HP Pavilion dv6018
Things you should know
- Touchpad is buggy - after a while driver loses contact with it and all fancy options become disabled
Foreword
To install linux on this shiny pile of great hardware you need to use “noapic” or “acpi=noirq” kernel parameters. After you install distro you need to load modules in proper order or kernel will freeze. Ron Kuris reported lucky module order in kernel bugzilla - i2c_core nvidia snd_hda_codec cpufreq_conservative ohci_hcd snd_hda_intel ndiswrapper. I installed Arch64 and modified module preloading parameter in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
MODULES="i2c_core bcm43xx nvidia cpufreq_conservative cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_ondemand ohci_hcd fuse usbhid powernow-k8 snd_hda_intel pata_amd ata_generic sata_nv"
... and rebuild initramfs (mkinitcpio -p linux)
System should work now.
Video
This lappy has GeForceGo 7200 adapter and glossy widescreen LCD. You’ll need nvidia proprietary driver. To make use of LCD’s native resolution you need to place correct mode in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen 1" Device "nVidia" Monitor "LCD" DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1280x800" ViewPort 0 0 EndSubsection EndSection
Input devices
To use sensor keys and remote control you need to set keyboard model in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Option "XkbModel" "hpzt11xx"
Add this command to some startup script, /etc/rc.local in Arch Linux:
setkeycodes e008 221 e00e 226 e00c 213
And finally add these commands to startup of your windowmanager or desktop environment. I put them to ~/.xinitrc
xmodmap -e "keycode 197 = XF86Pictures" xmodmap -e "keycode 237 = XF86Video" xmodmap -e "keycode 118 = XF86Music"
TODO: Add Fn+fx keys Remote control mimics keyboard, no additional software needed. Range is about 4 meters.
Touchpad is generic Synaptic. On/off switch on it is hardware, kernel seems not to like the way it works - after a while driver loses contact with device and touchpad loses all fancy features like 3rd button emulation and scrollbar.
Networking
bcm43xx is unstable. NDISWrapper is buggy. bcm43xx developers swear bcm4311 (used in this lappy) is stable in 2.6.22, yet to test... Ethernet: works flawlessly with forcedeth module. Modem: Don’t know anything about it, i don’t think i will ever use it.
On A similar dv6000, ndiswrapper works flawlessly with the bcm4311 chipset.