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.

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Page Contents Introduction Editing This Page Specifications Linux Compatibility Summary Graphics adapter CPU frequency scaling Bluetooth WiFi Memory Card Reader Related Resources

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.

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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 driver
Ethernet	Yes
Wireless	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes
56K Modem	Not Tested
USB	Yes
Firewire	Not Tested
SD 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 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.

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 driver. For installation instructions, you can view our Configuring the ndiswrapper driver 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.

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



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