The last week or so, I’ve been fine-tuning my current installation of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) on my new HP dv2024, which seems to be basically the same as any other HP dv2000. This is an overview of what I’ve gotten working, and how, and what I have left to test.
Because I use Windows very occasionally, I maintain a dual boot system. Setting that up was easy, and since I’ve done it before, I didn’t need a walkthru. If you do, check out this video. The only thing they don’t get into is the specific setup I prefer, which is having a small partition for Windows, a small partition for Linux, and a big partition to put files accessible to both systems. I did that simply by partitioning the drive as I wanted — installing Windows first, defragging the drive, resizing the partition, adding a second, larger partition for the files, and then a third, extended partition containing the Linux logical partition and another for the swap partition. (Because I wanted to preserve the Quikplay function and the use of my remote control while watching movies using the DVD system, the extended partition was an important necessity. It’ll be less so for those who won’t have that extra little partition, and who can therefore put fit a swap partition as a Primary one instead of mushing it into a logical partition shared with the Ubuntu system partition.
People who don’t have headaches at this point should read on. If you have one, this discussion may not be for you.
So, anyway — after installing Ubuntu Linux 6.10 to the Linux drive, I booted up to find most things were working fine. This was nicer than when I installed Ubuntu 5.10 onto my old Compaq Presario V2000 to discover that the video system wasn’t working, right off the bat. With 6.10, my PC mostly was functional already. Not only that, but the Windows drive and the Fat32 files partition were both available to me immediately, automounted. (Though there are some issues with accessing some files on that partition, which I need to sort out. Something to do with file permissions and “accessed” logging of files in the partition, I think. But it’s fine for storage of files.) Happily, the card reader was working out of the box, and recognized my San Disk immediately when I inserted it, offering to import the photo images from my camera right away.
So what wasn’t working? Well, a quick search of complaints and queries on the Ubuntu Forums shows my complaints weren’t all that unusual.
For one thing, I had to fiddle a little bit to get wireless working, but much less than I did with my Presario. All I did in this case was install Wifi-Radar and suddenly wireless access was completely functional. (At least, that’s what I remember.) That might be because my particular model isn’t using a Broadcom wireless component. Getting the Broadcoms to work takes some fiddling, but mine worked right out of the box.
The webcam, however, was nonfunctional, and there were issues with the audio. Unlike some dv2000 users, my audio out worked fine out of the box, but when I plugged in my headphones into the headphone jack, the headphones and the computer speakers both emitted sound. Finally, the built-in microphone was not working at all, and I also wanted to get the Korean-input working with SCIM, something I never quite managed on Ubuntu 6.06 on the Presario.
Well, getting Korean to work was relatively simple. I basically just had to use the language support system in System > Administraion > Language Support to install Korean language support. I configured SCIM using the control panel available at System > Preferences > SCIM Input Method Setup, so that I could use the Hangeul key on my keyboard to toggle from English to Korean, but the SCIM still refused to toggle when I pressed the key. Finally,I found the fix here.
Next, the webcam. This was relatively easy to get working, and after some fiddling, I basically followed the instructions here.
The audio is a lot trickier, and the progress I’ve made is mostly because of the instructions on this page. (Actually, it took me a long time to find that page — someone had to recommend it to me! — but it contains the best walkthrough the the steps I’d seen all over the place in less clear terms.) However, there are some features which remain slightly messed-up. The help offered on this page might be useful to some, but brought no joy to me.
So, what’s left? Small things. I have a couple of bugs.
For one thing, my computer now has headphone jack sensitivity, but it’s reversed. When I boot up, audio works. When I insert a headphone jack, sound continues to come out of the speakers, as well as through the headphones. Using mute momentarily silences both, and then when I unmute, the PC speakers remain muted but the headphones work. So far, not such a big deal, really. I’d like that resolved, but I can live with it until it is fixed. However, when I want to turn the PCs speakers on again, I can’t do so simply by removing the headphones — that just leaves me in silence. Instead, I need to open the Volume Control panel and unmute PCM-2 manually, then mute and unmute the Master Volume, and then I have speaker sound again.
And the internal mic isn’t working. Every time I try to change the mic status to something else in the Sound Recorder application, it reverts to Internal Mic automatically, and I seem to record only silence.
Neither of these are killer problems to me, but it would be nice to get them working. I’m assuming that the proper support will be available in a forthcoming ALSA driver. Until then, I suppose I can boot into Windows if I need to use the microphones, and I can do the fiddling to adjust the headphone issues easily, for now.
For my next trick? Well, once I’ve got all the little issues with the file storage partition, audio, and internal mic ironed out, I wouldn’t mind installing Beryl so that my computer looks as space-agey as it really, truly is, at least by me-ten-years-ago standards. Hell, me right-now standards still make my new laptop look space-agey… to me.
But I’ll wait a bit on the Beryl. I think I may even install it as an extra boot partition on my office PC, where I don’t keep anything too critical, until I’m confortable enough to put it on my much more critical laptop system. But first, to sort out the little things. I’ll be posting about those on the Ubuntuforums, as well as crossposting this overview, later this weekend.