SuSE Linux 9.3 on the Samsung X25 XVM 1600 Laptop

Some notes about installing Novell/SuSE 9.3 Samsung X25 XVM 1600 laptop.

WireLess LAN

After some experiments with the WireLess LAN and my Samsung X25 equipped with SuSE Linux 9.3, I have found out that the ipw2200 firmware will be only loaded, if the laptop is connected to the power supply. Running on battery the WLAN will not be set up.

But if running these commands after booting:

rmmod ipw2200
modprobe ipw2200

the firmware will be loaded and the WLAN works without further tweakings. Therefore I have added these commands to /etc/init.d/network:

--- network.001 2005-05-02 11:59:26.000000000 +0200
+++ network     2005-05-13 17:57:19.000000000 +0200
@@ -96,6 +96,7 @@
  if [ "$ACTION" = start ] ; then
+               rmmod ipw2200; modprobe ipw2200; ## kls
                 date +%s > $NETWORK_RUNFILE
  fi

Now there is no manual handling required after boot, when running on battery power. This is not a "clean" solution. Just in case you know a better one, I will be glad to know about it.

With SuSE 10.0 WLAN works out-of-the-box.

Synaptics TouchPad

There is a bug in the touchpad driver, which let one tap, look like a double click. Please use Synaptics TouchPad Driver >= 0.14.2. If you don't have newer driver versions available it is also possible to modify the X11 configuration file, changing the TapButton option:

    TapButton1           = 2
    TapButton2           = 1
    TapButton3           = 3

Other Resources

• Linux Laptop and Notebook Installation Survey - Samsung
• Linux on Centrino laptops
• TuxMobil - hardware section
• Linux Mobile Guide - Installing, Maintaining and Tuning of Linux on Mobile Computers

This report is a courtesy of Klaus Schmidinger <kls_at_cadsoft.de>.