[NTLUG:Discuss] Laptop install help

[Douglas Scott]

On Wednesday 28 November 2007 10:28 am, Wayne Dahl wrote:
> David Simmons wrote:
> >> the video
> >> again came up in 800x600 resolution mode.  I figured it was a matter of
> >> just adding the desired screen resolution (Vista had it come up natively
> >> in 1440x900 mode), I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf to add the desired screen
> >> resolution,

> >> rebooted (I'm a little fuzzy on the process of stopping and
> >> starting the X server) and I now had the maximum screen resolution this
> >> laptop will produce.  The screen is capable of 720p HD screen
> >> resolution, low end HD, to be sure, but it beats standard screen
> >> resolutions.
> >
> > So, is video working like you want it to
> > work?  Are you able to enable the 3D modes?
>
> Yes, I neglected to mention that, since it was running Vista Aero Glass
> out-of-the-box, I knew it had the horsepower
> to run Compiz/Fusion.  So yes, the first thing I did after getting the
> desired screen resolution out of it was to install
> Compiz/Fusion.  It works......sort of.  It was really flaky, doing

As it happens I just bought this same model laptop.  To refresh everyone's 
memory here are the specs, copied from Wayne's original post

HP Pavilion Entertainment PC, model DV9260US
AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core Mobile Technology TL-58
2 120 Gig SATA 5400 rpm HD's
2 Gigs DDR2 2 Dimm RAM
nVidia MCP67M gpu, 256 Mb of dedicated video memory, capable of using
559 Mb of RAM total.  (Vista listed the GPU as nVidia MCP67M, HP in
their specs says it's an nVidia GeForce Go 7150M (UMA), which is, I'm
sure, the same thing).
HP Pavilion Webcam with Integrated Mic
Broadcom 802.11 b/g wireless NIC

I've been trying out different distributions and running into the same issues 
as Wayne, plus a few he missed.  

It works fine in Vista naturally.  But all the Ubuntu variants have issues 
with the video, unless you use the safe graphics mode.  Open SuSe is able to 
work with 1024x768 out of the box, but I don't think it has sound.  I also 
noticed that when booting a Knoppix live CD (5.1.1) it failed to recognize 
the 2nd SATA drive.  I checked with dmesg and found that it was having some 
initialization error with sata_nv driver.  I have a suspicion that there 
might have been a bug either in the driver or kernel used by that version.  
But I was able to read both partitions on the 1st drive just fine.

In any case I wanted to make sure that you were eventually able to get the 
resolution on the system fixed.  I would hate to be stuck with 800x600.

Also where do you stand with the built-in wireless?  I haven't been able to 
get past the other problems to work on that yet.  I did do a little checking 
on the web and I think that may be fixable with a little work.

Thanks in advance