Sunday, November 15. 2009

Kubuntu Karmic Koala on a HP EliteBook 8530w

I already wrote about my experiences with Jaunty Jackalope on a HP EliteBook 8530w. Now this article is a delta update for Kubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10).

All in all hardware support is much better now. I did not had to install updated NVidia drivers (and still have no problems at all - even the random artifacts after waking up are gone) nor an updated firmware for WLAN. Even the function keys are partially working.

Device	Status	Comments
Graphics	Works out of the box
Audio	Works out of the box
LAN	Works out of the box
WLAN	Works out of the box
Suspend to Disk	Works out of the box
Suspend to RAM	Works out of the box
fn Functionkeys	Partially Working	Brightness can be adjusted using the keys. Sleep, battery and monitor switch do not work.
Specials Keys	Works out of the box
Memory Card Reader	Works out of the box	Only SD cards tested
Smart card reader	Not tested
CD/DVD Writer	Works out of the box	See below for information on how to get lightscribe working.

Since the direct upgrade failed and I have 4GB of RAM, which I can only address with the server kernel under 32 bit Linux, I installed the 64Bit Kubuntu version this time. Well, I won't do this again, since there are still a lot of packages that are only available for i686 and I don't really need all of the 4 GB RAM. For my tasks 3.3 GB is just enough. But installing applications like the debug version of the flashplayer (instructions here), Amazon MP3 downloader (instructions here) or the lightscribe software (instructions below) is always more cumbersome, though I was able to get everything working so far.

Lightscribe

For general information on how to use the lightscribe software on Linux there is a good article on Linux.com. I really recommend this article as you will be searching on how to start the applications as the file layout of the packages do not follow any Linux conventions. The trickier part is getting the software running on 64 bit Linux, but thanks to the Ubuntu community this is already described in the Ubuntu forums.

Posted by

Carsten Schlipf

in Linux at 21:31 | No comments

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