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Asus W3Z
Introduction
This is a guide to running Linux with the Asus W3Z laptop. The W3Z is one of only a handful of notebooks with an AMD processor. Unfortunately the wireless controller in the W3Z is a problem with linux.
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
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Specifications
| Name | Asus W3Z |
| Processor | AMD Turion64 MT-32 1.8Ghz |
| Screen | 14” WXGA |
| RAM | 1GB |
| HDD | 80GB |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon Xpress x200 |
| Network | 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Broadcom BCM4318 Wireless, Bluetooth |
| Card Reader | Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro host adapter |
| Other | 3 x USB2.0, 1 x Firewire |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | Frequency scaling is tricky |
| Screen | Yes | |
| Optical Drive | Yes | |
| Graphics | Yes | |
| Sound | Yes | Use the snd-hda-intel module |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | |
| Bluetooth | Yes | |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Firewire | Not Tested | |
| Card Reader | Yes | Kernel >= 2.6.21.1 |
| PCMCIA | Not Tested |
Summary
The main issue with the Asus W3Z was the configuration of the wireless controller. Other than that there were no problems in getting this laptop working when used with an up to date Linux distribution. It is recommended to use a Linux distribution with kernel version 2.6.16 or greater, such as Fedora Core 5 or Ubuntu 6.06.
Graphics adapter
For the graphics chip you can use either the open source radeon module or ATI's proprietary fglrx module. For installation instructions, you can view our Configuring an ATI graphics chip guide. For 3D support, you will need the proprietary module.
CPU frequency scaling
CPU frequency scaling depends on the powernow-k8 kernel module and powernowd daemon. The kernel module won't load unless the DSDT of the W3Z is fixed like explained here.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth works with the kernel Bluetooth support. The Laptop has a bluetooth button which, when switched on, plugs in a Bluetooth device connected to an USB internal bus.
WiFi
This wireless controller in this laptop does not have any native drivers for Linux so you will need to use the ndiswrapper module. For installation instructions, you can view our Configuring the ndiswrapper module guide. The windows driver to use with ndiswrapper can be found here.
Memory Card Reader
Kernel support for the Secure Digital card reader is available since kernel 2.6.21.1 (on Mandriva kernel 2.6.16.14mdv is enough). When an SD card is plugged in the device is available on '/dev/mmcblk0p1'. It can be mounted (or automouted) as usual. Typically SD cards host a vfat filesystem.
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