Compaq Presario x1000

[PseudoKiller]

Heys ppl ... I am asking for some advice.

Here's the dillio. I have this laptop and currently it is running XP home (shhh I know I know) I want to format it and install XP pro and dual boot it with some flavor of linux. Now here's the tricky part.
The laptop currently has built in wireless and also a SD media reader. My question is are there any linux distros that have support for these things?? Also has anyone tried to run a dual boot on a Compaq and encountered any problems??
This is only the 2nd computer I have bought and I am concerned about Compaq preprioritory architecture... Any advice on this would be appreciated. Thanks in advanced.

PK

 

[PseudoKiller]

BUMP No one has any advice ??

 

[Henyman]

no idea

 

[NetRyder]

Sorry. Haven't been around too much during the last couple of days.

Anyways, what wireless card does it use? It should be an Intel, if I remember correctly. As far as I know, nobody has got the Dell TrueMobile wireless cards working properly in Linux, basically due to lack of drivers. It might be a different scenario for the Centrino notebooks with Intel Wi-Fi cards. Search around to see if you can find linux drivers for it. That's basically all you need.

As for the SD card reader, I'm not sure what kind of interface it uses, so I really can't offer any help there. You might want to Google it to see if anyone has got any Linux distros working on the X1000.

If the Compaq is like my Dell, things should go quite smoothly. I didn't have any problems getting my hardware working. Most devices were auto-detected by Slackware and installed. The network adapter in this laptop uses a Broadcom controller, so I had to download and compile a kernel module to get that working, but it wasn't painful either.

This is a nice resource for linux on laptops:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/

Check it out, and look for other resources through search engines. You'll find something for sure.
It's great to have a mobile *nix box

 

[NetRyder]

Another thing: The 2.6.0 kernel is still in developmental stages, but I compiled 2.6.0-test7 a few weeks ago, and it seems to offer much better support for laptop devices, so if you don't find what you need, watch for the release of this kernel. For example, this kernel had built-in support for my Broadcom ethernet controller, and the Synaptics touchpad. Both these needed external kernel modules in earlier kernels.
2.6.0 has a much more streamlined compiling process than the 2.4.xx series as well.