This is a template for a future guide to running Linux with the HP ProBook 6550b laptop. If you have the HP ProBook 6550b and are running Linux on it please consider editing this page or adding a comment below with your compatibility details. By contributing you will help other people running this laptop or trying to make a decision on whether to buy it or not.
This page is just for discussing using Linux on the HP ProBook 6550b. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the HP ProBook 6550b page on LapWik.
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For full specifications see the HP ProBook 6550b specifications page.
| Name | HP ProBook 6550b |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i7-620M Processor (2.66 GHz, 4 MB L3 cache) Intel® Core™ i5-540M Processor (2.53 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache) Intel® Core™ i5-520M Processor (2.40 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache) Intel® Core™ i3-350M Processor (2.26 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache) |
| Screen | 15.6” (1366×768) Widescreen<br>15.6” 1600×900 |
| RAM | Up to 8GB |
| HDD | 250GB to 500GB |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW |
| Graphics | ATI Mobility Radeon HD 540v Intel HD Graphics |
| Network | 10/100/1000 Ethernet Intel Centrino 802.11a/b/g/n Intel Centrino 802.11b/g/n Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n |
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Not Tested | |
| Screen | Not Tested | |
| HDD | Not Tested | |
| Optical Drive | Not Tested | |
| Graphics | Not Tested | |
| Sound | Not Tested | |
| Ethernet | Not Tested | |
| Wireless | Not Tested | |
| Bluetooth | Not Tested | |
| Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Not Tested | |
| Firewire | Not Tested | |
| Card Reader | Not Tested | |
| ExpressCard Slot | Not Tested | |
| Webcam | Not Tested |
You can enter any specific notes with running Linux on the HP ProBook 6550b here.
You can enter a summary of how well the HP ProBook 6550b works with Linux here.
Discussion
SD Card reader doesn't work under Ubuntu 11.04
Installed Ubuntu 11.04 and everything works great, at least until you install the graphic card drivers. If you do so 3D games run better(Normal) but unity becomes slow and animations are not running even nearly smooth as they do without the driver. Tried two times on fresh Ubuntu installations and got the same results. When I removed the driver all is back to “normal”.
I'm not shore how this laptop got Ubuntu certified (the only one from HP) when graphic drivers are not well supported.
Just don't expect to play some good 3D games on this thing.
BTW wifi and fedora 14 don't go along as well.
Installed FC14 on 6550b with ATI card (resolution 1600×900). Everything worked fine, except the wireless device. Had to install broadcom-fw (or try akmod-wl) from rpmfusion to get wireless working
I've tried fedora 14, ubuntu/kubuntu 10.10, OpenSuse 11.3, Mint 10 kde/gnome but all of them don't support the graphic card and all I get is garbage on the monitor.
I've seen Lucas post above and retried to install FC14. I got desktop only when I've chose basic graphics during boot from the installation disk (actually unetbootin usb). As I've seen it worked I've erase both tools and recovery partitions and resized the win7 partition by using partedmagic. I've installed FC14 using basic gpu, installed rpmfusion, the akmod-wl and the rpmfusion's catalyst drivers.
Before installing the drivers the glxgears was 500FPS, now it's 3050FPS.
You can see a guide here (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=155503).
Touch buttons and function buttons seem to work right. By default the touchpad click is disabled in FC14 but you can enable it from System→Preferences→Mouse→Touchpad→Enable mouse clicks.
hdparm for 6550b gives 80MB/sec
Good luck to others
Great laptop - but wireless does not work with Fedora 14 XFCE
Wireless works fine with Archluinux - so far I use WPA with 150Mbit/s.
I still need to test WPA2 with 300MBit/s
Great laptop, everything works out of the box in Ubuntu 64bit, currently running 10.04LTS, although haven't yet tried 3g internal modem. This one has intel graphics. Wifi is fine in Ubuntu.