Ubuntu 8.04 on an Asus F8VA

[dickohead]

Alright...

So now that I have a notebook with Express Gate/SplashTop installed (woof) I was starting to doubt whether or not I would ever leave the rapid booting environment. But the temptation was too much so I installed Hardy on my notebook - and this is what I've found so far.

System Specs:
CPU: Intel C2D T9400 2.53GHZ
RAM: 4GB DDR2 800MHz
HDD: 320GB SATA 5400RPM
ROM: Bluray drive
Video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 1GB (native 1440x900)
Audio: Built-in Azalia compliant audio chip, with 3D effect & full duplex
LAN: Not sure yet... Reported as Unknown
Wireless: Intel® WiMAX/WiFi Link 5100
Asus Specs Link

I was able to boot from the CD just fine and started to install Ubuntu (x86_64). The keyboard and mouse were picked up fine and I proceeded to repartition my hard drive with great ease.

The system then rebooted and presented me with a logon screen running at 1280x800, I logged in and received no login Audio (this always happens, so I wasn't worried).

My first task was to change my resolution to 1440x900; because I'm a fussy turd, so I proceeded to the System Menu and checked out the Restricted Drivers to find that the ATI Drivers were installed, but not active... So I opened up a terminal and cat'd /etc/X11/xorg.conf and to my surprise - bugger all was configured. So I tried to enable the driver to no avail and then loaded up Synaptic to install a different driver - only to find that my network card had not been identified!!! THE HORROR!

I then rebooted into Express Gate and downloaded some files from the Asus website (from here) complete with drivers for VGA/Audio/LAN and Raid. Inside this file were LAN drivers for Suse, Mandriva, RHE and Fedora... no Ubuntu.

After cursing Asus I opened up the Mandriva folder to find that the included sis190.ko file was for X86_64 architectures, but none of the others were. So I copied this file to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/sis190.ko and rebooted - it freakin worked!!!

Who'd've thunk it?

I then loaded up synaptic, searched for "radeon" and installed the FGLRX drivers. I rebooted again and was greeted automatically with 1440x900 resolution and a much prettier desktop. I then turned on "normal effects" and dribbled a little.

So now I am left with fixing the WLan (no surprises there), testing Bluetooth (the applet is there) and finding out why ALSA has correctly identified my sound card; but is unable to playback any sound. I suspected it might have been "switches" or "options" under the Sound Applet as it was on my last notebook, but this did not work.

I also need to look into finger-print-reader support for Linux since I really do like this feature and Vista does it so nicely (*ducks*).

All in all - a pleasant surprise over my last Hardy-notebook experience. I'll update this post as I fix more things and discover more stuff that I like!

If anyone is looking for a new notebook - the F8VA is awesome!
And if Asus is looking to send me free stuff, send me an e-mail.

[dickohead]

Alright. I tried to get my sound working and have epically failed.

I followed the tutorial located here and even did the extra bits in the event the first stuff didn't work... and it still doesn't work.

So now I'm back to thinking that maybe; sound, Ubuntu and I had some problems in the past and now I'm paying for them... so be it. I'll use Vista... See what I did there, I instilled a little bit of fear, so now when I try and get the sound working it'll want to work!

My LAN card also switches between giving itself a 169.x.x.x address and getting one from my DHCP server (never happened before). I have to continually replace the sis190.ko file then reboot before it works again - ughhhhh!

Any suggestions or additional info you'd like?

[Chris Cudahy]

I bought a F8VA last week and I've had close to the same experience running ubuntu 8.04. The restricted video driver just worked for me, as did LAN but both Wireless LAN and audio are not functioning.

There's an ath9k driver in development which I believe should help with wireless. If I'm reading it correctly it was recently merged into wireless-testing (see the comment on http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/...h9k#Getthecode ). I haven't been able to get this running yet.

ASUS has a newer BIOS available, version 206 which claimed to "Fix bug that when disable the USB, the Audio and modem are disabled, too". This seemed promising, but didn't help.

A USB audio headset I plugged in as a sanity check works perfectly.

[wolfen69]

it's probably good to get a spare wireless card (PCMCIA) that works in linux OOTB. i have not needed to use mine yet, but at least i know that no matter which laptop i use or get, i'll be able to get online. i think if you're going to get serious about linux, also need to get serious about using compatible hardware. people buy computers with windows, dont they? and then complain that it's not ready for prime time. do yourself a favor and buy a pc with linux pre-installed, or use compatible hardware. the experience will blow your mind. why fight it?

[dickohead]

@wolfen69 - was not complaining mate, just putting my experiences down so that others may benefit and provide feedback as Chris did.

I also understand that there will always be hardware that won't immediately work, but if everyone avoids that hardware in favour of compatible alternatives; we'd never get anywhere.

[wolfen69]

@wolfen69 - was not complaining mate, just putting my experiences down so that others may benefit and provide feedback as Chris did.

I also understand that there will always be hardware that won't immediately work, but if everyone avoids that hardware in favour of compatible alternatives; we'd never get anywhere.

it wasnt really directed at you, i was just making a statement.

[FlyingPenguin]

I was thinking about buying this at newegg. Any updates on these issues? Any info on the built in webcam?

[dickohead]

After I ran some updated the LAN card issue went away, and I could get the Video working quite well. But still no sound, no wireless (this should work with the 2.6.27+ kernel) and no idea if the webcam works!

I installed 8.10 on last night and the video has gone bad on me, but it did pick up the WiFi card (dmesg | grep 5100 or dmesg | grep WiFi).

So I suggest you wait for 8.10 and see how much success we have there!

The laptop is reeeel pretty though.

[stalkingwolf]

maybe the EEE version would be of help? It was written for an ASUS.

Just a thought.

[dickohead]

Yeah I thought that too, but the EEEPC uses a different wireless card.