2. Detailed Test Setup

Figure 1: HP's Centrino Duo based dv1000

We chose the HP Pavilion dv1000 as our test machine, because it's a pretty modern machine, but still widely available, and also pretty darned affordable. This test machine also incorporates numerous key components that promised to make Linux installation an interesting challenge; these are summarized in the table below.

Table 1

The Questions

The first big question looming over all others - and in fact, the very impetus behind this article - is a simple one: "Will a Core Duo mobile solution run Linux?" Since we already know that multi-core processor technologies work for desktop/workstation and server solutions, we surmised that there should be no problem with our test notebook. Still, the only surefire way to verify our supposition was take a Linux installation test drive on this machine.

Even more interesting to us would be finding out whether or not the special multimedia function keys on this notebook work with Linux, and furthermore, determining if the proprietary Lightscribe technology built into the dual-layer DVD+RW/CD-RW would work. We also couldn't help wondering about the Pavilion built-in webcam, integrated microphone, and its fancy remote control. Would these function, and if so, how well? Battery-saving suspend modes were another hot issue we couldn't wait to dig into. In short, this unit would give us a great opportunity to see just how well Linux on the notebook is keeping up with increasingly common notebook features, especially those that relate to multimedia.