Installing Slackware 12 on an Advent 6000

Last updated: August 2009

General Hardware Specifications of Advent 6000:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Intel Celeron M Processor 1.30GHz	Works	No special procedure required during installation.
14" XGA TFT Display	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Integrated SiS 661FX Graphics up to 64K Shared Memory	Works	Works with framebuffer or standard VGA modes selected during install,can specify "sis" in xorg.conf after install to use dedicated driver, although I do not notice any performance difference
256MB DDR-Ram	Works	No special procedure required during installation
40 GB Hard Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Integrated 10/100 Mbit Network Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation, allocated as eth0
Integrated Ralink Wireless Network Card	Works	No special procedure required during installation, allocated as wlan0
Internal 56k Modem V.90	Untested	In progress
DVD+/-RW Drive	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Battery	Untested	In progress
4x USB 2.0 Ports	Works	No special procedure required during installation
AC97 2.2 Compliant Sound Chip with Integrated Stereo Speakers	Works	No special procedure required during installation
Synaptics track-pad	Works	No special procedure required during installation Works using standard PS2 mouse driver "synaptics" may be specified in xorg.conf after installation, but does not seem to take notice of any configuration options or other driver specific commands

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.27.7-smp

Basic Installation of Slackware 12.2:

Why to use Slackware 12
This distribution can be configured to use minimum resources for a relatively low-spec laptop, but still includes a full set of device drivers for specific hardware components
Obtaining Slackware 12
A list of mirrors is given at http://www.slackware.com/getslack/

Download 3 ISO images and burn to CD.
Installing
Boot off first CD. Set up partitions with the text based utility cfdisk, then run setup.
Follow on screen instructions, full install uses 4-5 Gb disk space and takes under half an hour. Insert other CDs when prompted.
Post-Install modifications/tweaks
To use the wireless network, this needs to be configured in /etc/rc.d/inet1.conf, /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless and /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Setting up additional features for Slackware 12

Getting Suspend-to-Disk to operate correctly
Untested
Getting the touchpad to operate as more than a PS/2 mouse
Unable to configure this
Window Manager
Can choose window manager (kde, ...etc) by typing xwmconfig. I found kde a little too resource hungry for this laptop, but this is a personal choice. Gnome is not available.

Unresolved issues

Touchpad accidental tap-to-click is a problem, especially when typing

Configuration Files

Configuration files to modify
/etc/rc.d/inet1.conf for network settings
/etc/X11/xorg.conf for display driver, graphic resolution and mouse settings

System information

df -hl

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root              37G  4.6G   31G  13% /
tmpfs                 360M     0  360M   0% /dev/shm

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX Host (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 25)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:05.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01)
00:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

Contact Information (Optional)

leehanken@gmail.com

Links:

Advent - http://www.advent.co.uk//
Slackware - http://www.slackware.com/ -
Linux on Laptops - http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

This was a cheap laptop sold with XP, and my one definitely did not last well - the power connector broke, the keyboard became flakey, and the wireless hardware seemed to develop problems. Now at the end of its life, some invasive repairs, a usb keyboard and a wired connection it can be used as a linux client, and possibly a server, if it is useful enough to warrant leaving it on using 40 watts of power. As a client, it plays music and divx movies, and runs firefox and thunderbird admirably.