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Ubuntu 6.06 on an HP dv1010(us) laptop: Success!

16 April, 2006

OS Version:

Ubuntu 6.06 (prelease) the Dapper Drake
Kernel 2.6.15-19-386

Hardware:

Hewlett Packard dv1010(us) Laptop

About the installation process:

Ubuntu is surprisingly easy to install. Using the default installation settings will yield you with a working linux laptop. During installation there was only one issue and this was with the Broadcom Wireless Card.

lspci output:
0000:02:06.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

All appears to run smoothly with this installation but the default drivers do not work properly. Other than this, the touchpad seems a bit over-sensitive and I recommend disabling the scroll and tap features.

Fixes and improvements:

The following are what I am referring to as “fixes” because I consider all of them to be improvements over the default installation.
Fix #1: Use the update manager located at System -> Administration -> Update Manager.
Fix #2: Expand your repositories. By default Ubuntu does not use many of the repositories available to it for apt-get and Synaptic Package Manager. To do this browse to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager -> Settings -> Repositories. Under installation media, check off all the options available and it will open up the number of features available for download.
Fix #3: Broadcom 4306 Wireless
1. Remove old ndiswrapper:

sudo modprobe -r bcmwl5
sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get remove ndiswrapper-utils
sudo rm -r /etc/ndiswrapper/
sudo rm -r /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

Ignore any errors you receive while running these steps.

2. Copy bcmw15.inf and bcmw15.sys files to your desktop. You can get these files from HP’s website. You will need to extract these files from a self-extracting executable.

3. You need an active network connection for the next step (hope you can hook up your wired card to your router). Type the following commands in terminal.

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils
sudo ndiswrapper -i ~/Desktop/bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -m
for conffile in /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/*.conf; do
sudo sed –in-place ’s/RadioState|1/RadioState|0/g’ $conffile
done

4. Reboot. Upon reboot type the following (you will need to type this everytime if you don’t set it up to be permanent.)

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

5. Voila, your network card should work now. You can use Ubuntu’s easy-to-use “networking” and configure your ssid, wep key, and ip info if dhcp is not enabled.

6. This next step is critical. You will notice your connection spontaneously dying or locking up if the kernel module for this card was in place. Check for the module:

lsmod | grep bcm

If anything comes up, use the following to remove and avoid those nasty lockups:

sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper
sudo rmmod bcm43xx
sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
sudo modprobe bcm43xx

Fix #4: Disable those pesky tap and scroll touchpad features:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Locate the section about “synaptics touchpad” and insert the following like the lines already present (some features may be redundant but this will definitely stop your windows from flashing around and scrolling every time you accidentally brush the touchpad with your palm:

Option “SHMConfig” “on”
Option “TapButton1″ “0″
Option “TapButton2″ “0″
Option “TapButton3″ “0″
Option “RTCornerButton” “0″
Option “RBCornerButton” “0″
Option “VertScrollDelta” “0″
Option “MaxTapTime” “0″

If you want to keep the scroll feature and just disable tap, remove the line with “VertScrollDelta.”

Fix #5 Playing DVD movies.

The DVD reader works off the bat but you will have to do a little tweaking to get it to work. Open your trusty terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

Now, open Synaptic Package Manager and install xine. At this point you should be able to play movies with xine.

Summary:

I’d recommend Ubuntu to newbies to Linux. Aside from the wireless issue, it has been smooth sailing. This is my first time installing running Linux (I’ve installed red hat before but left the administration to professionals) and I was able to make my problems go away with a minimal amount of googling. The interface is quite easy to use, and even though my version is pre-release, it is stable and has not crashed on me despite all my headaches with the network card. If you can follow my directions, you will be ok with this distro.

Thank You

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Credits

Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43x