Ubuntu on Acer Aspire 5315-052G12Mi

[sanone]

Last Update: 03-03-2008
- Updated Wifi (ndiswrapper) section. We now have a new driver which fixes bugs and enables the Wifi LEDS!!! (Marlo_nl keeps me busy )

21-02-2008
- Added gstreamer-properties section. (thanks ryphix)
- Fixed some commands that gave 'permission denied errors' and changed ndiswrapper packages. (thanks guykes and Marlo_nl)
- Added reference to ibiltari post about madwifi_ng patch instead of ndiswrapper.


Here I'll share my experiences with installing and configuring this neat little notebook. If you happen to own this notebook as well or have information to make this guide a bit better please let me know...

Specs:
• Celeron-M 530 1.73GHz
• 2048MB (2x 1024MB)
• 120GB
• DVD+/-RW DL
• Intel GMA X3100 onboard. Max.358MB shared memory
• USB 2.0/Modem/LAN/WLAN 802.11bg
• 15.4" WXGA TFT (1280x800)
• Li-Ionen-Akku (6 Cells)
• 2.80kg


INSTALLATION

The Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon LiveCD booted up without problems altho no wireless network was found. When I started the installer gParted (the partition manager) only gave me the option to install to the entire disk or manual installation.

Since I wanted to leave Vista on the disk (and 50GB is enough for now) I had to chose manual. I removed the third partition (sda3) which was the empty D:\ partition in Vista.

No further issues.


CONFIGURATION

After installation I logged into ubuntu and most of the stuff worked out of the box. There were only a few issues with the items below.

1) Compiz
2) Wifi
3) Sound
4) Webcam
5) Gstreamer-properties

Below you'll find solutions I found for these problems. If someone has better solutions / workarounds / knowledge feel free to comment as I will update this page.


1) Compiz
For such a powerfull 3D card with opensource drivers one would expect compiz to be working. According to this compiz fusion wiki page it is blacklisted.

Please note that this card is blacklisted for a reason. The drivers still don't support Xv which means that Totem (the default movie player) crashes when you play a movie and so does some other stuff (i.e. the visualization on rhythmbox). There is a pretty good work around for this. See section 5) Gstreamer-properties for more info.

If you want compiz fusion added the option "SKIP_CHECKS=yes" to the ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager file.

echo "SKIP_CHECKS=yes" > ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

2) Wifi
[Update] ibiltari has posted a possible solution to use the madwifi_ng driver (true linux driver) instead of the ndiswrapper (windows driver). Check it here. I haven't tested it myself but if you do please reply with the results!!
[Update2] This post suggests a newer XP driver which enables the wifi indicator LED and fix some issues.

Ubuntu detects the wifi card on this notebook as an Atheros AR5006EG. This is NOT correct and kept me busy for quite some time. When I booted back to Vista to dubble check on this I noticed that it was the Atheros AR5007EG. This card doesn't work with any of the restricted drivers nor with madwifi.

I used this thread, this website and this post as my guidance for installation and basically came down to this.

• Install ndiswrapper (use windows network drivers in linux)
• Download windows drivers and unpack ( I used these: http://www.atheros.cz/download/drive...2-6.0.3.85.zip from http://www.atheros.cz/)
• Install the driver with ndiswrapper
• Blacklist the device so Ubuntu doesn't try to load drivers for it itself.
• Save the ndiswrapper module configuration.

cd ~
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
wget http://www.atheros.cz/download/drivers/ar5008/xp32-6.0.3.85.zip
unzip xp32-6.0.3.85.zip
cd xp32-6.0.3.85
sudo ndiswrapper -i net5416.inf
gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

The last command starts gedit as superuser so we have the right to modify this system configurationfile. Add the following at the end of the file.

#Atheros AR5007EG (Ubuntu detects it as AR5006EG so we use ndiswrapper...)" blacklist ath_pci

Save the file and close gedit.

Now all we need to do is save the ndiswrapper config.

sudo ndiswrapper -ma && sudo ndiswrapper -mi && sudo ndiswrapper -m
cd ~

3) Sound
There are a lot of threads about Acer and sound on this forum. However most of them are old and require a lot of work (recompilation of also for instance). Luckily I found this official ubuntu wiki page. It shows this notebook and two simple instructions work perfectly.

• installed linux-backports-modules-generic
• added options line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base: options snd-hda-intel model=acer

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-generic
gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

The last command starts gedit as superuser so we have the right to modify this system configurationfile. Add the following at the end of the file.

options snd-hda-intel model=acer

Save the file and close gedit.


4) Webcam
[Update] It is possible to use the webcam pretty straightforward. The section below is kept for historical reasons and perhaps someone might find the tools provided there useful. See section 5) Gstreamer-properties how to set this up the 'best' way.

Wow.. during the writing of this article I did got some videofeed from my webcam.. but this doesn't mean that it's working in applications yet.. Both Ekiga and Camorama fail to connect to the webcam. I believe this is because it's supported by the video 4 Linux 2 drivers which aren't supported by those apps yet.

The command I used to get some video footage:

gst-launch v4l2src queue-size=2 !  ffmpegcolorspace ! ximagesink

I found another tool which shows webcam footage and can make screenshots / movies and allows you to alter stuff like gamma / sharpness etc. It's called luvcview and it's not in the repositories. The code below downloads, builds and starts luvcview.

cd ~
wget http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca50x/Investigation/uvc/luvcview-20070512.tar.gz
tar zxvf luvcview-20070512.tar.gz
cd luvcview-20070512
echo "INSTALLING THE REQUIRED PACKAGES TO BUILD THIS SOFTWARE"
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev build-essential
make
./luvcview -w -f yuv -i 30

Update: Ekiga can see this camera if you configure it to use the v4l2 driver but it seems that it can't send the data over..

If someone has some recommendations about good webcam software (capture sound/video) or a good MSN/ICQ client which supports this webcam please let me know


5) Gstreamer-properties
Gstreamer-properties is a configuration tool to setup devices for gstreamer (most gnome applications use this). It allows us configure gstreamer so we can playback video while compiz-fusion is enabled and allows gstreamer applications to use the webcam. The usage is pretty straightforward.

1) Start gstreamer-properties from the console by typing: gstreamer-properties
2) Goto the Video tab and select as Default Output the plugin X Window System (No Xv). This should enable all gnome applications to play video and visualizations while compiz-fusion is enabled.
3) Select at the Default Input section the plugin Video for Linux 2 (v4l2). This allows programs as cheese to use the webcam.

Please note while compiz is enabled and the Default Output plugin is set as in step 2 cheese (very nice webcam software) performs poorly. This is because they heavily depend on Xv for performance.


CONCLUSION
After these steps this notebook rocks your boxers like any other ubuntu machine. There are still some issues but it's for 95% usable.

The issues are mostly with the X3100 driver since it has some 3D related crashes, rendering bugs (try the 3d chess screensaver to see some ugly z buffering issues) and Xv. But since this is an open source driver I suspect these will be fixed soon,

The issues with the microphone are harder but I have good faith.

I hope some people find this information useful.

Cheers,
Sander


PS.
Thanks for all the replies with tips and bug fixes. Please continue to report errors / typos etc!!

[JoeTarrant]

Hi.

This post was very helpful. I wanted to get sound working. I installed the Linux modules and added the options line to alsa-base as suggested and rebooted. A whole new PC started up... Soundjuicer was playing a CD earlier and even recognised the tracknames.

For info - I've tried two old (10 years old) SVGA screens on this laptop and neither works. I set the Acer to 640x480 and they still don't work. Newer screens might work, of course, but at least one of these old screens was working in the last week. It's also impossible to screw the cable from an external screen into the laptop. So if you have an old connector, it just hangs there unsecured, which isn't the best for external screens.

I can also vouch that Fn+F7 turns off the trackpad. Gave me a bad 5 minutes before I worked that out! I connected a USB mouse to the laptop which worked immediately and checked around. So if anybody was wondering about USB.... It really works.

One problem I have is that the laptop whines a bit. I've begun noticing that over the last few days. Apart from that and a generally plasticky feeling (this isn't Apple quality hardware), it was a very good deal (£299 at Comet, in England).

I'm very new to Ubuntu. It seems light on the hardware - I have two Firefox windows running and the OS is using only 270MB of the gigabyte of ram. I have really fallen in love with Gnome. Extremely simple interface. Brilliant.

Thanks for the help with the sound. I'd never have worked that out. I'll keep an eye here for news of screen updates. If I'm in the mood later, I might try printing on it.

Joe

[sanone]

I'm glad this helped you out.. I haven't tested external monitors myself but if I do I'll update this page.

I also created a LaptopTestingTeam wiki page which informs you about all diffrent parts tested on this notebook.

San

[ryphix]

A note on compiz:

I was able to get visualizations in rhythmbox by typing

gstreamer-properties

into the terminal and under the video tab, selecting

X Window System (No Xv) for the plugin option.

I'm running on an Aspire 5315-2153. It's basically the same hardware.

[sanone]

Originally Posted by ryphix A note on compiz: I was able to get visualizations in rhythmbox by typing gstreamer-properties into the terminal and under the video tab, selecting X Window System (No Xv) for the plugin option. I'm running on an Aspire 5315-2153. It's basically the same hardware.

Thanks a lot ryphix!! I dind't know about this configuration tool.

This tool also allows me to change the default driver used by gstreamer for the webcam. Now cheese (webcam software) works. It's slow but according to their FAQ this is because of selecting "X Window System (No Xv)" in the gstreamer-properties configuration tool.

Well for now this tradeoff is good enough for me.. at least every video application using gstreamer (including watching movies in totem) now seems to work!

Cheers,
San

[JoeTarrant]

I've been having a problem with screen brightness. Fn+Left/Right arrow turns the screen brightness down/up. Pressing the key combination shows a little slider. Sometimes this works fine. Sometimes the slider shows nothing. It's there but has nothing to slide, as it were. Sometimes the slider shows full brightness and can't be altered. I feel there's a pattern to this, but haven't been using the machine enough to spot it. Anybody else having this and if so, what did you do to fix it? I don't like screens that are too bright and the default setting on the Acer is too bright for me. So it's one I'm keen to fix.

Thanks,

Joe

PS: just remembered. The Euro key (for the currency), next to the arrow keys, doesn't seem to work either. However, pressing AltGr+4 (as on Windows) works fine.

[sanone]

The brightness worked out of the box here... On all occasions so I'm curious what makes it not work on your machine.

And the eurosign indeed doesn't work.. neither does the dollar sign (the one near the arrows) btw. As far as I can tell they aren't supported by the selected 'keyboard layout' I use and therefore X11 doesn't detect any keypresses etc.

Perhaps some other 'keyboard layout' exists that has theses buttons on them... but then there is the issue that gnome doesn't have an option to bind a random key to the eurosign. There are only three predefined options which are all based on existing keys.

Even though I live in The Netherlands I do never use this sign so I'm not really looking further into this. If someone finds a fix for this please let us know in here!

Cheers,
San

[apez]

I'm going to buy this same model, and I would want to know if it's WLAN works fine with linux (not only Ubuntu/Kubuntu), for example, would it work with OpenSUSE or PCLOS?

[sanone]

Originally Posted by apez I'm going to buy this same model, and I would want to know if it's WLAN works fine with linux (not only Ubuntu/Kubuntu), for example, would it work with OpenSUSE or PCLOS?

Like I explained in my starters post I got WLAN / Wifi working with ndiswrapper. So the use of windows network drivers in Linux. Ndiswrapper is availible on almost every linux distribution so OpenSUSE / PCLOS should not have any problem with it.

I don't know about any specific tricks on other distros but there are certainly people on their forums / irc / mailinglists who can describe the procedure...

[mjwhitfield]

Your guide has saved my a*s. I'd never have figured all this out by myself. I'm getting this laptop of Christmas and I was super worried that I'd have a hell of a time getting it all working. Come to England one day and I'll buy you a beer - you've made my Christmas!