A Linux Installation on the ASUS M6S00VA (M6VA-S026P) Laptop

Specs

• CPU: Intel Pentium-M 740
• Chipset: Intel 915GM
• Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon X700 (128 MB RAM)
• Display: 17" TFT @ WSXGA+ resolution (1600x1050)
• RAM: 1024 MB DDR2
• Harddisk: Hitachi HTS541080G9AT00 (80 GB)
• Optical: internal CD-RW/DVD-RW (+/-)
• Network: 1 Gbit/s LAN (Marvell 88E8001), 802.11g WLAN (Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG)
• Audio: Intel HDA
• VGA-Out
• SD-Card/Memorystick reader
• PC-Card reader
• Firewire: 1 port (1394a)
• USB: 4 ports (2.0)
• Weight: 2.6 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.

Installation

The machine is installed with Debian testing which was a rather painless procedure. Afterwards, a kernel 2.6.14.2 was installed.

Screen

X.org

X.org runs with the latest driver fglrx from ATI which finally supports suspend modes.

Console

The standard console works just fine in character resolution 80x25. Perhaps it is possible to use framebuffer modes nowadays, but in former times, suspend modes happened to stop functioning when activating it.

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 only on the console, after appropriate configuration of the acpid. under X11, the external screen is always on and that only after X11 got restarted after plugging the external monitor into the laptop.

Network

LAN

The LAN interface works with the driver skge.

WLAN

WLAN works with the driver ipw2200, included in the mainline kernel since 2.6.14.

Bluetooth

As often, the device is a USB device and thus uses the driver hci_usb. It can be turned on and off via a hotkey, which also generates an ACPI event, so the bluez-utils can be started and stopped on button press.

IrDA

The BIOS lets you disable the infrared or set it to FIR. But none of the FIR drivers loaded in Linux seemed to have support for it. Of course, no serial device could be seen either.

Sound

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

Modem

Well, slmodem from smartlink and hsf from linuxant both do not work. There also is no evidence of the modem in lspci, but there exists a physical port on the backside of the laptop.

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 hibernate script from Suspend2 is used which is also available as a Debian package. It suspends and resumes fine when properly configured.

Suspend-to-DISK (S4)

Works also fine with the mainline kernel's suspend code and the same configuration file as for S3, only that "mem" is exchanged by "disk" in UseSysfsPowerState.

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 their 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 Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 04)
0000:00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
0000:01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
0000:01:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
0000:01:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)
0000:01:01.2 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 17)
0000:01:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 08)
0000:01:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 03)
0000:01:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
0000:03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M26 [Radeon Mobility X700]

Credits

• Sebastian Henschel