Getting Ubuntu Running on my Compaq F500
Well, it’s all configured and working now, with a little fiddling, a lot of reading and the kind help of the Ubuntu community. Here’s what I had to do to make my Compaq laptop work, both with video and with wireless networking.
Video
The first sticking point. To make this work, you need to add the directive
vga=792
to the end of the boot command. When you first boot the live CD, press F6 and add that command at the end of the line. This will let you boot into the graphical shell.
You will need to do this later to the grub bootloader menu in /boot/grub/menu.lst - simply add the directive to the end of the kernel boot command. That’s it, it all worked from there. Some minor issues with the NVIDIA drivers, desktop effects and Beryl, so I’m using none of those. I’m going to try the newly released NVIDIA drivers over the weekend.
Wireless
The second sticking point, and something that was giving me nightmares for ages. I got wireless working on the Broadcom 4311 that’s built in to the point where it would see other people’s access points, but not mine.
In the end, it was a post by Pichulines on the Ubuntu forums that solved my problem. He suggested following the Broadcom BCM4311 rev 01 (ndiswrapper) installation guide. So, I followed this very carefully, except that I used the latest 1.43 ndiswrapper instead of the 1.35 version documented in the guide.
After the reboot stage, everything worked perfectly. I could see and connect to my wireless access point using WPA and I could roam wirelessly.
Moving Along
Now all that’s left to do is to finish fiddling with the setup. I need to look at various things like reconfiguring the window manager (I’m using the default Gnome, but I may switch to KDE or Enlightenment), and I need to get little things in place like proper Beryl support (I love the multiple desktops on a cube - incredibly useful when you don’t have multiple monitors), and I would really like a Mac-like toolbar, something I got used to on my work PC, although it’s not critical.
Hopefully this will help those who have been having the same problems.
May 10th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Hey, I have the same laptop and was not being able to install Ubuntu, but you give me hope. As soon as I get home will try this.
But if I understand it right, what you are doing is telling the kernel to boot in 1024×768 (so I guess the problem is the kernels tries by default to start in 1280×800 and that freezes the computer). The question is, have you been able to use a wide resolution? (1280×800)
May 10th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Ubuntu installs and runs fine at 1280×800 once you make this change - in fact, I’m running Ubuntu right now at 1280×800 :)
May 11th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Thanks mate. It worked!!
One last thing, I noticed that the battery manager says my battery is fully charged just at 50% of its capacity, do you happen to have this issue too?
May 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am
No, I’ve had no issues with the battery manager at all - mind you, I’ve also not looked closely.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Hi
I have followed Broadcom BCM4311 rev 01 (ndiswrapper) steps and seems fine until can’t get Wlan0 in the list when I made iwconfig command, then I go back to step 2 and comment out the eth1 line in /etc/iftab, and redo the rest of the instructions. still unluck, any idea ? how I can unistall? I want to redo it from the beginning? I have no any linux experience, please help me. Thank you.
July 27th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Thanks! it works like a charm for HP Compaq Presario F551AU
August 26th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Thanks you give me hope
September 8th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
ou will need to do this later to the grub bootloader menu in /boot/grub/menu.lst - simply add the directive to the end of the kernel boot command. That’s it, it all worked from there. Some minor issues with the NVIDIA drivers, desktop effects and Beryl, so I’m using none of those. I’m going to try the newly released NVIDIA drivers over the weekend.
Can you tell me how to I add the command to the grub bootloader menu? I’m not sure how I do that.
September 16th, 2007 at 1:38 am
open a terminal window (command line, oh no!!)
cd /boot/grub
sudo nano menu.lst
scroll down to the kernel= line and cursor-right to the end, type vga=792
ctrl-x to quit
y to save
enter to keep the filename
sudo reboot
–Matthew
October 20th, 2007 at 9:48 am
ok i’ve tried this like 9 times now, it’ll get toe “loading linux” little popup and stop cold at 3% what am i doing wrong?
January 25th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Thanks Cro. I have now succesfully installed Kubuntu 7.10 on my Compaq F550EE. The video worked fine out-of-the-live-cd, but the options I had to add on the Grub boot are “noapic irqpoll nosmp”. That ensures live cd will run, then you have to add it again once for the first run after an install, after that you can add it to the /boot/grub/list as a default option. The Broadcom BCM94311 wlan card was more of a problem. I had to use ndwiswrapper. This post helped me get the wireless up : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=297092
Good luck yall !
March 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I’m in Linix now thanks to this post the vga=792 is what did the trick for my video.