SOHO 5.8 RC3 on an Acer Aspire 5610-4260 notebook

[JohnB316]

I have a Belkin F5D7000 version 1134 (I think) wireless card in one of my VL boxes. Ndiswrapper didn't work for that card. However, the Broadcom bcm43xx driver works very well with it. If I had a card that could use either driver, I'd go for the bcm43xx over ndiswrapper.

FWIW (about $0.0000000002),
John

[Jerry]

Well the only thing I would say to that is "suck it and see". 
Most of the users here have reasonably good things to say about SOHO 5.8 on laptops.
We should probably be able to help you with any unforeseen problems. For certain VL is likely to be faster than Mint or Xandros, I am unsure about the performance wrt Sabayon.

Well, I'm about to take the plunge with my Vector 5.8 SOHO disc.  This is a promise:
If this goes ok and I get these issues taken care of I will send to the Vector folks
$100.  I have been using Vector (off and on) for a couple of years now, and I always
come back.  The old pc that had 5.8 SOHO on it now has PCLinuxOS 2007, but that's
because I could not get Vector SOHO to sync sound at certain websites like David
Letterman's site with the great videos there.

Anyway, the hundred bucks will be sent to Vector no matter what happens as I realise
that Vector was the first distro to really tear me away from Windows several years
ago, and I appreciate that very much.  But here's what I'm dealing with:  this is a
brand new Acer Aspire 5610z with nice graphics (Intel 945/950), plenty of RAM
(2Gigs) and a nice big hard drive (120Mb).  I need wifi to work and I need to be
able to view streaming video at places like www.cnn.com and as said before the
Letterman site, as well as www.foxnews.com and www.cbsnews.com and others.  Also I
love to watch my old (get ready for a laugh) Mr. Bean DVDs.  Vista does all this
without blinking an eye, but it's Micro*&^%#$!soft.    I want to get RID of it,
not dual boot!

So, ... er, here I go..........

[Joe1962]

FWIW, all that works great on my 5610. It did come as a surprise to me that it doesn't actually have bluetooth, lol. It is optional and the bluetooth on/off button on the front is just for show on this one...

[The Headacher]

Bluetooth is a waste of money anyways. If you give me the choice between bluetooth and a cable (e.g. USB) i'll take the cable over the insecure bluetooth any time. I don't see why my cellphone would need to communicate wirelessly with my laptop. If it's my darn phone and laptop I should have the cable too right? (By the way, the manufacturers SHOULD just use a standard mini USB connector, not some weird proprietary connector).

Cyber criminals on the other hand go around with a laptop hacking mobile phones. A few years ago a newspaper or a news program had someone hack cellphones of ministers and members of the Dutch parliament. They didn't even have to touch the phones to steel personal data and addresses of important political figures.

Bottom line is, unless you're a Cybercriminal, stay away from bluetooth .

[Joe1962]

I don't have a use for bluetooth at all, in fact, since a certain colleague of mine swears by it, I hate it by design... . I was just testing all the hardware support. Oh, and I haven't had time to have a go at the webcam yet.

[Jerry]

FWIW, all that works great on my 5610. It did come as a surprise to me that it doesn't actually have bluetooth, lol. It is optional and the bluetooth on/off button on the front is just for show on this one...

5.8 really went well?  That is very encouraging.. I should do some searching around to see if
you had any issues setting up wifi, etc.  .. but I'll just ask here if you don't mind
(after all, I am about to install Vector SOHO 5.8 on the hard drive of the same model
of notebook computer that you say you did):  did you have any issues installing and
getting it to work in all those areas?

I'm ready to do this today.. 

  -- Jerry B.

[Joe1962]

See earlier in this thread.

[Jerry]

See earlier in this thread.

I was looking at that, but it's on RC3.. I'm hesitantly going ahead with
5.8 SOHO, the one released May 17th. 

I also have the live CD version, but I had trouble with wifi and screen
resolution.. but it was very fast on this new notebook for a live CD,
that's one of the things that got me intrigued about just installing the
5.8 SOHO and dealing one-by-one with the problems;  I'd end up with a
great, fast system.

[Joe1962]

I'm using SOHO 5.8 final now.

[Jerry]

I'm using SOHO 5.8 final now.

Wonderful! 

Mind telling us how you got to that point?  Did you upgrade your existing
RC3?  Did you install 5.8 Final over it, beside it as a dual boot? 

My guess is you did a fresh install.  If so, how did that go?  Any issues
like in those you pointed out with RC3?  Or was that all resolved with
the Final installation?

Too many questions?  Sorry.   

[Joe1962]

Fresh install of course, won't have it any other way, no matter what OS...

Everything was mostly the same as in RC3. Lack of time, need or means has prevented my testing the burner DMA fixes, modem, microphone, webcam and card reader. For the screen resolution and wifi, follow the notes in "Things that work after tweaking".

EDIT: The installer issues are fixed in final, obviously.

[Jerry]

Fresh install of course, won't have it any other way, no matter what OS...

Everything was mostly the same as in RC3. Lack of time, need or means has prevented my testing the burner DMA fixes, modem, microphone, webcam and card reader. For the screen resolution and wifi, follow the notes in "Things that work after tweaking".

EDIT: The installer issues are fixed in final, obviously.

Muchisimas gracias.  I'm going to print out that post with the tweaks.. now it's time
to finally get started on the install. 

Thanks again for reponding to my posts and queries in here.

  - Jerry -

[Jerry]

Well..     I finally got Vista back up and running on my
notebook.. my advice to anyone with an Acer Aspire:  DO NOT
ATTEMPT AN INSTALL TO HARD DRIVE OF A SLACKWARE DERIVED DISTRO!

I spent three days trying to get a gui, a READABLE gui with
Vector and then with Zenwalk.  It just keeps coming up 1024x768
with horrid looking fonts (the old "cookie cutter" fonts from
the 1996 Red Hat 5.2 days) and very, very slow application
launching. 

I finally formatted the 120Gb hard drive and installed Vista
Basic from DVD then "upgraded" back to Premium after getting
things straightened out via phone with the Microsoft people.

That was quite a lesson in Linux experimentation.

I seems that the problem is that this laptop is too new for
the existing Linux kernel. 

Anyway, it feels strange that I'd send $100 dollars to a
distro and have it uninstallable on my new machine... but
I am looking at that from a rather humorous standpoint,
like the time I paid a cab driver to take me from the
St. Luis airport downtown and hotels were full and I had
to walk back to the airport for my morning flight out
of town.   

Meanwhile, I have to accept the fact that this new computer
needs Windows Vista to function properly, at least for now.

[lagagnon]

Did you search the Linux on Laptops site beforehand? http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/acer.html .
Because there you will find a possible solution to your video troubles - you basically need the 915resolution drivers. See here: http://www.microbotica.es/aspire5610.html

[Joe1962]

Sorry to quote from myself, but I did mention that:

Things that were set up automagically:
- video driver and working DRI (resolution set to 1024x768 by autodetect)

Things that work after tweaking:
- 1280x800 resolution
   (after copying 915resolution utility to /usr/sbin and calling it at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local)

If you could list your hardware specs here, there might be differences between the models...