Acer Aspire 5613ZNWLMI. Optimizing it for linux.
Yesterday my girlfriend and I bought a new laptop in Ho Chi Minh City, even if we know that in Vietnam the Windows License is not paid or included in most of the laptops we preferred to buy a Linux loaded Laptop and the best Prize/Quality we could find was an ACER ASPIRE 5613ZNWLMI, belonging to the ASPIRE 5610Z Series.
The system is loaded by default with a Linpus Linux. Apparently the installation on Acer is non-graphical so when we asked to the guy in the shop to run the OS to try the sound volume etc we coudn’t open a Graphical Desktop. The guy proposed us that the shop could install the Windows XP for free if we would wait a little bit, but I had better plans than let them do the partitioning, etc.
That’s the results after using Ubuntu 7.04
| Procesor: Intel Core Duo T2080 2 x 1.73GHz (1MB cache) |
| It works fine. |
| Screen: 15.4″ WXGA TFT 1280 x 800, CrystalBrite - |
| I achieved my 1280×800 resolution very easily, “sudo apt-get install 915resolution” and restart X. |
| Graphic Card: Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 950 |
| Graphic 3D Acceleration works. Graphic effects (Beryl-Compiz) works. |
| DVD RW DL |
| K3b detects IT WORKS |
| Modem |
| NO TESTED |
| Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX |
| It WORKS |
| (802.11g) WI-FI: Atheros AR5007EG |
| Since december 2007, madwifi has released a patch to make it work, so no need more Ndiswrapper. Follow this link to use the last MADWIFI patch for AR5007EG.. |
| Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller |
| It works! |
| Bluetooth |
| It works! |
| 5 in 1 Card Reader(Accepts Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick PRO (MS PRO), MultiMediaCard (MMC), Secure Digital (SD), xD-Picture Card (xD) |
| Thks to Andrea.In order to have the 5 in 1 card reader working you need the kernel 2.6.22 which has the ENE module integrated. This kernel is used by default in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gusty gibbon). I tried the Live CD of the rc4 and when pluged my SD card in the reader an icon appeared in the desktop and I was able to explore all my photos. |
| PCMCIA |
| It works out of the box. |
| Webcam ORBICAM |
| It works fine using last versions of Kopete, also with skype works. |
| IrDa |
| No Tested |
| TouchPad and Extra Keys(Multimedia and Launch keys) |
| Working after doing this . Thks IceWeasel |
Here are the outputs for the lscpi, lsusb and dmesg commands.
NEW: I submitted my Hardware Info using the “Kubuntu Device Database”, here is the link.
Kevin Miller said
am July 3 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
People really love Acer laptops here in Saigon. I bought an IBM Thinkpad T60 from FPT last October. Got Kubuntu and later openSUSE to boot no problem. Everything was detected though the finger print reader does not seem to work on both distributions. It is supposed to work with SLED and Gentoo. I am going to switch my laptop back to Gentoo next week to have a little more fun.
David Tremblay said
am July 4 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
This Linpus distribution is quite stupid, since ACER is the number 1 in vietnam ($$$) the cheapest laptop always come with Linpus. Linpus will never install with X. I already wrote to ACER about that. Why on earth would they sell an unusable linux distribution. I recommend you write to. Maybe if more people complain they will do something…
admin said
am July 4 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
Yeah, it’s a really big mistake installing non-graphical linux versions because will show definitely to the people what they don’t want to see, A TERMINAL.
It should be very easy for Acer to create different OEM linux distributions for their laptops all preconfigured to make work all their drivers etc.
I will send them an email also. Thanks to this guys the efforts needed for us to convince people that linux is easy to use is becoming harder, people will remember linux like that OS that they had to remove to make their new laptops “work”.
IceWeasel said
am July 7 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
I own an Acer Acpire 5613ZWLMI, but can’t get BlueTooth to work.
Did you do anything special, or did it work right out of the box?
I have the same dmesg output, but there is no active blue LED and the switch doesn’t seem to be a hard-wired one as it is the case with the wireless switch.
Ivan Garcia said
am July 7 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
I installed Kubuntu 7.04 and the bluetooth worked out of the box. But your led should be turned on (blue color). Try some Live CD to see if that’s the distribution. Which one are u using??
Make sure that when you do “modprobe -l |grep blue” , you have the bluetooth module loaded.
/kernel/net/bluetooth/bluetooth.ko
Also maybe you need to install ‘bluez’, or kbluetooth
IceWeasel said
am July 8 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
Well, i have Debian (unstable) installed. I also tried Kubuntu 7.04 LiveCD, and one from the Gentoo project. No success unfortunately.
In any case all relevant bluetooth modules and user-space tools are loaded, but the LED isn’t even flickering.
After 1 month of working on this matter i’m not so sure anymore if this switch is even real and there is bluetooth hardware in it (despite the hardware manual, the vendor’s promise and the labelled switch of course)
As of now i’m searching the internet for hints on *how* to get relevant hardware information, as “lspci” and similar tools don’t really give me the information i really need to know what kind of bt-hardware is in there (brand, manufacturer, etc.), just to be one step further and set a few limits to this matter…
admin said
am July 8 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
This is my DMESG output about Bluetooth
dmesg |grep Bluetooth
[ 38.140000] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.11
[ 38.140000] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[ 38.140000] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[ 38.180000] Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.8
[ 38.180000] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[ 38.268000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 38.268000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 38.268000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.8
Are you sure that you have exactly the same version than me of laptop?
IceWeasel said
am July 10 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
I have exactly the same ‘dmesg’ output, but as far as i understand it this just states what drivers are loaded and not that there is actually hardware initialized or that the hardware is (should be) functional.
Regarding the laptop brand: No, not exactly. the “N” is missing in my Laptop, but as it’s the same series (5610Z) i hoped that there is the same/similar hardware in it.
admin said
am July 10 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
I checked this website for ur model and they say it has bluetooth.
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050490,40578820p-0,00.htm
I think the “easy” way to try it is to run windows on it and install the bluetooth drivers, do have it?, if you don’t want (I understand) then you must try harder.
What about the multimedia hotkeys and the Card Readers? Are you aible to make them work??
IceWeasel said
am July 11 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
Aye, i was hoping to avoid installing Windows - but Linux-fan or not - Windows just has the better hardware recognition/driver model - the one thing i will never understand about Linux. The average end-user doesn’t care about Open-Source or Closed-Source, he/she just wants to use the hardware he/she bought. Why there is still no interface in the kernel, that “officially allows” closed-source drivers just puzzles me…
Anyway…
I didn’t try out the card-reader yet, but i certainly will do so in the near future. If i succeed i will let you know.
All Multimedia Keys (incl. Mail-LED) work just fine with a little work, the only thing left to do is getting a bit more into “Xmodmap” and “setkeycodes” as i don’t really understand the concept fully.
The “eXXX”-codes are always the same, but my setkeycodes-mappings seem to have a life of their own with Fn-F3
The way i did it was compiling and installing the module “acerhk” (32-bit only!) with the “force_series” switch. Just pick a series that enables the “Dritek EC controller” (e.g. 2020 i think). Then install “hotkeys” (i also tried keytouch, but keytouch wasn’t able to control the volume properly) and choose maximum logging. From there on, you will receive key/scancodes and there you go…
The only thing left with “hotkeys” is Brightness, which are hardware switches and work, but ACPI apparently doesn’t detect it and can’t control it (kpowersave for instance reports no hardware support). But i can live with manually adjusting Brightness.
The module “acerhk” also provides an interface to brightness, but i can’t figure out how to tell kpowersave that there is a /proc interface to use (if this is supported anyway).
The other thing with “acerhk” is that this module lets me toggle the mail-LED via a /proc-interface.
David said
am July 24 2007 @ %1:%Jul %p
Can you use the 3D effects and, inside the 3D-accelerated environment, reproduce a video? In my case, the player fails because the card (similar to yours) gets out of video RAM:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=425882
(if you give a reply, maybe you can Cc to my email because I may forget to check this website).
By the way, how did you manage to buy an Acer laptop without windows?
Thank you.