Living with Linux

Today a Linux 2.6.24 kernel appeared in Debian unstable, so I immediately gave it a try, to see if it did anything to the sound issues on my Zepto Znote 3214W laptop.

First thing, the 2.6.24 kernel has ALSA 1.0.15 which is needed. The Realtek ALC268 doesn’t work with earlier versions of ALSA.

Still the sound didn’t work. I then tried setting different values of model= for the snd-hda-intel module in /etc/modprobe.d/sound, and the setting model=acer did the job.

The whole line is

options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=acer

There is one remaining problem: when I plug in headphones the speakers aren’t turned off automatically. For now I’ll just have to do that manually, but I believe it is fixed in a later version of ALSA.

As my old Asus M2N laptop got older and older, and for some reason slower and slower, I decided to buy a new one. I ended up gettinng a Zepto Znote 3215W with a few customisations. There were several reason for this choice:

• Zepto has very competive prices,
• Zepto will sell laptops without an OS preinstalled – no involuntary Microsoft tax,
• laptops can be customised as you want them,
• and then this quote: “Works with Ubuntu Linux. 3215W is tested and will work together with Ubuntu Linux 7.10 beta, Out-of-the-box. For Wifi you will need to use the Intel Pro/Wireless 4965 netcard.”

The specs of mine are:

• Intel Centrino “Santa Rosa” chipset
• Intel Core2 Duo CPU T5450 @ 1.66GHz (*)
• 2 Gb DDR2 800MHz RAM (*)
• 120 Gb SATA harddisk 7200 rpm (*)
• DVD-RW DL drive (*)
• 15.4″ WXGA “Crystal Clear” display at 1280×800
• Intel GMA X3100 graphics chipset
• Intel Pro/Wireless 4965AGN wireless network adapter (*)
• Broadcom NetLink BCM5906M network adapter
• Broadcom internal USB bluetooth adapter (*)
• Ricoh Firewire adapter
• Ricoh SD/MMC card reader

The items marked with (*) are where I have asked for changes or additions to the default configuration.

It is a fairly large laptop, measuring 36×27×4cm and weighing 2.8kg which is OK for the kind of semi-stationary work I do currently.

Conclusions

Most parts of the laptop work immediately with little or no manual configuration on a Debian Testing install, but there are several parts that doesn’t. Most of these seem to have a solution on the way. Zepto states that the laptop is fully Ubunto 7.10 compatible, but not everything went that smooth with Debian.

An install of Debian Testing (lenny) with a Linux 2.6.23 kernel leaves these parts non-functional:

• No sound (fixed in kernel 2.6.24)

and these only partly functional:

• X server sometimes fails to restore textmode correctly
• Touchpad not recognised but it still usable
• ACPI works only partially
• Minor issues with sound and headphones

and these require an extra effort to get fully functional:

• Compiz window manager
• SD/MMC card reader
• Keyboard hotkeys

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