[NTLUG:Discuss] Success! HP DV9620US laptop fully functional!

[Wayne Dahl]

I have a success story...finally!  I had Kubuntu 7.10 installed on this 
laptop after I got it (and the Gibbon came out) and everything except 
the wireless NIC worked.  Even the built in webcam worked to snap 
pictures, take videos with and use with Kopete for Yahoo chats (haven't 
tried it for MSN chats, but the docs say it'll work). 

However, I couldn't get the wireless to work, no way, no how.  I tried 
so much crap from so many different pages trying to get it to work that 
I think it was permanently fubar.   Because of that, I didn't EVEN want 
to try doing an upgrade.  So I opted to do a fresh install of Kubuntu 
8.04 AFTER a few months had gone by after to release, so as to let 
Canonical come up with patches for some of the left over bugs. 

The downside to doing a fresh install was the time I had to put in 
getting everything back the way I wanted it after I foolishly tried 
Compiz again.  Compiz just does not like this laptop (or maybe it's 
nVidia is just doesn't like...never had ANY luck with it running nVidia 
video cards, but that may be because of my choice of video cards) and it 
totally screwed up KDE when I tried to remove it.  I took some advice I 
found on a Kubuntu forum and renamed the .kde folder to .kde_old, then 
restarted the laptop.  ALL of my configuration stuff was now gone and I 
had a fresh KDE install. 

Well, I now have it all back to normal.  This laptop has a Broadcom 
wireless NIC in it and Broadcom has a really bad reputation when it 
comes to Linux.  I was ready to buy an HP Intel PRO NIC (found one on 
sale online for less than $50) which should have alleviated the issue 
with the BIOS not recognizing it (a "feature" HP builds into a lot of 
their laptops) but I decided to give the latest version of Kubuntu a 
try.  I did the install, activated all the repositories, including 
restricted, did a full update of the system before trying to activate 
the restricted drivers (the nVidia and the Broadcom).  The nVidia driver 
just installed the restricted (proprietary) nVidia driver and everything 
just worked (no tweaking of xorg.conf to get more than 2 screen 
resolutions).  The Broadcom driver was almost as easy.  After selecting 
it, Kubuntu told me I needed to download the restricted drivers, do you 
want to do so...yes.  After downloading the driver, it told me I needed 
bcm43xx-fwcutter, do you want to do so...yes.  After that ran, said it 
was done, I rebooted the laptop to see KNetworkManager asking for my WPA 
key.  I'm assuming that Kubuntu automatically downloaded and installed 
WPASupplicant since I didn't install it...or maybe it's just a part of 
the default installation.  At any rate, for the first time, I've been 
able to connect wirelessly to my Netgear wireless AP. 

Before 802.11 was working, I had to use a Novatel Ovation broadband 
modem on the Sprint network for internet access...to the tune of an 
extra $60 a month for unlimited data transfers.  No more.  I still have 
the Sprint account in the event I don't have WiFi access, but still need 
internet access.  That's being evaluated at this time, though.

Allen, was that what you were talking about?  Sprint has decent 
instructions on how to get their broadband wireless access working with 
Linux.  However, I agree with most of the others here...broadband 
wireless access would be a last resort.  I would do what I could to get 
WiFi working first.  But I can relate to your questions with this laptop.

One thing I haven't had the courage to try with this laptop is 
hibernate/sleep/resume.  I tried it on the Gibbon and it didn't work 
very well at all.  Anyone have any luck with it on the Heron?

Thanks for listening to my gibberish...I just had to share my success.  
Most people hear HP and run screaming in the other direction.  I suppose 
I've been lucky to have had the success I have with this laptop.

Wayne