Debian/GNU Linux on the Acer Aspire 1363WMLi Laptop

AMD Sempron 3000+, Wifi, display WXGA 1280x800.

Linux Debian Sarge (testing au 01/2005), noyau 2.4.27-1-386, replaced during installation by a 2.6.8-2-k7

Ethernet Internal PCI Card

Module: via-rhine. Card is correctly detected, but il not correctly running because of power saving (acpi) So you've to give parameters to kernel during boot sequence: pci=noacpi noapic, example, modified line in menu.lst (Grub):

kernel                /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-1-386 root=/dev/hda3 ro pci=noacpi noapic

Video card and Screen

Card seems to be via unichrome (chipset KM400/KN400) By default, vesa driver is installed, ad runs only in 800x600 and 640x480 We try to install unichrome drivers, without success (cf unichrome.sourceforge.net) This driver is only necessary if you want to make mpeg2 decompression. For us it was not useful. So we arrived to display in 1280x800 by keeping the vesa video driver and tuning the XF86Config-4 file:

#Section added above Monitor:
#-----------------------------------
Section "Modes"
        Identifier         "16:10"
        ModeLine "1280x800" 83.5 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 828
EndSection

#Modified Sections :
#---------------------
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Écran générique"
        HorizSync    30 - 90
        VertRefresh  50 - 75.0
        Option                "UseEditFreqs"        "1"
        UseModes        "16:10"
        Option        "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = aspect-scaled"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Default Screen"
        Device     "Carte vidéo générique"
        Monitor    "Écran générique"
        DefaultDepth     16
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     16
                Modes    "1280x800"
                Virtual         1280 800
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     24
                Modes    "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

#We display in 16bits color, it certainly works in 24

Wifi Wireless Network Card

Internal PCI Card: acer IPN2220 lspci output:

Ethernet controller: Linksys, A Division of Cisco Systems [AirConn]
INPROCOMM IPN 2220 Wireless LAN Adapter (rev 01)

There is no native Linux driver, so where obliged to use ndiswrapper, wich is a tool allowing using Window$ network driver (ndis) on Linux. Docs : ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/ We compiled ndiswrapper, used version : ndsiwrapper-0.12 We install wireless-tools to(wifi test tools)

~#apt-get install wireless-tools

We installed a 2.6.8-2-k7 kernel (apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.8-2-k7), and the corresponding headers (apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-k7) necessary to compile ndiswrapper. Then decompress-detar ndsiwrapper, and

make - make install

download the Win2K/XP acer wifi driver, here ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_1350/drivers/80211ag.zip

After :

~#ndsiwrapper -i /path_to/win_driver_inf_file

ndiswrapper output:

Installed ndis drivers:
neti2220        driver present, hardware present

Then you need to load ndiswrapper as a module in the kernell :

~#modprobe ndsiwrapper.

To check the card (and the wireless network) :

~#iwconfig # (program coming from wireless-tools package) :

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"wifiSSID"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:0D:88:F3:86:F4
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-66 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:44  Invalid misc:74   Missed beacon:0

To end, add the following lines in /etc/network/interfaces:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

And, the end :

~#ifup wlan0

Good luck.

This report is a courtesy for TuxMobil by Vincent Maury <artec.vm_at_nerim.net>.