HP NX9010 and openSuSE

I have an ancient HP NX9010 laptop on which I've run Linux for some years. The wireless has never worked, and the graphics has always been a struggle. I'll document here my attempts to get both these subsystems working after installing openSuSE 12.1

Having upgraded my installation from an earlier version, openSUSE 12.1 presented me with a login screen which was unreadably dark. On login, the new Gnome desktop was also unreadable. Only by turning the brightness up to the max could I interact with the system, and the desktop crashed everytime I attempted to access the Applications menu. Logging in with the trusty old fvwm window manager gave me, at least, a desktop I could see.

So, there are two options, either work with a traditional Window Manager that doesn't use 3D, or attempt to get the 3D desktop working. Given the age of the laptop, I may have to be satisfied with a traditional desktop.

Graphics

The graphics chip in this machine is a Radeon Mobility 345M.

The relevant output from lspci is:

> lspci
... output from lspci ...
> lspci -vv -s xx.yy.zz
... output from lspci ...

The output from hwinfo is:

> hwinfo
... output from hwinfo ...

The open source radeon driver is the first suspect, so I'll install the proprietary driver from AMD. From Bruno's page linked below, I'm given a link to a repository that has the driver I suspect I need.

Let's add the repository:

> zypper ar -c -f -n "AMD/ATI legacy fglrx non-official" http://geeko.ioda.net/mirror/amd-fglrx-legacy/openSUSE_12.1/ "ATI/AMD-FGLRX-LEGACY"
> # Remove any old installations
> zypper rm ???
> # Remove old conf & stuff
> rm -fr /etc/ati
> # Remove any old fglrx inside kernel modules
> find /lib/modules -type f -iname "fglrx.ko" -exec rm -fv {} \;

...under construction...

Unfortunately, not one of the drivers I attempted seemed to support the chipset I have. So I'll now fall back to using a 2D window manager and display manager. Let's get rid of all the cruft associated with gdm and gnome.

> rpm -e ...
... output from rpm ...

Now let's install a new light-weight display manager (lxdm) and window manager (lxde).

> zypper install ...
... output from zypper ...

To change the default window and display managers, we now have to edit the sysconfig files. Replace "gdm" with "lxdm" in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager, and replace "gnome???" with "lxde" in /etc/sysconfig/???

Wireless

The wireless chip in this machine is a Broadcom 4301.

The relevant output from lspci is:

> lspci -nn

... output from lspci ...

> lspci -vv -s xx.yy.zz

... output from lspci ...

The output from hwinfo is:

> hwinfo --network

... output from hwinfo ...

> hwinfo --netcard

... output from hwinfo ...

The output from rfkill is:

> rfkill list

... output from rfkill ...

The output from iwlist is:

> iwlist scanning

... output from iwlist ...

HP NX9010 and openSuSE

Graphics

Wireless

Links