Saturday, February 7, 2009

Ubuntu on HP nc 4200

Well, finally i got around to publish this, the HP nc4200 is the nicest piece of Linux compatible hardware that i ever laid hands on, don't look no more!

Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy' on HP nc4200

Intel Pentium M processor 740* (1.73-GHz, 533-MHz FSB, 2-MB L2 cache)
Works / no special procedure required during installation.

12.1-inch TFT XGA (1024 x 768 resolution and 16 M colors)
Works / Select Generic LCD Display in Installer

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
Works / no special procedure required during installation

1024-MB 400-MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Works / No special procedure required during installation

40 GB 5400 rpm SMART
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Integrated 10Base-T/100Base-T/1000Base T Ethernet local area network (LAN) network interface card (NIC) with RJ-45 jack
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Internal 56k Modem No idea Not tested

External DVD-ROM MultiBay II Drive
Works / No special procedure required during installation

TouchPad, pointing stick pointing devices and a dedicated vertical scroll region Works / No special procedure required during installation

One integrated Secure Digital slot
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Sound ADI AC '97 CODEC Integrated 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro compatible audio
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Integrated wireless Mini PCI IEEE 802.11b/g and 802.11a/b/g WLAN device
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Bluetooth
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Basic Installation of Ubuntu 7.10 'gutsy':


* Why Ubuntu? HP originally planned to release this notebook with Ubuntu so it was the obvious choice :-)
* Obtaining Ubuntu: do i really have to tell you how to obtain Ubuntu?
* Installing: pretty straight forward: put cd in drive, answer a few questions, partition if wished and let the installer do the rest :-D
* Post-Install modifications/tweaks: just customizing options (desktop, starup programs/daemons, etc), everything tested worked out of the box.

Setting up additional features for Ubuntu: nothing i can think of.

Unresolved issues: none!!

Links:

* The Ubuntu forum offers excellent support and almost any question will be answered to satisfaction.
* HP has tons of information on the website about this notebook.
* Laptop was recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with Kernel 2.6.24-23 without any problems, now running compiz and desktop effects.

I originally wanted to get a IBM because of the famous Linux compatibility but after doing a lot of research and reading i ended up buying this notebook. Linux often requires several kernel patches, or even windows drivers to work properly on a portable computer. HP originally intended to market their NC4200 notebook with Ubuntu, so they went the extra mile to get the system working and they did a great job :-)

Note: On November 2011 this notebook was upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot'. Check here for the full report.


4 comments:

  1. Very nice and helpful post, thank you very much :-)

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  2. Hi anonymous, glad my post helped you out, thanks for your visit :-)

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  3. I just installed the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Works lovely for everything but wireless. Did you have any issues with that?

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  4. Hi Bob, i had absolutely no issues during install or now with upgrading to 11.04, the only thing is that i got rid of unity and i'm using gnome, don't quite find myself in this unity environment, i'll make a more complete report asap and post it.

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