Hey Guys!
This instruction is to help installing Debian 5.0 on an
ASUS X50R-F5R notebook (released in late 2007). It describes
my experience with kernel 2.6.26-1.
If you are interested to see the same instruction for Debian GNU/Linux
4.0, click here.
The installer detects both, the ethernet card and the wireless card. But I was not able to activate the wireless card at first (this is usually done with Fn-F2). I will mention some more details about that lateron.
What works out of the box: graphics card (the correct mode is selected automatically), sound card, ethernet card, card reader, bluetooth.
Installing the Penguin
I was using a Debian 5.0 network installation CD.
Installing the basic system caused no problem. I decided to use the unstable branch.
Now it's time for WLAN. There is an Atheros chipset and
you actually have two possibilities. Kernel 2.6.26 comes along with
an ath5k module by madwifi that works with this card, but I was
not able to activate the card while this module was loaded (the LED does not
show up when pressing Fn-F2). But this can be solved if you blacklist
the module asus_acpi in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist or unload it
manually with modprobe -r asus_acpi (but this might interfere
with the touchpad driver).
Second possibilty: From my previous installation (Debian 4) I knew, that
there exists another module ath_pci that worked. So I retrieved
this old module and compiled it again. It still works. It is now
possible to activate the network device although asus_acpi is
loaded. Afterwards, you can even unload this driver and load the other
one and you will find out, that ath5k works as well. The
ath_pci module can e.g. be obtained
here.
I received
some lines from Nahuel
Greco who wrote about updating older versions: now the
madwifi package in Debian testing supports the wlan card out the box! No
idea about Ubuntu.
LAN: Thanks to Nahuel Greco who sent me a mail on this issue, I can report that the driver is called atl2. It is now included in the kernel.
Sound is provided by the module snd_hda_intel which loads automatically. I installed esound and libesd-alsa0 to be able to play several sound files at the same time.
The camera works using the built-in driver in the kernel. It does not work anymore using the programme camstream, but mplayer tv:// and xawtv can display the image. Unfortunately, after closing these programmes, the led indicating that the camera is in use does not turn off anymore.
Bluetooth works out of the box once bluez is installed. While troubleshooting , keep in mind that there are two switches which disable bluetooth/WLAN. One on the left side and one is Fn-F2. There are two leds near the touchpad that indicate whether bt/WLAN is activated. Nevertheless, I have never been able to exchange PIN codes the way it is meant to be. So I entered the PIN code for my mobile phone in a file called: /var/lib/bluetooth/[bluetooth module MAC]/pincodes. The format is [external MAC] [PIN]. E.g. 00:11:23:3D:69:9A 0815.
The card reader works out of the box
ACPI: After installing the acpi packages and rebooting the computer, acpi worked. I was able to suspend and realive the computer with the Fn-F1 keys. Somehow, I don't know what exactly made it work. Hotkeys can be configured with the files in /etc/acpi/events. To find out what signals come from the hotkeys, use the programme acpi_listen.
You need to install cpufrequtils to control the CPU frequency. Make sure that during boot only cpufrequtils but not cpufreqd is loaded! Otherwise both interfere with each other which makes the CPU frequency hang at the upper limit after a couple of minutes. cpufreq-set and cpufreq-info are your friends here.
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 5a31 (rev 01) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge 00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge 00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge 00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge 00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge 00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0) 00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1) 00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2) 00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3) 00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4) 00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI) 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 13) 00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200M] 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01) 06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter (rev a0)