HP Delivers KDE on Laptops

Hewlett-Packard made quite a splash when they announced that they are
offering Linux on the nx5000, one of the latest HP laptop models. HP also sponsored aKademy, the KDE Community World Summit as a Platinum
sponsor
. This included a loan of 24 laptops for usage in the tutorial rooms
as well as a special deal for KDE contributors to buy the nx5000 model at a
reduced price. The aKademy press team arranged a meeting with Thomas Schneller, Manager Software R&D and asked him about this venture from HP.

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Can you please introduce yourself?

My name is Thomas Schneller, Manager Software R&D of the HP EMEA Product Development Center based in Munich.
I was part of the Linux Core team which developed the first Linux pre-installation on a nx5000 Laptop.

The KDE desktop contributed to the success of SUSE Linux and HP chose SUSE/KDE for this laptop. What
were the strong points for offering a KDE desktop to your customers?

We used the standard configuration which comes with SUSE Linux which is KDE.
We believe that KDE is a good choice as it offers basically everything needed on a today's desktop.

Do you give support for the nx5000 configured with a KDE/Linux configuration?

Yes, there is a 90 days support for the pre-installed Linux software shipped on
that laptop which is similar to Windows where we offer the same support.

Are there any plans for more models supporting Linux?

It depends on the market response to the nx5000 offer. If there is a need for Linux pre-installed
Laptops we will discuss how to support that. Currently we are also thinking to offer better support
for Linux in the first place.

Right now the nx5000 is not available in Europe. Do you have any plans to sell them anywhere other than the US?

It is true; right now the nx5000 is only available in USA. It would have been too much effort to offer it
for Europe as well as there are so many languages and localization options to take care of. But European
customers are welcome to buy it in the USA if they want. It can be ordered on the
HP website.
Just choose Linux as OS and the Integrated HP W500 wireless option.
Drivers for that device are pre-installed. The Intel 2200BG driver was not available at the
time we released the pre-installation.

Will you support people who build device drivers and will you be giving them hardware information?

Yes, we already work with the open source community. As an example have a look at HP & Open Source where several Open Source projects are hosted.

Does power management and the winmodem work on the nx5000 as they do under Microsoft Windows?

Yes, basically all hardware is working. ACPI is fully supported, so hibernating your Linux laptop is
possible and also the winmodem works on this model. I also want to stress the fact that we welcome any feedback
as we are eager to hear people's experiences with our product.


K3B and Kopete running...

Did you have some problems of getting hardware components to work?

We carefully choose the target platform for that project. We wanted to make sure everything just works.
The only problems we had during development were caused by pieces of hardware where detailed specs were not available to us.

Will this only work on SUSE or do you have any plans to support more distributions.
Does HP have any plans to better support Linux in general?

Of course other distributions are free to benefit from the work we did. There are plans to distribute BIOS in a Linux-friendly format for selected Models. For the nx5000 this kind of BIOS is still available:
ROMPaq for HP Notebook System BIOS (68BCU ROM) Linux-Based.
You can just download it onto your Linux desktop, unpack it and run a script which will ask, if you want to create
a bootable diskette or a bootable CD. Then you only need to reboot with the bootable media and can flash your BIOS easily.
Plans to collect and offer Linux pre-installation instructions and white papers on an open source basis are discussed as well.

Did you write any additional software for the nx5000 project? Any plans maybe on doing that?

Well any needed software we were looking for was already provided by the SUSE Linux distribution like
for example the power management applet. So we did not need to write additional software.

Any ideas of working together with KDE developers with this. How about a KControl module
for usage in KControl?

HP will support initiatives which will enrich the desktop experience on our laptops. If you or
your project has an interesting piece of software please let us know.


Watching DVD's with LinDVD...

Can you tell us about any experiences your customers have with the KDE desktop on these laptops?

Currently it is still a bit early but we are busy collecting feedback from all people who are using these
Linux laptops. We have a feedback loop installed for this. But at least the experience of testers are telling us,
we are on the right way.

You sponsored the KDE Conference with these laptops and you even decided to sell some of those laptops at a lower price
to our developers. What's the gain for HP for doing all of this?

HP was an official sponsor of the KDE Conference as we are sponsoring open source events in general. Also we hope
that by selling these laptops at a nice price that some KDE people will provide us some feedback. We as HP want to
improve Linux support for selected models and to do so, we need to understand the issues. We appreciate your feedback,
please don't hesitate to send us any problem you're having with the nx5000 you bought.

Is there anything else you want to mention?

Yes. Please post your comments below the article. I will read through them and answer any question appearing.

Thank you for answering these questions and also a big thank you for the support HP has given to KDE.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by The Badger (not verified)

"So doing a extra sku for all european country simply was to expencife specially when not knowing how the market demand is."

Understood.

"You are still influencing HP. We appreciate your feedback and I will input directly into the Linux core team."

Thanks for participating in this discussion! It's good to see that some companies are interested in what (potential) customers think.

If your answers are any hint of what we can expect from HP now and into the future, I think HP has just made itself a bunch of friends.

My company is moving slowly to Linux: 30%Linux, 70%Windows. We expect to be 50/50 by the beginning of 2006. Our biggest fear was user training and we have needed little to no training. We want to be able to get our computers, particularly laptops, preloaded with Linux to ease the intallation process. I am hoping that there will be additional laptops sold with Linux in the future, so that we can accomodate different usage profiles.

Thanks for all your great work.

by probono (not verified)

Split it into two boxes: one box that contains the notebook without a keyboard and linux preconfigured so that it asks for the language on power-on, and one separate box that contains the keyboard.

Before you start to laugh, two boxes, that's the way Apple did localization already back in the 80s... and it makes sense from an economical perspective!

(IBM just lost me as a customer because they weren't able to ship a German keyboard for their ThinkPads to the USA at an acceptable price... so hopefully HP gets this right)

by Thomas Schneller (not verified)

Intresting idea. Is there an instruction how to assemble it? Don't understand me wrong, but their might be people out there with two left thumbs.

We need to take care of them.... :)

by probono (not verified)

I don't know about HP, but the IBM keyboards are user-exchangeable with just 3 screws or so. And I even heard that some manufacturers (Apple?) have "keycaps sets" where you can exchange the caps of the keys with a screwdriver... the whole "localization" then costs the user $5...

by Adham (not verified)

Hi, REcently I got an hp nx 9005 notebook, and had some trouble with Suse Linux 9.1 Pro (ATI Driver, ACPI, FIreWire) It would be nice, if HP would release a Support Page with official drivers, installation tips, and even an HP sponsered mailing list for Running Linux (esp. Suse) on their models. Its nice to be able to tal to the people inside HP like you Thomas, who seem to know WAY much more about the inner working of teh laptops, and thus can assist in finding solutions faster...

Any way, is my hp nx 9005 going to be supported!! Is it Wishfullthinking....

by Thomas Schneller (not verified)

Adam,

thanks for the feedback. There are indeed discussions to collect and offer Linux installation instructions including links to drivers and stuff like that for selected models. Usage of mailing lists is also under discussion. In addition HP is working with several 3rd party hardware vendors to get Linux drivers for their products.

Regarding nx9005 installation instructions, have a look here:

http://tuxmobil.org/cpu_amd.html

there are several installation instructions for the nx9005. Should help to solve the ATI, ACPI and firewire problem.

by shahid mehmood (not verified)

I have HP Pavilion dv4440 laptop . i have problems in installing its drivers as firewire, modem , sd card reader under fedora core 6 kernel 2.6.18-1.2849. Will you please guide me in installing these drivers.

THANKS

by Lamarque Souza (not verified)

This link might be useful for you:
http://freax.be/wiki/index.php/Installing RH9 on a Compaq nx9010 laptop

nx9010 is very similar to nx9005 except it uses Pentiun IV instead of Athlon.

by Jeroen (not verified)

Thomas, bit of a different question altogether; do you know if anyone at HP is looking at nomachine's NXserver and/or freenx? The advantages of connecting thin clients to a huge linux/unix server or cluster seem massive from the security and sysadmin point of view, and both the hardware and software TCO of such a setup would be very appealing. Not to mention that in the deal you get to sell and service big iron. Seems to me that nx has taken this technology to the next level.

by Thomas Schneller (not verified)

>do you know if anyone at HP is looking at nomachine's NXserver and/or freenx?

Yes. I am. I always was un-satisfied with the remote desktop experience when running it over modem. So I installed nx-nomaschine server on an Linux box within the intranet of my office. Over that gateway I was then able to connect into an MS intranet inviroment over VPN with a MS client connected by modem and then calling my office unit running WinXP.

Strange routing:

MS XP client connected via modem to the internet-->
calling gateway by pptp MS vpn-->
connecting to the nx-server running on Suse Linux 9.1-->
jump to my office unit running WinXP and connect to the nx-client.

-->run the remote connetion over modem in a usable way.

Great. I love this software. Well done!

Apart from that, HP is not involved with any nx-nomaschine issues. Users are free to install and use it any time.

But at least I can say, tested and it's working.... :)

Have a nice time

Thomas

by David (not verified)

Will the Linux OS support the new cameras and printers? What about the new HP iPod? Does it ship with iTunes?

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

Hi,

Being positively surprised about the well-working software suspend, I was somewhat negatively surprised about the missing support for multimedia keys.

The solution is easy:

1) Follow this description at
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Configuring_keyboards
(Mute is 160, VolDown is 174, VolUp is 176 on the nx5000, test other models with "xev").
2) Load xmodmap on every start (is there a way to configure this in KDE?)

3) install and run kdebase3-mixer aka kmix (you can disable kamix) via yast
(I upgraded the packages to KDE 3.3 by adding ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_9.1/yast-s... to the installation sources and do an upgrade, worked fine for me).

4) open the mixer window, right click on the master volume slider, "configure shortcuts", assign keys.

5) enjoy your newly working multimedia keys! Please note that the mute LED will not work, this will be fixed in KDE 3.3.1

Alternative way: configure the keys with xmodmap as decribed above. http://hardware.mcse.ms/message65071.html has a nice script
that mutes the sound (even with a working mute LED). Similar could be written for vol up / down. Then assoctiate the script with the keys using khotkeys in kcontrol.

Thomas, could you add method #2 (or preferably #1) for a new revision of revision of the OEM installation?

Should be fairly similar to the way you added the macrovision daemon. I only found it confusing that the daemon is not provided by any RPM package. Why is that?

Cheers,
Daniel

by Klaus (not verified)

if I hadn't just bought an Averatec laptop two months ago. A laptop that works with Linux out of the box, and that comes without the Microsoft tax, is a dream come true! And the price seems right, too.

So if HP keeps producing great Linux laptops when my current laptop becomes obsolete, they have a customer in me!

Klaus

by Boudewijn (not verified)

AOL... My new Dell is only six months old, so I guess I won't be looking for a new laptop until 2006. Unless 64 processors really take off and I cannot resist... Or the Dell breaks down. But when I'm in the market again, HP will top the shortlist (together with ASUS, about whose laptops I've had good reports). (Which doesn't mean that I don't covet a new apple to replace the old powerbook I'm typing this on.)

by azhyd (not verified)

any information on the deal for KDE contributors? was it limited to those that were able to make it to Akademy?

by anonymous coward (not verified)

>>> any information on the deal for KDE contributors? was it limited to those that were able to make it to Akademy? <<<

Yes.

And only to the first 30 to shout "here!", when the offer was announced.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

I found this very cool mailing list with lots of great info for Compaq R3000 series notebooks. It has been quiet for several days and I just posted and it seems it's off line. It looks like somebody is hosting it on their home system. Maybe they are out of town or perhaps live in Florida or something. I thought it was cool that their subdomain was quanta, but right now I am frustrated. I'm willing to host it on one of my servers which has near perfect uptime if they would like, but there is no way to know who had the list. Maybe it will be back. If you have any info please email me... sequitur at kde, don't forget the dot org.

by Rudi Nunlist (not verified)

Looking for a fast 17" screen laptop, I bought a zd7140 in May and installed Fedora 2. While many features
work, there are some remaining issues. Might there be any support for the 7000 series? Specifically, I could
not get these features to work (stock kernel 2.6.7):
- Suspend/hibernate: Could not get it to resume.
- Blanking the screen: the backlight stays on. It seems to be hard-wired?
- SD card reader: I found no trace of a driver.

Support for a Linux driver for the broadcom wifi card would be welcome. Ndiswrapper works, but the driver
lacks featutes implemented for other cards (monitor mode, etc.). Pushing the wireless button locks the machine.
It appears that the BIOS is set up to not boot if a different wifi card is installed. Is a more tolerant BIOS version
(and linux flash utility) on the drawing board?
I have not tested firewire and S-video, etc.

by Fikret Skrgic (not verified)

I don't see the flash utility being a problem. BIOS can be flashed from a floppy. That option seems to be offered from everybody. As long as that is possible, it is very easy to distribute BIOS updates to Linux users. All they need to do is to create one floppy and then create an image out of it on a Linux machine by doing

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=image.file

Then they can let us download image.file and we can reproduce the floppy by doing

dd if=image.file of=/dev/fd0

So, no problem. They just need to be willing to spend a couple of minutes per BIOS version.

by mark (not verified)

I love my new zd7260. SuSE 9.1 Pro works great, with just a few things to note. You need to set your keyboard to "microsoft natural keyboard pro" to get your multimedia keys working. The broadcom chip works with ndiswrapper, but not out of the box, and it is somewhat limited. The scrollbar on the touchpad does not work, but I will try the alps driver as mentioned a previous thread. I have no use for the digital media port or for the infrared port, so I don't know if those work. Hibernate/suspend work fine. There is an issue with the screen blinking sometimes, perhaps an issue with the nvidia driver.

I would like HP to provide specific support about hardware compatibilty with linux, perhaps even ensuring they only use components that work in windows and linux.

I had to pay the windows tax, but it would be nice to have had SuSE preinstalled (without windows).

Mark

by David Hopkins (not verified)

I just bought a refurbished Zd7260 and it needs a hard drive. What make and model do you have in yours?

by Richard Witt (not verified)

Hi David,

I just found this post while looking for a different issue which I will as you about in a moment. I also have a zd7260 running SuSE 9.3 Pro and my hard drive is an 80 GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 HDD: 7,200rpm, the ID is IC25N080ATMR04-0.
Now, let me ask if either you or Mark (the original post) has had any trouble with the hardware wireless button? It used to work fine for me in the sense that I could turn the wireless off and on with it and it would light-up or go dark as expected. Just last week it stopped working in Linux but still works as expected in Windows. Have either of you seen this behavior? Did you fix it somehow?

Thanks, and sorry for being off topic here. It's hard to find Linux users with the same model laptop.

--Richard

by Thomas Schneller (not verified)

Not to pay it?

Heard that now many times. Seems to be a number one priority in the community?

Please vote.......

Considering all the stories about how Microsoft ensures a steady stream of money by locking OEM into contracts which let them pay licenses per sold computer instead per actually sold software it should be no surprise and rather natural that those people aware of this practice while not at all interested in buying Microsoft software are looking for OEM which are not locked into the above scheme. (That sentence became a little long, sorry about that, heh.)

I have something to say about this. The fact that HP now sells one (ONE) model with Linux preinstalled is nice, but not thrilling. Here is my point of view and I believe that a huge number of people think the same. I really don't care whether it comes preinstalled with Linux. I can install it myself, I prefer to install it myself, and, as a matter of fact, even if I would buy that laptop, I would erase the hard drive and install what I want from scratch. Also, I don't need any support. I want a warranty for the hardware, of course, but beyond that I don't need anything else. What I am looking for is buying hardware without paying for Windows, not for Linux preinstalled. Once I have found a nice laptop on the HP website (generally I like HP laptops and I think they are reasonably priced) and I called to ask whether I can buy it without Windows. I was told: "No way". I don't, really, understand why. That's as if I would go buy dinner plates and they would tell me that I can buy them, but only if I buy some meatloafs with them too. I don't like that laptop, but I could definitely find one that I like. Well, if I want to buy the one I like, I have to buy Windows. As a matter of fact, I have an HP laptop and I paid for Windows which I immediately erased. I mean, Microsoft has it real nice. They don't have to care about competition, because even if you choose a competitor's product, you still have to pay to them. How could they not make money? I will not buy Windows anymore. There are some small companies selling OS-free hardware. Some people, as you can read above and I know anyways, are still paying for Windows and erasing it. A LOT OF people. Why can't I click on "Customize" on the HP website and select "No OS"? HP won't sell harware without support or whatever? I don't mind at all. We do that anyway. We buy hardware and install an operating system for which no support is offered. But we still pay for Windows. How can it be worse for us if we get the same just without paying for Windows? HP is no different from other big guys. I'm not saying that anybody else is better. This is an omnipresent problem. Then, there is a huge hype about Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer coming with Windows and antitrust laws. But that's really irrelevant compared to this. You don't have to pay extra money for IE or WMP. We are being forced to PAY for something we don't want and do not use. Let us take a look at this. Aren't the hardware and the software two separate products? If IE is a separate product with respect to the operating system, isn't the operating system a separate product with respect to the hardware. If I want to buy some hardware, why would I have to buy some software at the same time? If I have to, I should at least be offered an option. Because the hardware cannot work without software? Well, IE cannot work without the operating system either. Just before Bush was elected they were about to split Microsoft into two companies. That's how serious they were about it. Then MS gave Bush some money and, after he was elected, they just made MS install Windows in some schools for free, which in the end might be good for Microsoft, and turned the MS loss into a win. But, that is a separate issue. The point is, if Bush was not elected, they would have really split MS because of something as irrelevant as IE, which is free. Windows is not free and we are still forced to buy it, if we want to get the hardware we want. The same holds for desktops, but, luckily, there are a lot of companies that sell OS-free desktop hardware, and desktops are easy to assemble and I can just buy parts and do it myself. Laptops are a bigger problem. I will buy an HP, or Dell, or IBM as soon as I can get any of the hardware offered without Windows. Until then, I'll help the small businesses, if I need a laptop, and I will build my own desktops. Unfortunately, a lot of people are still buying Windows and erasing and companies like HP do not get the message. For example, I would like to buy a laptop with an Athlon 64. You put a link above to a laptop with this processor. I clicked on the link and, of course, it says MS Win XP Pro. If I want it, I have to buy Win XP Pro. I do want it, but I will not buy it. The first one of the big guys (HP, IBM, Dell etc), who will offer their hardware (all their hardware) Windows-free will have my everlasting loyalty. However, I don't see it happening soon. I will always, as long as the company exists, buy my desktop hardware from www.micronux.com . They offer great hardware and do not force me to buy Windows. I have this HP laptop, but the next time I buy a laptop, I'll buy a Sager or a ProStar. I hope they will grow and I appreciate what they are doing. And I will make sure I help them out. They are fair to us. They are willing to sell me hardware (just hardware).

While I was disappointed in the outcome of the MS vs DOJ trial, I am seeing some serious FOSS competition that is making an impact. In a way, this I feel is better for the industry as a whole.

The fact that HP has released a Linux laptop is huge. This signifies that their research showed there *IS* a market for desktop Linux. The fact there is starting to be more and more support for Linux as a desktop OS from companies such as Novell, HP, and Nvidia is encouraging.

I hope that even if HP finds that selling their own Linux on a laptop is not viable, they will continue to test their systems against Linux and provide an alternative toward Windows pre-installed (ie load up FreeDOS but offer drivers for Linux).

While it still is very much in the early stages, I believe the pieces are starting to fall into place. If HP continues to support Linux and offer more systems with Linux preinstalled (or Linux certified) then other OEMs will have to react and provide similar offerings to stay competitive.

With more systems being offered with Linux, the user base increases. With it increased, software vendors will start to port their applications -- most likely starting with business/niche players and slowing rolling to more general use software (the general use players have the most to lose as there already is a lot of great FOSS in that segment). From there, it will have an appreciable small percentage of the market.

Am I nuts? We'll see .. There still is a lot of ground to cover. Software patents, DRM issues, fear of the unknown/running back to the familiar, etc are still big hurdles. However, the fact that there is already a healty corporate backing for Linux and support options are expanding (multi-tiered, classes, etc..) is very positive.

Either way, it is fun to kick back and watch the competition.. The tech industry is starting to get interesting again (truly feels like the first timne since the 90's..)

I think apart from price issue there is an issue of teaming up for linux.

Example: If I I had a choice between two comparable laptops one with M$ tax say for $1999 and one without for $1959 and had to buy PCMCIA card for $79 for the latter, I would still go for the one without tax. I'd rather support people who care about me joe Linux user.

Having to pay the Windows tax is bad in at least three ways:
- first obviously because there is no way around ("have to"). This wouldn't be such a problem if you could easily sell the Windows licence or at least get a refund for returning it.

- second, the money goes to someone who is not using it for anything of worth, I'd rather donate it to KDE, amnesty international or Greenpeace or spend it on beer :)

- third, statistics count me as a Windows user and my machine as a Windows installation, which is not very helpful considering that some (most?) managers rely on these statistics when considering market options.
For example I am a HP customer (I own a Omnibook 6100since 2002), but I am quite sure HP counts this machine as a part of their Windows market, they have no data to assume anything else.

by Ron de Jong (not verified)

I haven't got the HP nx5000, but a laptop with a pre-installed Linux distribution would be my choice otherwise I would install SuSE anyway which is what I've done before on other laptops including a HP laptop which worked excellent even wireless worked out the box (without web encryption unfortunately)

I exclusively work with SuSE Linux and KDE for many years and find it very robust and modern these days, almost everything one expects on a desktop is there and as for a server litterally everything is there.

In the Netherlands some local governments have entirely switched to a Linux desktop and there are more to come. also our educational system and ICT industry massively makes use of Linux as it perfectly matches to work with UNIX/Linux datacenters deployed.

Our central government is also investigating OpenSource possibilities and holding conferences on a large scale.

Linux and her X Window System & Managers helps to work cost effective, stable, modern and powerfull and makes sure that competitive OS manufacturers will not gain monopoly and OSs in general evolve faster.

You're probably just as enthusiastic about Linux as I am and are more curious to issues that need improvement on Linux, which is what I'll write now.

More games as that is what is holding back a lot of people.
More intensive trouble shooting on USB memory sticks/drives (copying large amounts of data causes the system to become instable on rare occasions.
3D window animation functions in Xfree to give window managers a Sun looking glass look and feel which is very slick, productive and attractive.
LinuxBIOS or OpenBIOS would be excellent (opportunity for HP) as that would make BIOS much more powerfull (think about Sun Ultra Sparc Workstation & Servers that allow to be remotely controlled by console (serial port) connected to a terminal server or a simple null modem cable, even if the OS isn't running.

That's it folks and Thanks for all the good stuf!

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I hate to interupt this love fest, but there is a slight problem.

For some reason, HP doesn't do this for their scanners. They don't provide hardware information. Will this problem be addressed soon?

--
JRT

by Thomas Schneller (not verified)

James,

can you please be more specific? Model? What kind of problem?

Thanks

Thomas

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

If you check here:

http://www.buzzard.me.uk/jonathan/scanners-usb.html

you will see that support for all non-SCL based HP scanners is rather poor and that what progress has been made was made by reverse engineering.

The scanner that I was looking at was the Scanjet 3970.

I also note that I would be willing to pay an additional $20.00 for a version of it that was SCL and used a standard communication protocol or had a (direct) parallel port interface.

--
JRT

by Mitch Davis (not verified)

Hello,

Does anyone know where I can find information on
enabling hyperthreading under Linux on a new Compaq
d530?

HT is turned on in the BIOS and I'm running an SMP
kernel, but /proc/cpuinfo still shows only one CPU.

Despite the machine being sold with Mandrake Linux,
I've tried HP support but no-one knows Linux or
wants to help.

Many thanks,

Mitch.

by Walter Buendia (not verified)

Hi! Kan you help me? I need the driver to my PC DF364#ABY, D530CMT thank for your help.

by Mitch Davis (not verified)

Sorry, I can't help.

by Ian (not verified)

Hi. I would first like to extend my sincere thanks to the HP company
for adopting Linux and the Open Source idea. It says a lot.

My questions:
Is Linux offered on any desktop systems currently?
Will other Laptop models have Linux?

A suggestion:
Is it at all possible for HP to consider Gentoo Linux as well?
(www.gentoo.org) Its unique because it is remarkably easy to install
a program. simply type 'emerge' followed by the programs package name
in the Gentoo portage tree. The only thing that can be frowned at is
the ease of installation of Gentoo, so if it was preinstalled, users
would have even better use of the Linux operating system.

Thank you very much.
Ian

PS> I just cant stress it enough, Thank you soo much to HP for doing all
of this Linux work. With your assistance, Linux is expanded dramatically.

by step (not verified)

I personally run Gentoo Linux/KDE 3.3 on my nx7000 and i do not have to deal with the SuSE and Mandrake RMP hell.

Why Gentoo Linux? Because they have one of the best package management systems ever.

http://www.gentoo.org

KDE and HP, keep up the good work!

Cheers!

by Stefan Ludwig (not verified)

Dear Thomas,

did you try to install Linux on different HP notebooks than the nx5000? If yes, did the hardware inclusive modem and power management work? Can you recommend any other notebook than the nx5000 for Linux?

Thank you very much!

by Janos Marki (not verified)

I have an nx7000 and installed Fedora 2 and upgraded to Fedora 3 just a while ago, both are working perfectly. Hoever, if anyone could tell me how to get the screen resolution working at its proper rate (you know, widescreen...), then I would be really happy!

Thanks,

Janos

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

I have configured once. I can find the file somewhere, but the trick is this:

Look at the X logfile, and you will see that something ( I don{ t recall the name) is resetting your Horizontal frequency range. You have to disable that, then it works automatically.

If you email me (I am easy to find ;-) I will email you the file in a few days.

by Rick Choi (not verified)

Just installed and configured SuSE Linux 10.0 on my nx5000 machine with packages of my personal purpose. Everything seems to work fine except one thing of wlan stuff..
I found some information from http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/ saying that I need to turn the wlan on using hardware RF switch, which is Fn+F2, but it does not show me the blue light for the indication. Even when I type iwconfig on console, it's not configured. I'm wondering how to make this work with my old buddy nx5000. Any help..?

by David (not verified)

I purchased an nx5000 and loaded suse 9.3 on it. It really works quite well. I can't say that in the 6 months that I've used it I've tested everything, but it seems to be functional, and I really like the KDE desktop environment. It seems to deal with updates (kernal 2.6 now) pretty well also.
I recently bought an HP SCR241 pcmcia smartcard reader, and I'll be darned if it isn't incredibly difficult to get it set up. I wonder why everything else seemed so straightforward, and this is so strange. Do I have to buy a smartcard reader from someone other than HP to get my laptop to work with the cards?

by cyber_rigger (not verified)

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The HP deal looked like a one-time offer.

Here are companies selling pre-installed Linux Desktops and Laptops.

http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/

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