My best friend bought me a
Compaq V2405CA, a nearly new AMD based laptop that's quite speedy, burns dual layer DVDs, has TV-out and it plays a 1920x1080 MPEG4 video file that I haven't seen any other computer able to play... Awesome! The only problem with it is the wireless network only works for a few minutes, then stops, still seemingly connected but refuses to work, no matter what until a full reboot. Tried updating drivers, adjusting settings but still, no luck. I've determined that it's not my wireless access point because the old laptop has no problems staying connected, so time to try Linux and solve what seems to be the root of the problem, Microsoft Windows XP.
I'm using
Mepis on my main machine, it's a Live Debian distro so there are thousands and thousands of software packages already built and ready for installation from the repositories, and most non-distro software is available as a .deb format package. I'm trying the latest build, 3.4 rc4 and updated KDE to 3.5. It works well with this hardware, but the default drivers included for the Broadcom WiFi card aren't suitable, so I had to wrap the supplied Windows drivers with ndiswrapper and then the wireless card was fully functional, including the on/off button and the blue LED. There is a native version of the driver in the works that should support
Kismet. No problems with disconnection either, so it's not the drivers since the Windows drivers were still in use. For the volume buttons above the keyboard I had to select a keyboard layout in the
KDE control panel for a "Hewlett-Packard Omnibook XE3 GC, GD, GE and Pavilion N5xxx" and now an on-screen display pops up when they are pressed indicating the volume level or mute state. In the Mepis Config (OS Center) panel under mouse and display, I chose "Synaptics Touchpad" and then the vertical and horizontal scrolling areas worked, better than in Windows, in fact, you can scroll in ALL programs, unlike in Windows where it uses strange hooks to scroll that don't work in many common programs, such as Firefox and Winamp.
There are still one or two minor issues, I need to figure out how to setup the multiple heads (monitor and TV), I know the drivers are capable, but for now it's easy enough to boot into Windows to do video output. I'm using a
Free OS that's running this computer
better than the operating system that it came bundled with, isn't it about time they start offering these for sale
even cheaper without Windows? The sticker states "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" and that is in fact true, no Linux drivers are supplied, but Linux still manages to run it better. Sticker removed.
