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.

Page Contents Introduction Editing This Page Specifications Linux Compatibility Notes Related Resources Summary

Introduction

This is a guide to running Linux with the Asus L4R laptop. The L4R is a cheaper notebook but is still quite fast. The wireless controller is problematic when used with Linux.

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Specifications

Processor	Intel Pentium-M 1.4 GHz
Screen	14.1" XGA
RAM	256MB
HDD	40GB
Optical Drive	DVD+-RW
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon 9100 IGP
Network	10/100 Ethernet, Broadcom BCM4301 802.11g Wireless
Other	4 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-atiixp driver
Ethernet	Yes
Wireless	Yes
56K Modem	Not Tested
USB	Yes
Firewire	Not Tested
SD Card Reader	Not Tested
PCMCIA	Not Tested

Notes

For the graphics chip you can use either the open source radeon driver or 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 9100 IGP, 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.

Related Resources

Preparing your laptop for Linux
Configuring 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 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.


Have you installed Linux on this laptop? If so how about leaving a comment about your success in the comments section below.