Here are some other installs: SUSE 8.2, SUSE 9.1, Ubuntu 5.04
Installationreport of Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary) on the ASUS L3500D
Last Update: 2005-04-28
2005-04-24
After years of successfull use of various versions of SUSE, Redhat, Debian I've noticed this ongoing hype about a 'new' distribution everybody is talking about: Ubuntu. So I decided to give this newcomer a try, downloaded the ISO image and started a new adventure.

If you don't know what Ubuntu is, have a look at their homepage .

Details about my hardware can be found here where I described the installation of SUSE 8.2.

After booting from the installation CD, the installer asked a few questions, detected my hardware, installed everything and 30 minutes later everything was ready und running ;-)

More details? Ok, here we go:

First of all, it is important to use a kernelparameter for booting. Otherwise the screen resolution won't fit and you can't access all dialog boxes.

So, simply use a

  linux vga=0x317

and everything will be ok.

After that, everything else was ridiculous easy. Just make sure you understand Ubuntus' concept of userhandling. The first user, the one you set up during installation, will be The One. This user will get configured with rights for using 'sudo'. So be aware that this user will be the 'main user'. By default, the actual 'root' account is disabled.

I used a user named 'install' for that because my main user needs some special settings like a defined UID/GID and you can't define those during the installation process. This has something to do with my servers (Hint: NFS). But this is another story.

So I defined another user later with my UID/GID, added him to the necessary groups, and everything was ok.

Let's make it short. Here is a list of things I've found working: And here some things I haven't tested:
 And, of course, some things that don't work:
Some more details regarding the points above:

To get 'Suspend to RAM/Disk', alias 'Hibernate/Sleep' working, check the file 'etc/acpi/default/acpi-support'.
There you can define a few things.

Here is mine: 
  # Uncomment the next line to enable ACPI suspend to RAM
  ACPI_SLEEP=true

  # Comment the next line to disable suspend to disk
  ACPI_HIBERNATE=true

  # Change the following to "standby" to use ACPI S1 sleep, rather than S3.
  # This will save less power, but may work on more machines
  ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=mem

  # Add modules to this list to have them removed before suspend and reloaded
  # on resume. It should look something like MODULES="e1000 ipw2100"
  MODULES=""

  # Should we save and restore state using the VESA BIOS Extensions?
  SAVE_VBE_STATE=true

  # The file that we use to save the vbestate
  VBESTATE=/var/lib/acpi-support/vbestate

  # Should we attempt to warm-boot the video hardware on resume?
  POST_VIDEO=true

  # Should we switch the screen off with DPMS on suspend?
  USE_DPMS=true

  # Uncomment the next line to switch away from X and back again after resume.
  # This is needed for some hardware, but should be unnecessary on most.
  # DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true

  # Set the following to "platform" if you want to use ACPI to shut down
  # your machine on hibernation
  HIBERNATE_MODE=platform

  # Comment this out to disable screen locking on resume
  # LOCK_SCREEN=true

  # Uncomment this line to have DMA disabled before suspend and reenabled
  # afterwards
  # DISABLE_DMA=true

  # Add services to this list to stop them before suspend and restart them in
  # the resume process.
  # STOP_SERVICES="mysql "

Also you have to use

  acpi_sleep=s3_bios

in your '/boot/grub/menu.lst'.

Again, here is my default entry:

 title  Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-5-386
 root   (hd0,0)
 kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro vga=0x317 quiet splash hdc=cdrom acpi_sleep=s3_bios
 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386
 savedefault
 boot


If you want to use some of the other special keys, maybe to control your soundvolume (remember, this doesn't work out of the box), here is a diagramm of all those keys and their corrosponding codes:


Anything else?

Not really. This distro is the most boring thing I've ever installed. 'Boring' in a positive way. It simply works. I'll not go in deep about Ubuntu here. There are lots of reviews out there in the net for that.
My only purpose was to tell you that it works on this kind of notebook.

Oh, one last thing, did I mention already that i really, really like Ubuntu? Not with Gnome or KDE, but with Fvwm (as usual) ;-)
have fun...

Uli