3. The Solutions

The installation of Fedora Core on the HP Pavilion dv1000 went like any other - which is to say smoothly, and without any obvious hitches or glitches. The entire process was completed in under 20 minutes using only the default package selections. All the basic features, like audio, video and wired networking were identified, configured and operational upon delivery to the desktop. Once there, the software update tool simplified the otherwise laborious chore of shoring up old on-disk applications with current versions available online through various package repositories. During the initial installation process, we were able to take care of all three USB ports and a single Firewire port, thereby enabling our Linux notebook to put any of a variety of plug-and-play external devices to work.

For a Windows user, seeing a crisp WXGA high-definition BrightView widescreen display can be a visual delight. But even for a seasoned Linux user, the same display evokes an occasional "uh oh!" Fortunately, the immediate solution proved surprisingly simple: Fedora's X Windows system provides a profile called "HP A7217A Wide-Aspect" that happens to work perfectly with this display. Once it was put in place, our desktop looked superb at 1280x1024 resolution, with color depth specified as "millions of colors."

Although the video adapter was recognized only as a generic VESA-compliant component, the display delivered crisp, detailed imagery at an acceptably high resolution. Interestingly, the touchpad mouse interface worked without requiring any manual setup or configuration - a point worth mentioning if only because the HP dv1000 lacks a secondary eraser-head style mouse pointer as a fallback.

Conveniently, the large third-party repository available at ATrpms.net includes an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 package. This spared us the task of downloading, compiling, and installing the wireless driver package, by providing a binary that's ready to install. These pre-made binaries proved to be quite handy, as you can see from the list of required packages in Table 2.

Table 2

True-to-form, the Centrino Bluetooth solution also works right out of the box, using the software provisions available within Fedora's default package selections. Within seconds, an in-house Bluetooth-enabled PDA was easily identified during the notebook's first scan of available devices. No additional configuration was required. The screenshot below shows Bluetooth discovery using a post-out-of-the-box add-on Bluetooth Manager from Fedora's core package repository.

Figure 2: Bluetooth on the dv1000 finds the Dell Axxim on its first try.