Asus A2K
Created by: Bill Giannikos,Last modification on Mon 13 of Aug, 2007 [05:54 UTC]by Bill Giannikos
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which drivers you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required drivers have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
Introduction
This is a guide to running Linux with the Asus A2K laptop.Editing This Page
View our Editing GuidelinesSpecifications
| Processor | AMD Mobile Athlon64 3000+ | |
| Screen | 15" XGA | |
| RAM | 512MB | |
| HDD | 60GB | |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW | |
| Graphics | ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 | |
| Network | 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Broadcom BCM4306 802.11g Wireless | |
| Other | 5 x USB2.0, 1 x Firewire | |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
| Processor | Yes | |
| Screen | Yes | |
| Optical Drive | Yes | |
| Graphics | Yes | |
| Sound | Yes | Use the snd-hda-intel driver |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Firewire | Not Tested | |
| SD Card Reader | Not Tested | |
| PCMCIA | Yes | |
Notes
For the graphics chip you can use both the open source radeon driver and ATI's proprietary fglrx driver. For installation instructions, you can view our Configuring an ATI graphics chip guide. For 3D support, you will need the proprietary driver. Some older versions of X may not have support for the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, in this case you will need to use the proprietary driver.This wireless controller in this laptop does not have any native drivers for Linux so you will need to use the ndiswrapper driver. For installation instructions, you can view our Configuring the ndiswrapper driver guide. The windows driver to use with ndiswrapper can be found here.
The USR5410 802.11 card works in well in the PC card slot, so PCMCIA works fine.
Related Resources
Preparing your laptop for LinuxConfiguring an ATI graphics chip
Configuring the ndiswrapper driver for wireless controllers without native Linux drivers
Increasing battery life
Summary
The main issue with this laptop is the setup of the wireless network. 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.Have you installed Linux on this laptop? If so how about leaving a comment about your success in the comments section below.
Comments
Video Compatability