Linux on the ASUS M5200A Laptop

Specs

• CPU: Intel Pentium-M 740
• Chipset: Intel 915GM
• Graphics: Intel 915GM
• Display: 12" TFT @ XGA resolution (1024x768)
• RAM: 512 MB DDR2
• Harddisk: Toshiba MK4004GAH (60 GB)
• Optical: internal CD-RW/DVD-RW (+/-)
• Network: 100 MBit/s LAN (Realtek 8139), 802.11g WLAN (Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG)
• Audio: Intel HDA
• VGA-Out
• SD-Card/Memorystick reader
• PC-Card reader
• Firewire: 1 port (1394a)
• USB: 3 ports (2.0)
• Weight: 1.6 kg
• See the ASUS product page.

BIOS

You can reach the BIOS via <F2>.
Hitting <ESC> on startup lets you choose between several boot devices (optical, removable, hard drive).
It should be possible to flash the BIOS by a utility accessible via the BIOS itself, no need for Windows. Presumably, the extra partition on the hard disk contains the flash utility.

Installation

The machine is installed with Debian testing which was a rather painless procedure. Afterwards, a kernel 2.6.13 was installed.

Screen

X.org

X.org runs out of the box with the driver i810, with hardware-accelerated 3D.

Console

The standard frambuffer driver vesafb works just fine in XGA resolution.

TouchPad

The touchpad works fine with the synaptics driver in X and standard PS/2 on the console via GPM.

VGA-Out

When the kernel module asus_acpi is loaded and the hotkeys are configured, switching of internal and external display works quite well, even without having to reboot.

Network

LAN

The LAN interface works with the driver 8139too.

WLAN

WLAN works with the driver ipw2200 from IPW2200's homepage. To use it with 2.6.13, you need these patches:

• ieee80211-for-2.6.13
• ipw2200-for-2.6.13
• ipw2200-suspend2-fix

But still, there is a problem with the RF-Kill switch. According to /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/0000:01:05.0/rf_kill, it is hardware-controlled, but Fn+F2 does not do anything. The driver from the project RFSwitch does not work either. The only solution found so far, is to boot into Windows and disable the kill switch. Afterwards, you can use it (the blue LED is on) in Linux, too. This setting stays even after a shutdown of the system.

Sound

Sound works with Advanced Linux Sound Architecture - ALSA driver snd-hda-intel.

Power and Configuration Management

ACPI

No problems, except for asus_acpi which complains about being loaded on an unsupported system. But everything seems to work, though.

CPUFreq

The module speedstep-centrino should be chosen. With the governor userspace and the package powernowd, the system scales up and down the frequencies quickly as needed.

Suspend-to-RAM (S3)

The system freezes when waking up, though this was not tested intensively.

Suspend-to-DISK (S4)

Suspend2 in version 2.2-rc4 was installed, with hibernate script 1.10.
The resume works when the modules ipw2200 and button are unloaded before suspend and reloaded afterwards. The latter is necessary for the power button to work properly after resume.

Hotkeys

Most of the hotkeys are controlled by ACPI and its module asus_acpi, except for Fn+F2 wich does not work. You can configure its behaviour in /etc/acpi/ if you are running the acpid.

Optical Drive

The optical CD-RW/DVD-RW combo poses no problems.

Cards

PC-Card

It works fine: the device is handled by the driver module yenta_socket as almost every CardBus controller nowadays.

SD/Memorystick

Unsupported. Neither USB nor PC-Card nor the module wbsd recognise it.

Survey PCI Devices

Output from lspci:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 04)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. Mobile Graphics Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. Mobile Graphics Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1b.0 0403: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio [..]
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI   [..]
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d4)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
0000:01:03.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
0000:01:03.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)
0000:01:03.2 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0822 (rev 17)
0000:01:03.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0592 (rev 08)
0000:01:04.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:01:05.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)

Ressources

• ASUS@tuxmobil
• ASUS

Credits

• Sebastian Henschel