Monday, December 27, 2010

Slackware64 13.1 on an HP Pavilion dv8000

My in-laws got a new laptop, so they wanted to know if we wanted their old one, an HP Pavilion dv8000 (ummmm, yes!). Yesterday I installed Slackware 13.1 on it. I expected to fight with the wireless and the graphics drivers. The drivers that are used automatically (kernel DRM?) work well for 2D stuff. 3D works somewhat. Not sure if that's a driver issue or the fact that the ATI Radeon Xpress 200m is nothing to write home about.

I was able to get the wireless working relatively easily. It uses a Broadcom chipset. I just had to follow these instructions to get the firmware for it installed. After that, it fired up just fine. Very impressive for something that used to be a major PITA.

There are still a few things I want to tweak, but the installation was surprisingly painless.

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