Mitac MiNote 8375
TuxMobil - Linux on Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs and Mobile Phones
Updated : 02/08/2004


I choose the 1.4 rc2 version for installing Linux on my notebook. Programming, playing DVD movies and surfing on Web are the principle tasks devoted to this computer. Gentoo is my choice because you can control the packages you install, find the kernel according to you harware specfications. Now, go on to see the manner for installing Linux on my notebook.


Components and Installation

(see the result of lspci)

Processor :
Mobile AMD Athlon XP 1400+
Personnally, I choose the 2.4.22-rc2-ac3 kernel (Alan Cox patches) because it provides with the most up-to-date ACPI support, the CPU Scaling feature (for the use of the PowerNow K7 technology) and the support for miscellaneous hardware.
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Input Devices :
internal keyboard and touchpad
usb keyboard and usb mouse
Recently, I switch PS/2 protocol on XFree for the touchpad to synaptics 0.11 driver incorporated in XFree 4.3.0-r3. It works really well.
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Graphics chipset :
S3 ProSavageDDR supported by XFree 4.3.0

DVD/CDR Combo : QSI CDRW/DVD SBW-241 (24x read, 24x writeable)
I use the scsi emulation for this CDR Burner. I play DVD movies using MPlayer and I burn CDR with K3b. Don't forget to add to your /etc/lilo.conf file the following line : append="hdx=ide-scsi". x is the letter (c-d) of your burner according to your configuration.

Audio : Via8233 chipset
Personnally, I use the ALSA drivers (0.9.2). Look at the Gentoo Desktop Configuration Documentation for more information. If you don't want to install these drivers, you can load the via82cxxx_audio kernel module. May be, you could have some problems to play MP3 files because they could play too fast. In this case, you must change the sampling rate and fix it at 48000 Hz in aRts (KDE).

Network : ViaRhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter (VT6102)
HSP56 MR (micromodem) - VT82C686A
For the ViaRhine Network Adapter, you have to load the via-rhine kernel module.
For the micromodem, look at the following link to obtain the driver : http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/pctel-linux/

PCMCIA : use pcmcia_core and yenta_socket kernel modules

Firewire : load ohci1394 kernel module
You can use another firewire kernel modules as well as the fist mentioned above.

Irda :
The first time, I published my personal webpage, I had found a binary driver for only the following Linux distributions : Red-Hat, Mandrake, Red-Flag, SuSE at this location http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=299#linux . To finish, I want to point out that I find a kernel module in the 2.6.0-test3 kernel for Via FIR Irda. As I had problems with this kernel, I couldn't try it.

External devices : USB Floppy drive / Y-E Data Usb-Fdu usb device
MP3 player
I load the usb-storage kernel module to drive these two external devices. I want to submit you few problems with the use of these two devices. When I copy several files either to MP3 player or to usb floppy drive, that can lead to random freezing. I find a workaround by removing the battery kernel module (ACPI) with this command : modprobe -r battery.