Linux on Asus A6K

I haven't tested this laptop much, but it works pretty well with Ubuntu 5.10 for AMD 64bits. The following things are automatically detected and working perfectly:

• 2D Ok (some strange things occur with cursors on text boxes of firefox)
• Ethernet Ok
• Sound Ok
• ACPI: battery and power are correctly detected, hybernates ok. (no suspend)

Manual Setup:

• Modem is not recognized. I haven't tried more.
• Wifi is not detected, but it works using ndiswrapper following next steps (similar to Gentoo)
  • Install the package ndiswrapper-utils
  • Download windows xp drivers for 64 bits
  • Descompress the file. You will get a folder with a set of files, an .inf file between them.
  • Now use ndiswrapper tool to install the driver with ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
  • After installing you can run ndiswrapper -l to see the status of your installed drivers
  • Run the next commands (as root):

           ndiswrapper -m
           depmod -a
           modprobe ndiswrapper

  • Note that this does not automatically load ndiswrapper module at boot time. If you want the module to be loaded automatically at boot time, you should configure your module setup. Most distributions will load all modules listed in /etc/modules at boot time. For them, you can add a line 'ndiswrapper in /etc/modules'. (some times, it hangs the computer when the wifi button is pressed).

It was difficult for me to know which components form part of this laptop, and so check linux support. I put here the lspci result, if you want to check yourself.

Output of lspci :

  0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0756 (rev 02)
  0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0004
  0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
  0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)
  0000:00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0)
  0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
  0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
  0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
  0000:00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
  0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
  0000:00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4318 (rev 02)
  0000:00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
  0000:00:0a.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)
  0000:00:0a.2 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0822 (rev 17)
  0000:00:0a.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0592 (rev 08)
  0000:00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
  0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
  0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
  0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
  0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
  0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0167 (rev a1)