Hardware
| AMD Turion MT-28 1.6 Ghz | Works | had to manually load powernow-k8 module |
| 15 inch TFT Display, 1024x768 pixels | Works | selected generic flat panel 1024x768 |
| SIS M760 integrated video card | Works | selected "sis" driver in XFree86 config |
| 2x512 MB | Works | - |
| 60 GB IDE hard disk | Works | - |
| Firewire/IEEE1394 | Not tried | detected by kernel, probably works |
| Integrated Network Card | Works | - |
| Internal 56k Modem | Works | using ALSA + Intel 8x0 driver + slmodemd |
| DVD writer | Works | - |
| Internal WLAN | Works | - |
| Battery | Works | added ec_burst=1 to kernel parameters |
| Touchpad | In progress | some remaining problems |
| Power management | In progress | mostly works |
Software
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" for AMD64 upgraded to 4.0 "Etch"
Installed an i386 chroot as per instructions in The Debian GNU/Linux AMD64 HOW-TO. Using self-compiled 2.6.27 kernel.
Modem
I downloaded the binary packages for x86_64/Fedora Core 4 and converted them to DEB format using Alien.
Debian correctly identifies the soundcard and loads the snd-intel8x0 and snd-intel8x0m drivers and the ac97 codecs.
To use the modem I need to run slmodemd --country=ITALY --alsa --daemon and change pppd config to use /dev/ttySL0 (wvdial does this automatically).
Touchpad
For Debian the driver is packaged as xfree86-driver-synaptics; installation instructions are under /usr/share/doc/xfree86-driver-synaptics/. As an alternative, you can download the sources for the Synaptics driver; it is then necessary to modify XF86Config/xorg.conf as demonstrated here.
Power management
Suspend to disk (S4) works using the stock 2.6.15 kernel. There seem not to be any problems.
Suspend to RAM (S3) works after adding acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode to the kernel boot parameters. The notebook only wakes up when pressing the power button hence I had to substitute the poweroff.sh script included with acpid as packaged by Debian.
My /usr/bin/suspend.ram script (to be run as root):
#!/bin/sh touch /var/run/suspend.ram echo -n mem > /sys/power/state
My /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh script:
#!/bin/sh
if test -e /var/run/suspend.ram; then
( /bin/sleep 5; /bin/rm -rf /var/run/suspend.ram ) &
else
/sbin/shutdown -h now "Power button pressed"
endif
Standby (S1) works with 2.6.16/2.6.17 kernels. Sometimes the notebook enters standby when the lid is closed even if attached to AC (happened with 2.6.12, seems to be fixed in 2.6.15).
DPMS turns off the display but fails to turn off the backlight hence the screen becomes completely white (and I suspect there is near-zero power saving).
Wireless
Works using kernel 2.6.15.5, ndiswrapper 1.10, 64 bit Windows drivers for ACER Aspire.
Not tried with a 32 bit OS but it should work. It did not work with older kernels/ndiswrapper versions.