Last updated: October 1
NEWS
Laptops specifications:
Quick note and warnings:
Please be sure that you have read the Disclaimer before continuing.This guide is not an intensive guide to installing Linux, nor to using it. Rather I will assume that you've already read the installation manuals. This guide will just make life a little easier by giving you the warnings and tips you need. With that in mind, let's go on to the things I don't like about this laptop...
Video card:
This laptop comes with the NeoMagic video card. It will not produce a good output at all in Slackware 3.6, which is using XFree86 Release 3.2. Fortunately, this can be easily remedied by upgrading XFree86 to Release 3.3.3.1. If you've downloaded the XFCom NeoMagic server distributed by RedHat Linux, do not run it! It's much better to just upgrade. I will describe this process later.Modem:
The laptop modem is a winmodem. Generally a winmodem will not work under Linux. However, I have been recently informed by someone that it is possible to get the modem working. Lucent has recently released Linux drivers for its winmodems, and so we can get this particular winmodem to work under Linux. Note that this was done under Slackware 7.0, but should generally work under any Linux distribution. This is how you do it. First go to http://www.linmodems.org and download the LucentPCI winmodem zip file. It should be under Vendor Linmodems. The current version at this time of writing is linux568.zip. Save it and then unpack it as follows:
unzip linux568.zip
This should generate four files. To install the modem, type:
./ltinst
This will automatically load and install the modem driver. Depending on the kernel version you are using, you may get a warning. You can safely ignore this. The next thing to do is to modify /etc/rc.d/rc.local. So open it with your text editor and append the following line to it:
setserial /dev/ttyS14 uart 16550
Now if you reboot your system, your modem will be properly initialized. If you got the warning when you installed the modem driver and don't want to get it (or rather see it), then modify the following line in your /etc/rc.d:
/sbin/insmod -f ltmodem
to the following line:
/sbin/insmod -fs ltmodem
Now instead of seeing the warning, the warning will be logged into your log files instead, so you don't have to see it again. You should now be able to use your PPP software to estabilish a PPP connection to your ISP.
Rating the laptop:
All in all, I would say this laptop is pretty good, considering that 99% of the hardware is Linux compatible.
Preparations before installing:
Before you begin, you should realize that there are two ways to set up Linux on the laptop. The first method is a destructive way, which requires you to completely format and repartition your hardrive. A second method, non-destructive, has been emailed to me by Jason E. Massey. Both methods will be discussed. This section will assume a few things:
Destructive method:
First of all, use the Windows 98 startup disk to boot up your computer to MS-DOS. When you enter the MS-DOS command line prompt, run FDISK. From here you want to create a Primary DOS partition as well as any other partition you may want to use under Windows 98. Don't bother creating the Linux partitions here, because you can do it later on. On my laptop I have the hard disk partitioned 50-50 for Windows 98 and Linux. After creating your DOS/Windows 98 partitions, reboot with the Windows 98 startup disk, and format your newly created partitions. When you're done formatting, that's when you want to install Windows 98. It is important that you install Windows 98 first because it tends to overwrite the Master Boot Record (MBR) and so you won't be able to boot Linux with LILO if you install Linux first, and then Windows 98. When installing Windows 98, do not use the Compaq Restore Disk! The Compaq Restore Disk will destroy your newly created partitions and restore your laptop to the way it was when you first bought it. You don't want that.
After Windows 98 is fully installed, you'll find that certain things in your computer aren't working the way they were supposed to. Like the mouse pad icon is no longer in the System Tray. Don't worry, we'll restore them. Get the Compaq Restore Disk and using Explorer, navigate your way to D:\DATA\. Copy the file D:\DATA\Cpqdrv.zip to some temporary folder. Extract it, and you'll be extracting all the drivers that your laptop requires. Just install whatever drivers you think you'll be using. When you're finally done with all the installing and the rebooting, you're ready to install Slackware.
Non-destructive method:
Warning: I have not tried out this method, so I cannot confirm if it will work or not. Please do not email me with questions about it. The following is the email I received from Jason E. Massey:
Compaq corporation in its infinite wisdom provided something called a Quick Restore CD with the Presario 1230 instead of the Windows 98 CD. While this Restore CD is great to restore your computer to its factory state, it does not allow the existence of multiple partitions, which are needed to install a dual boot Linux/Win98 system. The following method is a way around that limitation using a freeware utility, called Partition Resizer, to shrink the single partition without data loss.
Note: Step number 3 below may not be necessary. It seems logical that as long as you have sufficient space left on your hard drive you shouldn't need to use the Quick Restore CD to reformat your hard drive. In that case you should be able to skip that step and follow the rest to shrink the partition. However, the directions that follow are what I did to my laptop.
=================
Partition Resizer v.1.2.0
=================
Steps to Install Linux and Compaq Restore CD together.
Partition Resizer is available at http://members.xoom.com/Zeleps/. Thank you to Jason E. Massey for this bit of information. If you have questions about the non-destructive method, please contact him at jemasse@gte.net
Creating the boot and root disks:
Using the Slackware CD, or wherever you're installing it from, create the boot disk bareapm.i and the root disk pcmcia.tgz. You'll need to use rawrite.exe to do this, and it's provided in the Slackware package. The syntax is: rawrite [image] [floppy drive] Just go to the directory containing the boot image and type:
rawrite bareapm.i a:
Do the same for pcmcia.tgz. After the laptop stops chugging, you should have two floppy disks ready. So insert the bareapm.i floppy into the floppy drive and reboot the computer. After which Linux should happily start, dumping loads of information onto your screen. At this point, you should not get any errors. When Linux prompts you for the root disk (pcmcia.tgz), insert it, and press ENTER.
Creating the Linux partitions:
Upon login, you're greeted with the command prompt. The first thing to do is to type fdisk. Note that in Linux, everything is case sensitive. FDISK and fdisk are different! Using fdisk's print option (p), here is what I have:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 394 1588576+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M /dev/hda2 395 787 1584576 5 Extended /dev/hda5 395 755 1455520+ 83 Linux native /dev/hda6 756 787 128992+ 82 Linux swap
Remember that it will most probably look different on your system, depending on the size and number of partitions you crate. When you're done writing your partitions to disk, run setup, and follow the instructions. You'll be asked to format and your newly created Linux partitions. Make sure you have them checked for bad blocks.
Installing the X Window System
X is Linux's standard graphical user interface (GUI). To be able to run X in your laptop, make sure you install the X disk sets: X, XAP, XD, and XV. If you plan on installing KDE; The K-Desktop Environment, then do not install the Qt library that comes with Slackware 3.6. More on installing KDE later on. The version of XFree86 included with the Slackware 3.6 package is Release 3.2. You'll be able to use this with the laptop but it looks really bad. So you're recommended to upgrade XFree86 to Release 3.3.3.1 by downloading the necessary files from ftp://ftp.xfree86.org. By the way, do this only after you install Linux. If you do not have a modem that works in Linux (which you most likely don't), here's what you do:
You must make sure you download their current release! Also, do not bother with downloading and installing RedHat's XFCom NeoMagic server, as the latest release of XFree86 will contain the necessary drivers for the NeoMagic cards. When you've downloaded everything in Windows 98, boot back into Linux. Next we'll mount the Windows 98 partition and grab the updated X packages and transfer them over to Linux:
When asked for questions in postinst.sh and preinst.sh, just say yes. If everything went alright, XF86Setup should start and you're presented with a graphical interface using a VGA16 server. You only need to do three things here. First of all, go to Card and pick out the NeoMagic card. Then go to Monitor and choose the Extended Super VGA, 800x600 @ 60 Hz. Finally click on Modeselection and choose an 800x600 setting with 16bpp color depth. Click on Done, and see if the settings work (they should). Save the settings if you're satisfied. You'll then be asked if you want to create a link, and you should say "yes" to this. When you get dropped back to the prompt, type startx and you should be dropped into a clean Fvwm95 window manager!
Installing LILO:
If you want to use LILO, go ahead and install it in the MBR. Everything should work well. LILO will overwrite the MBR and will let you boot between Windows 98 and Linux. As already mentioned above, if you install Windows 98 after installing Linux, Windows 98 will overwrite the MBR and you'll have to install LILO all over again. Check the manual pages for LILO for more information on this.
Installing KDE:
For those of you who don't know what KDE is, you can go check it out at http://www.kde.org. It's basically a window manager complete with a desktop manager, or vice versa. If you're interested in installing it, the fastest way is to go to Linuxberg and to download the Slackware packages for both KDE and the Qt libraries. When you've done this, do the following to check what will be installed:
installpkg -warn qt_1_42.tgz
installpkg -warn kde.tgz
When you've checked to see if everything is okay and you're not overwriting anything important, then you're ready to install:
installpkg qt_1_42.tgz
installpkg kde.tgz
Of course your package names may be different. By the time you install KDE or the Qt libraries, they may have already undergone upgrades. Next, type the following, or just log out and log in again:
. ~/.bash_profile
Notice the "." right at the beginning of the command! Don't forget it! KDE will create it's own xinitrc file called xinitrc.kde in /var/X11R6/lib/xinit/. Copy this file to your home directory as .xinitrc:
cp /var/X11R6/lib/xinit/xinitrc.kde ~/.xinitrc
Type startx and KDE should take a few seconds to initialize, create your directories and configurations, and then start up.
Configuring sound:
I have received emails from a few people telling me that they were able to get their sound card to work under Linux. Unfortunately they are using RedHat, which has a program called sndconfig to automate sound detection for you. sndconfig is not part of the standard Linux distribution, so Slackware does not have it. There are two ways to configure sound in Slackware 3.6. You can either reconfigure the kernel using the following settings:
Or you can do it the easy way. I found out that to get sound to work in Slackware, all you have to do is to edit one file. Open up /etc/rc.d/rc.modules using your favorite text editor. Look for the section on Sound, and uncomment it. The line is:
#/sbin/modprobe sound
This module is compiled to support Soundblaster 16, which works in the laptop. Just uncomment it so it looks like this:
/sbin/modprobe sound
Reboot, and sound should now be functional. If you don't want to reboot, just run the command /sbin/modprobe sound to load the sound module. When you next boot up, the sound module will be automatically loaded. Test it by playing a sound file. I used the CD player that came with KDE, kscd and it worked perfect. The following people are credited for informing me that that the sound card in the Compaq Presario 1230 works in Linux, and for providing me with the sound card's settings:
When to email me:
Read the following before you decide to send me an email: Email Rules page.
X_console
shellscope@yahoo.com