inportb

I got a new notebook computer a couple of days ago. Here are some specs (details):

Processor: AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-52 at 1.60 GHz
Memory: 1 GB DDR2
Video: integrated ATI Mobility Radeon X1200 on PCI-E x16
Display: 1280 X 800
WiFi: Atheros AR5006EG/AR5006X
Software: 32-bit Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium

Now, all this is delicious stuff, except for the Microsoft Windows Vista part. Naturally, I proceeded to wipe Windows off the disk. I popped in my Kubuntu 7.04 Live CD, pressed [Enter] at the graphical menu, and waited for the system to start and load KDE.

It didn’t.

Actually, the system booted, but it appeared that the X-server had some trouble. A quick search revealed that the Radeon X1200 was not very well-supported by the bundled drivers. I’d known about issues with ATI and Linux, but since my last laptop with an ATI Xpress 200M worked alright with minor tweaking, I thought I might take a risk with this one.

So I installed the system using the alternative text-mode installer. When the system booted, though, I saw just a white blinking cursor at the top-left of a black text-mode screen. I switched to TTY1 and found the commandline interface very usable; so it had to be a problem with X not supporting the graphics chipset. I proceeded to remedy the situation:

# update package list and upgrade packages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
# install proprietary ATI driver
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
# update loaded modules
sudo depmod -a
# patch /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo aticonfig –initial
sudo aticonfig –overlay-type=Xv

Then, because the proprietary driver cannot do compositing and does not work with AIGLX, I opened up my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and added the following to the end:

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “0″
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
Option “AIGLX” “off”
EndSection

After rebooting, I got a nice shiny KDE desktop. However, glxgears ran at only 100fps in the small window. Yes, I know it’s not a benchmark tool, but I was still interested in comparing the X1200 with the X200M, which ran at about 1000fps. Now that graphics-mode video works, I proceeded to check my wireless network connection. Atheros is known to require proprietary drivers, but my older laptop’s Atheros chipset worked fine. Not this one. Apparently, it’s too new for MadWifi. So I turned to ndiswrapper, which allows Linux to work with Win32 drivers. The WinVista drivers that came with the computer didn’t want to work, so I looked online for a WinXP version. This is the package I downloaded:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/115677

The important files in that package are

ar5211.sys
net5211.inf
net5211.cat

The package needs to be extracted to where it can stay for an extended amount of time — ndiswrapper would need these files even after installing. I extracted it into the /opt/atheros directory, but anywhere would be fine. I navigated to the directory containing these files and issued the following commands:

# blacklist and unload the madwifi driver
sudo echo “ath_pci” >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
sudo rmmod ath_pci
# install ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
# use ndiswrapper to install the net5211.inf
# use sudo if installing in a privileged directory
sudo ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf
# check the installation; it should say something like
# net5211 : driver installed
# device (168C:001C) present (alternate driver: ath_pci)
sudo ndiswrapper -l
# load the ndiswrapper module and make it load on every boot
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo echo “ndiswrapper” >> /etc/modules

Next came compiz-fusion. Even though glxgears didn’t go that fast, I had to try a real-world application. It works great, and I’ll post this up someday.

I found this blog very helpful when tweaking my wireless networking driver: http://my-geek-side.blogspot.com/