Notes on installation and compatibility of Ubuntu with Acer laptop computers.

Summary

Details

Acer Aspire 1522 WMLI

• Sound, video, network works out of the box.
• Touchpad generates wrong tap-event (mouse2 instead of mouse1), unless i tap very hard.
• Special keys don't work.
• Suspend seems to work but is unreliable (requires a reboot sometimes)
• Wlan needs ndiswrapper. Ndiswrapper doesn't work in 64bit enviroment, works fine under 32bits.
• Powermanagement: gnome asks my password after closing the lid, but does not suspend.
• irda untested.
• modem untested.

Acer Aspire 1652 WLMi

• At install time, I needed to enter the options "acpi=off vga=771" to make it go ahead. Then it went alright
• Right now Broadcom LAN and Intel 2200BG Wireless LAN don't seem to work, DSDT adjusting and ndiswrapper are probably needed for this.
• Battery status is not shown, this is probably because i turned off ACPI with "acpi=off" at boot time. If i delete this option Ubuntu will not boot at all.

Acer Aspire 1681 WLMI

• Everything works out of the box, including Broadcom Lan (BCM 44xx), Intel 2200BG Wireless Lan ([des]activation using the dedicated led-button), Centrino SpeedStep, etc ...

• 3D-hardware acceleration for ATI's Mobility Radeon 9700 can be simply enabled intalling the right packages (sudo apt-get install fglrx or via Synapic)

• Wifi switch (a sort of LED) enables (des)activating the Wifi device, but no red light coming out from it (not important. Just use Gnome's wifi applet

• Special keys (volume, play/pause, mail, etc) can be assigned using Gnome's "Keyboard Shortcuts"
• Suspend seems to work, never had to reboot when coming back from suspend mode
• CD/DVD Burning working quite good. IRDA not tested but should work
• Winmodem untested (have no need to use it for the moment)

Acer Aspire 1681 WLMI

• No wireless lan device is detected upon install, because of lack of ndiswrapper.
• No power management features seem to work properly at all. if i close the lid on my laptop, when i shut down the power isn't automatically cut off afterwards.
• Extra keys/multimedia keys don't work at all.
• Winmodem untested (have no need to use it for the moment)

Acer Aspire 1692 WLMI

• Great laptop but some problems with ACPI. Wifi works, but pressing the front button sometimes crashes it and you'll need to restart to work with it again.
• Beware to use kernels compiled for 686 and not 386 to get 1GB RAM support.

• Finally I managed to activate speedstep, battery level and suspend to RAM, but hibernating to disk requires a newer kernel with some patchs from [http://www.suspend2.net/ swsusp]. If somebody manages to make it work, please report!

• Need to install with 'noapic'

• Need to compile the [http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi/downloads.htm intel compiler]. Beware that flex is broken, you need the package 'flex-old'

• Download the [http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/view.php?id=402 DSDT] and compile it with the intel compiler. This one is a great DSDT and is tweaked so that there are no errors on 'dmesg'

• Copy the resulting file DSDT.aml to /etc/mkinitrd/DSDT and dpkg-reconfigure linux-kernel-whatsoever
• Hope this little HOWTO works!

• Update: I wrote a full review of the laptop and HOWTO in my blog. It's in Spanish, but as it's CC-licensed, you can translate it if you find it useful. HOWTO [http://weblog.topopardo.com/archives/000270.html here]

Acer Aspire 2001 WLMI

• Everything except suspend works out of the box (CPU scaling, ipw2100 WLAN, sound, usb hotplug, graphics with dri)

• Special keys (volume, play/pause, mail, etc) work with hand-compiled acerhk driver and set using Computer->Desktop Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts

• Actually suspend seems to work, but resuming from s3 state cause laptop to lock-hard and requires reboot! Have tried everything I canthink of or find on net, will file in bugzilla.

• irda, cd & dvd burning not yet testedbut should work

• winmodem untested (have no need to use it)

Acer Aspire 5002 WLMi

• Wide format display seems to cause installer to display text "wrapped" from the bottom back over top of display.
• Had to make minor edits to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to specify "sis" instead of "vesa" as the display Driver.

Acer Aspire 5002 WLMi

• Installer needs vga=792 (1280x768*16Mo), or the 80x25 screen will display only 8x25 twice.
• boot splash will be vga=792 (1280x768*16Mo). The picture is then displayed using only 8 colors
• Dollar and euro keys (located around the cursor pad) are not mapped.
• Screen is 1280x800
• Using the french install, the default keymap is Latin9,
• In Gnome, the Fn + left arrow set the computer to sleep mode instead of dimmerng the screen light. Use the shortcut preferences panel to modify.

Acer Aspire 5024 WLMi

• No problems with install. Widescreen 1280x800 worked "out of the box", as did most multimedia keys.

• To set up WLAN look this tutorial : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WiFiHowto/Acer5021WLMiConfiguration

• WLAN requires ndiswrapper, also [http://www.archernar.co.uk/acer_acpi/acer_acpi_main.html acer_acpi] module to activate card under Breezy amd64. (shameless plug, sorry

• DVD has no DMA, requires edit to /etc/hdparm.conf
• Battery status detected perfectly.
• Suspend to disk/ram not work
• Powernow change frequency in steps 800/1600/1800 MHz
• No problem with IRDA

• For proprietary ati drivers in Breezy AMD64 look on [http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu]. It works.

• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib32/ is needed for fireglcontrolpanel in Breezy AMD64.
• Dual screen works (clone mode), TV output as well.

Acer Ferrari 3000

• Installed with Hoary 5.04 and Warty 4.10. Both worked very well.
• No problems during the install
• WLAN nor modem have been tested.
• Everything else like soundcard, screen, touchpad, ethernetcard worked from start
• To get the bluetooth working I had to install that module into the kernel via Synaptic (and ordinary Ubuntu repositories)
• The special keys like open web browser did not work from start. I have not tried to activate them.

Acer Ferrari 3400

• Installed with Hoary AMD64 Arra y 3 CD
• boot option vga=771 required
• drops into Aptitude during install, but updating packages and installing Ubuntu-desktop and restricted modules fixes things.
• have not tested sound, wireless etc

Acer Ferrari 4000

• Installed Breezy amd64.
• Install started X and I got a blank black screen.

• Dropped down to console and installed fglrx - sorted X out. (although it was horrible working in the console because of the ACPI errors every few seconds, and no SysRq so I couldn't turn them off)

• Had to install ndiswrapper for WiFi

• Had to install custom DSDT [ACPIBattery], http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/view.php?id=453

• Had to manually enable DMA for DVD drive
• Everything else worked (haven't tested modem, assume it doesn't work)

Acer Travelmate 800 (using hoary)

• Bluetooth: out of the box (ok)
• Wireless and wired networks: out of the box (ok), Ubuntu installed over wireless!!!
• Speedstep: no probs (ok), speed indicator applet works fine.
• Firewire: device detected, untested
• IrDA: device detected, untested
• Smartcard reader: device detected, untested
• DVD reading and writing: no worries (ok)
• Touchpad (including joystick like thingy): ok
• Extra keys (mail, browser, etc.) are not recognized, only power-down button is recognized and works.
• Sound: several problems, but all seem alsa/esd/oss related. Most applications use sound properly (also thanks to loads of suggestions on this wiki and Ubuntu fora).
• Hibernate: did not wake up after hibernate.
• Suspend / sleep: don't think so
• (USB)(hot)plug cameras, webcams and mp3 players: konica 500z (mass storage), iriver ihp200 (mass storage), (...)
• Display driver and screen resolution: Mobility Radeon 9000 - max 1400 x 1250 (ok)
• Video out: ok
• More test-results coming up...

Acer Travelmate 4101WLMI

• Install: used noapic and install goes smooth

• Resolution: used 915resolution, found here http://www.freshnet.org/debian/hoary/915resolution_0.4.6-1_i386.deb

  • run 915resolution 5c 1280 800
  • had to edit my xorg.conf, as refresh rate was set to high on the Modeline, changed from 83 to 60
  • restart X
  • if successful run 915resolution before X starts on boot up
• Battery status was done by recompiling the DSDT

  • find fixed DSDT.aml here: http://www.rrdesign.ca/

  • copy fixed DSDT.aml to /etc/mkinitramfs

  • run: mkinitramfs -o <somefilename>

  • copy <somefilename> to /boot

  • edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

  • change line: initrd to initrd /boot/<somefilename> Note: may want to duplicate a grub entry so you still have the good one.

  • Reboot
• For the front WLAN LED, ipw2200 module has to be loaded with: modprobe ipw2200 led=1, then it works fine.
• So far other than Suspend/Hibernate(the screen blanks but thats it), everything is working fine, wireless, ethernet, sound, etc.

Acer Travelmate 4150LCi

• Both Breezy installer CD and Breezy live CD are unable to mount the DVD drive. Immediately after the keyboard language selection, the installer fails the montage of the DVD drive.
• When installing from a external CD drive, the previous problem is circumvent but the installation fails at the Hard Drive montage stage.

Acer Travelmate 4501LCi

• Sound works, but no midi. Haven't really looked into it, though
• Lan and wlan work right out of the box, but the LED's don't work. Installing acerhk doesn't seem to work
• Custom keys can be assigned in keyboard shorcuts
• Speedstep works very well, but the battery indicator doesn't seem to work

• Suspend untested (ToDo)

• IrDA untested
• Modem untested
• Cardreader untested
• PCMCIA untested
• Everythings else works right out of the box without any problems. So the only real problem is the battery indicator

Acer Travelmate 2200

• The keyboard and mouse doesnt work, to make them work you will need to disable the Legasy USB Support in the BIOS.

  • Select 'F2' while powering up. Look for the biso setting: Legasy USB Support <Enabled>

  • Change this to <Disabled>

  • Save, power down. Re power up.

• ACPI doesnt work, to make it work you will have to use a custom dsdt table in order to make it work. You can get a working dsdt table from here: http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php There are also instructions to apply the custom dsdt. Using the custom dsdt, the PCMCIA works just fine.

• Sound also doesnt work out of the box, a manual to make it work can be found here: http://www.ubuntuguide.org/#configuresoundproperly

Acer Travelmate 2403

• To perform installation, need to boot with:

linux noapic nolapic

• To use the 1280x800 resolution with X.org - install 855resolution - edit /etc/default/855resolution and set:

MODE=54

XRESO=1280

YRESO=800

• The intel chipset 910GML is not supported yet. So video acceleration does not work. It is too slow to read a DVD.
• Tested successfully: sound, ethernet, usb mouse

Acer Travelmate 8003

• Everything except suspend/standby works out of the box (speedstepping, Intel IPW2200 WLAN, bluetooth)
• Win modem works. Install sl-modem-daemon package and if you have Linux kernel 2.6 then there is no need to build any modules.
• IrDA untested, DVD-Burner untested, but should work

• special keys such as 'Volume down/up' and 'Acer-Launchkeys' can be assigned as shortcuts in Computer -> Desktop Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts

From AndyStable Fri May 20 19:04:09 +0100 2005 From: Andy Stable Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 19:04:09 +0100 Subject: Acer Aspire 1510 Message-ID: <20050520190409+0100@https://www.ubuntulinux.org>

Use 'live vga=791' to boot with correct screen resolution, update should sort out any other shortfalls - suspect acpi will not work due to bios bug in this model see - http://casteyde.christian.free.fr/laptop/LinuxOnAspire1511LMi.html for more info

Acer Travelmate 4101WLMI

• Installation: Installation hangs, but worked when I used acpi=off. Later (see below), I discovered that pci=noacpi should be used instead.
• Resolution:
  • This is a 1280x800 (widescreen/WXGA) screen, but System/Preferences/Screen Resolution only offers 1024x768 at 60Hz.

  • Tried adding HorizSync and VertRefresh to /etc/X11/xorg.conf as described here:

    • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FixVideoResolutionHowto No noticeable effect.

  • Tried using 855resolution.
    • That does give me the extra resolution choice in System/Preferences/Screen Resolution but the screen then becomes scrollable instead of all fitting into the screen at the higher resolution.
• Wired Network card: Broadcom 4400 10/100BaseT Ethernet does not work.
• Wireless Network card: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG
  • dmesg said "ipw2200: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On: Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.", but using pci=noacpi instead of acpi=off at boot caused the kill switch message to no longer appear in dmesg. Wireless still doesn' work though.
• The battery applet does not work, obviously because ACPI is disabled. Suspend also does not work, probably for the same reason.

Acer Travelmate 8104WLMI

• Installation: Installation hangs, but worked when I used "noapic" option. Need to add "Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS, AUTO"" in Section "Device"

  • of xorg.conf (see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=191715#post191715) cause blank screen at first boot (I switched to console with CTRL+ALT+F1 and modified xorg.conf with vi editor).

• Resolution: It's better to use 1680*1050, no problems detected.

• LAN and WLAN work right out of the box, I've enabled led with this command: echo "options ipw2200 led=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/ipw2200. (You can set

  • WLAN configuration using Gnome network configuration tool, it supports also WEP authentication).
• Special keys work right out of the box after changing keyboard layout to "acer_tm_800" (you can edit xorg.conf and add line

  • Option "XkbLayout" "acer_tm_800" to your input device / keyboard section) and using Gnome shortcuts editor to assign a function to them.

• ACPI: ACPI partially works. I've put a patched DSDT table (3c22 custom) in folder /etc/mkinitramfs and linked it to kernel with command
  • "dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-(uname -r)" (this table works well with 1024MB RAM models, if you have a 512MB one, you can try DSDT table that

    I've attached to this thread: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=98413). With this patch you can read battery state, you can control CPU frequency and read CPU temperature. Unfortunately none of standby, suspend-to-ram or suspend-to-disk are working for me. System hangs and I have to hard reset it. (I've tryed with ati driver that come with Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy and fglrx driver until version 8.20.8).

• Graphic driver: ati driver that come with Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) 5.10 Breezy works well but without hardware accelleration or TV-Out. FGLRX driver
  • works but when I switch to console (CTRL+Alt+F1) screen starts melting strange colors and I have to reset with CTRL+Alt+Del. It seems that with kernel 2.6.15-rc5 this problem has gone but sometime system freeze when I restart it.
• In conclusion my system is functional, but I really need standby, suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk. I will try software "Suspend2" hoping to
  • solve problem. I will let you know.
• Sound works, I only unmuted device.
• Modem untested
• Cardreader untested
• PCMCIA untested
• IrDA untested
• Bluetooth is recognized, but untested.

CategoryLaptop