FC5 and Ubuntu 6.06 like my laptop.

In the last few days I’ve tried installing both Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu Dapper Beta on my Acer Travelmate 4101WLMi (i915 graphics version). There’s a huge difference compared to earlier versions, such as Ubuntu Breezy. I didn’t need any extra boot options, and I get working networking and audio, though FC5 doesn’t ship the firmware, and it’s difficult to find the correct version of it and install it.

The Ubuntu Dapper Beta now uses the LiveCD installer. They seem to be moving to that, instead of the regular Debian installer. It’s a bit confusing still, and the partitioning bit is particularly flaky for me, but just having the ability for people to take screenshots of the installer (because you have the rest of the desktop to use too) must help them to improve it.

I notice that the Dapper Beta CD doesn’t use Network Manager anymore, so you now have to manually configure the wireless connection, but it did at least show my wireless network name without me having to type it in. I loved how network manager just did the right thing without me lifting a finger, but I guess it has some problems still.

I still don’t have widescreen resolution. Setting a mode to 1280×800 with 915resolution just gives me a scrolling desktop. Setting all the modes to 1280×800 gives me an Xorg crash with a “no screens found” message. This is becoming a bit annoying.

7 thoughts on “FC5 and Ubuntu 6.06 like my laptop.

  1. Just for comparison, I have an Acer Aspire 3623, with the same graphics card i915, and the same widescreen resolution 1280×800. I have not tried FC5, but Ubuntu Dapper Beta (LiveCD installer) installs perfectly in it, and detects the correct widescreen resolution without problems.

    AIGLX/Compiz with Dapper is also perfect and smooth, although you still must run it in 16-bit color, and I have not yet tried XGL/Compiz, but some users say it might work with the i915, but not so smoothly, or it might not work at all.

  2. I don’t think so. desrt. I haven’t noticed any change of this between Breezy and Dapper, and he seems to experience this when setting only one mode with 915resolution.

  3. On Ubuntu, you can add network-manager using synaptics/aptitude/apt-get or even from the Add/Remove-program…
    I’ve added it and it works great for me.

  4. I have the same graphics on my acer laptop, and I have been able to get the right resolution by getting the resolution915 package. By the way I am using Mepis 6.0, so it should be similar to ubunto – the information on how to get it to work I found on a ubuntu forum.

  5. I did get the resolution working correctly by using 915resolution and the vesa driver instead of the 810 driver. The vesa driver is known to have other disadvantages, however.

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