Fedora 12 on HP Pavilion dv6340eu

Atlast the day has come, LINUX running on my laptop(pre-loaded with M$ VISTA). Time for celebrations.

So I decided to drop a post on how the journey took place towards installing and using LINUX in my laptop. Initially I faced a serious problem, which LINUX flavour to use ... UBUNTU or FEDORA (sorry these are only my preferred flavours for long time). I got UBUNTU successfully running on my old desktop, on my sister's latest desktop and some more desktops of friends. I got FEDORA running successfully on my SERVER and other desktops. I never tried or used LINUX flavours on a LAPTOP (as I see communities filled with posts saying problems with LINUX on their laptops) so I have to choose one ...

Atlast I decided to go with FEDORA 12 .. not sure why I dumped UBUNTU over FEDORA ... but since I am comfortable with FEDORA as I work more with FEDORA .. and FEDORA 12 got many new open-source technologies and pre-packed with latest kernel in the market (Hmm I agree that a UBUNTU release is 6 months older to a FEDORA release). But still I love UBUNTU :)

Laptop Specs
HP Pavilion dv6340eu (2007 European model)
AMD Turion 64 X2 processor,
1GB RAM (really insane),
NVIDIA GEOFORCE 7200M graphics card,
BROADCOM wireless chipset and other HP stuff.

Off the Road ... M$ VISTA
Boot up and complete M$ VISTA loading takes around 10 to 15 minutes (low RAM might be the cause) until then don't even think of opening any other application it will mess up. Sometimes I use a NOKIA mobile to connect to WIRELESS GPRS INTERNET of AIRTEL and it requires PC-SUITE software from NOKIA. Apart from this inorder to protect myself from viruses and online threats I need a third party security application(s) like ANTIVIRUS, FIREWALL (resource hogs on 1GB RAM machine running M$ VISTA). Even in idle state more than 60% of the RAM is always busy and processor(s) utilization is always more than 50%. I faced strange problems on M$ VISTA with External harddisks .. when I use "safely remove hardware" option and then disconnect the hardware it always pop up message saying some information might be lost ... eventhough I wait for sometime to disconnect them?? and it really messed up my external storage devices many times.

Back to the Road ...
I decided to go with a 32 bit FEDORA OS installation ... after seeing many problems reported with 64 bit OS when compared to 32 bit OS. Downloaded a LIVECD and installed FEDORA 12 in dual boot without any hiccups ... that's a plain install no magic spells or hacking cheats used :). Voilla great its really simple on my laptop.

Automatic reboot of laptop once the installation is complete and booted in FEDORA12 ... Wow it just took less than 2 minutes to boot up completely ... RAM and CPU usage has been drastically reduced.

I connected my NOKIA mobile to laptop and it is detected automatically. I created a new wireless broadband connection under my subscriber AIRTEL and it simply connected like a charm. Damn who needs NOKIA PC-SUITE crap for connecting to internet. I am not using any of the fancy COMPIZ stuff and simply using the NOUVEAU drivers for my graphic cards. My wirelan connection is also working like a charm no drivers from HP or any third party stuff.

Problems in Journey ..
Small usage problems with openoffice ... as my brain is corrupted with M$ OFFICE. Eventhough LIVE CD is downloaded recently it has got many security updates and patches (around 412 I guess .. of 300MB) to be downloaded from internet ... I wonder why don't they update the FEDORA build atleast once in a month with latest patches :(. Livecd doesn't have any compilers for C, C++, Java and so on and they have to be updated from internet :(. Fedora by default has music/movie players but none of them have any codecs to play a normal MP3 file (hmm licensing problems)...

Seems there are some problems with power management .. as my laptop makes me feel as if it is burning ... My harddisk temperature is at 60'c and processor cores are above 65'c eventhough internal fans are running at full speed.

After all the problems and happiness I decided to drop this post in BLOGGER from a LINUX machine ... my FIRST one. Now my laptop proudly carry the logo of FEDORA on its chest.


Update 1: Do check Fedora 12 common bugs before you install Fedora 12 on your machine - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F12_bugs

Update 2: Integrated Webcam is still not working .. looking for workarounds.

Update 3: Do not use Nvidia Proprietary drivers replacing NOUVEAU drivers. Atleast I am seeing a system crash after update. Raised a bug at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=594439 and waiting for the real reason behind the crash and any workarounds.

Hmm ... haven't found any solution until now ... Only solution available is REINSTALL OS again ... stupid workaround. Why should I stuck with FEDORA 12 which seems to be crappy .. UBUNTU 10.04 with 5 years of support here I come.

Update 4:BYE BYE FEDORA 12 .... I am really disappointed by the support and help provided by Fedora Community.