HowTo: Ubuntu Linux on HP Pavilion series laptops
4. Video Device
On Ubuntu Linux Lucid 10.04 and Karmic 9.10 the video subsystem is fully supported.
Intel chipsets are fully supported directly by Xorg. Intel X3100 is the only one decent graphic chipset available at the moment that has a completely full featured open source driver.
nVidia is fully supported as well. There are however 2 drivers: ‘nv‘ which is 2D only and open source and ‘nvidia‘ which is 3D and full featured but closed source. In order to enable 3D you just have to enable nVidia drivers via System -> Administration menu -> Hardware Drivers.
With nvidia drivers, compiz desktop effects enabled and OpenOffice Writer Hardware Accelleration enabled you may experience redraw / refresh problems when editing and scrolling your documents. There is a workaround explanined here.
AMD ATi has fairly good support for linux. Things seem to be changing for the better lately. Here we also have 3 drivers: ‘ati‘ and ‘radeon‘ which are 2D open source and ‘fglrx‘ which is 3D closed source. In order to enable 3D you just have to enable ATi drivers via System -> Administration menu -> Hardware Drivers.
ENVY install script
You do not have to use Envy script. Latest official drivers are generally available through the update manager in a week or two from their public release date.
Using Old Envy (prior to EnvyNG) can cause some annoying issues for those not used to cope with shell mode since whenever you upgrade the kernel your graphical interface won’t work any more. (In order to fix this you should reboot in failsafe mode and type envy -t, then select the number corresponding to your driver and reboot once again after Envy has finished installing).
Envy is a very handy tool cleverly coded by Italian OpenSource supporter Alberto Milone to whom goes my credit. It can be downloaded from http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html.
Install the .deb and Choose Applications->System Tools->Envy
Choose to install the video driver.
During installation it will ask you if you would like it to configure xorg.conf for you. Choose ‘Yes’. Reboot.
If you want to use Envy on Jaunty you will only have to follow these steps:
type:
sudo nano -w /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/Envy/classes.py (location seems to be changed with recent versions of Envy)
search for cassandra (through CTRL+W in pico or nano editor or CTRL+F in gedit) which will look like the following:
elif self.details['osname'] == 'cassandra':#SUPPORT FOR LINUX MINT CASSANDRA
and replace the word ‘cassandra’ with ‘gutsy’ so that it looks like the following line:
elif self.details['osname'] == 'jaunty':#SUPPORT FOR LINUX MINT CASSANDRA
Save and exit.
Then launch Envy and install dirvers for your graphics card.
Please notice that envy requires internet access and since a download might fail due to timeouts if it ends in an odd way you should run it again. Since it has to download several packages no surprise if you have to run envy a few times before completing successfully if you have a poor quality internet access.
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When using the drivers downloaded from nVidia website in order to remove the nvidia splash when X starts add option NoLogo in the graphics card section of xorg.conf
Section “Device”
Option “NoLogo” “true”
add also this in order to enable power saving features
Option “OnDemandVBlankInterrupts” “true”
Brightness Control malfunction on dv2xxx: brightness control can be achieved through the applet Power Management in System -> Preferences (and also with the Brightness Applet from the Gnome panel), however in case those do not work (ie. for dv2690el, dv2058ea) you can achieve the same effect via keyboard shortcus Fn+F7 Fn+F8.
The only problem is that gnome-power-manager periodically checks the display brightness, thus making the keyboard shortcut tweaking useless.
In order to disable gnome-power-manager brightness monitoring you have to run gconf-editor from shell, browse to /apps/gnome-power-manager/backlight and uncheck the enable string.
User Chris in this comment suggests having a look at the patch attached at the following post which, he claims, solved this problem: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=673946 and at this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase/+bug/145337
Related posts:
- Linux Power Saving Tweaks for HP Pavilion laptops
- Call for enabling HP Pavilion internal softmodem
- Ottimizzazioni per il Risparmio Energetico per portatili HP Pavilion su Ubuntu Linux
- [EN] Configure HP Pavilion QuickPlay multimedia buttons in Ubuntu Linux
- Guida per Ottimizzare Ubuntu Linux sui portatili HP Pavilion
- How to update ALSA to latest version easily
- Ad Hoc Wireless Networking in Linux
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Thank you very much, Aldeby, for this great collection of tips! I found it after solving almost all problems in 9.04 and wished that I had found your site much earlier.
One hint for the suspend/hibernate chapter: I run a dv9500 with the most recent BIOS, but after a clean install of 9.10, the machine hung while trying to hibernate. There are two more solutions to this topic, one is to use the package “uswsusp” instead of the default pm-utils. The other is to list modules (mostly wifi) to unload before suspending or hibernating. Google “SUSPEND_MODULES” or have a look here:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/fix-for-suspend-and-hibernation-problem-for-laptops.html
Best regards,
Uwe
i runed the script setup_alsa and it gets to a point where it says “Choose the mode which best fits you” but when i type my prefered number and i hit enter doesnt do anything.am i doing something wrong?
Makis, why don’t you use an utility like meld to compare the original and your customized script to highlight all the differences (and eventually the mistakes)?
In the audio section, sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic should be sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic.
This site saved my 9.04 + 9.10 ubuntu installations on my HP dv 7 (3165dx) notebook. Thank you! I just did a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and everything works perfectly: sound, front audio jacks, wireless card, web cam, etc. I hope this helps If your considering upgrading.
I confirm my flawless upgrade to 10.04 from 9.10 – on the 6th of May 2010 – kra20kra!
Thanks for this wonderful website that helped in the first place, when I doubted about buying this machine for Linux.
So I guess HP should be thankful as well…
Charlot
I’m happy to read your feedback CharlesdArvay!
By the way I haven’t heard a word from HP yet.
They seem way too busy making profit to even bother understanding what the opensource approach is!
Thanks for your detailed site. I look forward to delving in to it. My initial task however is to install 10.04 Server on a Pavillion notebook using an external monitor as the LCD screen is not working. The external monitor initially shows the cdś loading progress and then the screen is completely black. When the off button is pressed the external monitor again details the shutting down process. Is there some way of seeing what is occurring through the whole process? Thanks for any help that can be offered.
Hi Darren!
As far as I recall the external monitor would switch off when the video driver takes control of the video card. As long as is the BIOS controlling both internal and external screens are enabled. You should then be able to enable the external screen from within the driver settings.
But I guess your laptop has a broken screen…
Basically I would suggest you to install the operative system in text only mode (so that you would benefit from the BIOS controller and be able to use the external monitor) and not forget to install SSH support so that you could access via network cable your install. Now it would be fairly easy to enable the external monitor by configuring your laptop driver ( /etc/X11/xorg.conf for instance).
Linux newbit who installed the newest version of Linux Ubuntu 10.04 on my HP Pavilion dv6000 Laptop. Both my wired and wireless connections do not work. Thank you for your help.
Below is the output of sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: MCP67 Ethernet
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: a
bus info: pci@0000:00:0a.0
logical name: eth0
version: a2
serial: 00:1b:24:8c:7b:fa
size: 100MB/s
capacity: 100MB/s
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: pm msi ht bus_master cap_list ethernet physical mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=forcedeth driverversion=0.64 duplex=full latency=0 link=yes maxlatency=20 mingnt=1 multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s
resources: irq:27 memory:f6488000-f6488fff ioport:30f8(size=8) memory:f6489c00-f6489cff memory:f6489800-f648980f
*-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: 02
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
resources: irq:19 memory:f6000000-f6003fff
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: wlan0
serial: 00:1a:73:84:5e:66
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
It seems your hardware is supported. Have you had a look at System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers to see whether your computer needs restricted drivers?
By the way I find it suspicious to read: *-network DISABLED
If you have installed the default packages and had not modified any file inside /etc by hand you should at least be able to connect via ethernet. Check right clicking on the Network Manager applet if you can tick Enable Networking.
[...] [...]
Broadcom also offers closed STA drivers for those chipsets that aren’t yet covered by the b43 driver. Their compiling instructions are pretty distro-inspesific, I found it easier to connect the laptop to a wired connection and install the same closed driver offered by Ubuntu.
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
Thank you for sharing your suggestion Neva!
I’ve added it to the tutorial. Have a nice day!
Hi Aldeby, it’s me again.
This time with an addition to 7. (Touchpad):
Under 9.10 as well as 10.04 I had problems with the touchpad after disabling it with the touchpad’s “on/off”-button. Re-enabling did not work, although the button’s light changed from off to on. Restarting X or rebooting did not work, either.
Cause: The gnome-settings-daemon interferes with the Synaptics touchpad driver and saves the “off” state forever.
Remedy: Run “gconf-editor”, navigate to “apps”-”gnome-settings-daemon”-”keybindings” and change the value of “touchpad” to “” (empty string).
Source: Ubuntu Bug #549727, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/549727/comments/103
Best regards,
Uwe