Ubuntu Linux on the LG P300

Hello. I've seen some people asking questions about linux on the P300. I recently purchased a LG P300 (8600 GS version) and installed Ubuntu 8.04. I thought I might write something about how everything works so far and maybe answer some questions (if you got any ). Please do acknowledge that this is my first time with Ubuntu, so if you want me to do any "special" terminal-based testing please be patient. And excuse my english, it is my second language.

My LG P300:
3072 MB DDR2-RAM PC5300
250 GB SATA 5400rpm (dualboot with Vista, so around 100GB on two partions)
256MB NVIDIA GeForceGo 8600M GS
Purchased from notebook.de:
http://www.notebook.de/lg-p300-serie-g-767


Driver support:
I have had no problems with any drivers. Both the graphics and sound drivers worked "out of the box". The internal webcam worked without changing or installing anything when I ran aMSN (MSN client). The build in "test hardware" application seems to detect everything.

Screen
The resolution setting of 1200x800 is identical to the setting in Vista. The screen refresh rate however was 50 Hz in Ubuntu, and 60 Hz in Windows Vista. At first I was unable to set the refresh rate higher than 50 Hz in Ubuntu, but when I installed the nvidia-settings application* the 60 Hz option was there.

Wifi:
Wifi works great and I could connect to my home network in a matter of seconds after the first bootup. Unfortunately I have not tried bluetooth yet.

Battery:
When I first booted up Ubuntu I received a minor shock due to this warning:
"Warning: Battery capacity: 7% (poor)". Ubuntu claims that my battery is broken and that the capacity has been reduced to only 7%. This is however incorrect since I've gotten around 3 hours of computing on a 100% charge. I have also noted that the "Battery capacity" sometimes displays "100% (excellent)" when the battery is fully charged (it then switches to 7%). Ubuntu both detects when the AC adapter is plugged in (brightness increases: high performance mode) and when it is not (moderate brightness: balanced mode). Average charge time seems to be approximately 2 hours.

Noises and heat:
I dual boot with Windows Vista and as far as I can tell there is no difference in noises nor heat when comparing the OS to each other. The P300 stays on the same level of noise and heat (which is quiet and cool). There has been some complaints about the P300 running hot while gaming; but since Ubuntu does not support any high performance games, the P300 remains cool. The only time which I can feel a difference in heat is when charging the battery, but even then its far from hot.

DVD Drive:
Ubuntu recognizes the external DVD drive and has applications for burning CD:s and DVD:s. I have not received any problems so far.

Boot time:
Ubuntu boots to the login screen in about 10 seconds (grub bootloader time excluded) and after the login screen it takes another 3-5 seconds to boot into desktop mode.

This is all I can think of at the moment. If you got any questions, don't hesitate to ask! Thank you.

/Ontrop.

Edit: I felt that this post belonged "more" in the LG sections, since I've seen some questions about the P300 and linux here and since this is more about the P300 performance in Ubuntu. If moved however, it is fine by me.


*To download nvidia-settings type this in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

 

Please do try bluetooth. I don't have a P300, but I'm trying to collect as much information as I can before I venture off into bluetooth with Ubuntu.
If you can post any experience with it when you try it, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Testing bluetooth will be hard, since the only bluetooth- ish things I own are two Dual Shock controllers for the ps3. If I get my hands on any other bluetooth devices I will be sure to test them out and reply to this thread.

Thank you,
/Ontrop.

 

I'm getting my bluetooth module today and I'll try it out, so maybe I'll be posting the info instead.

 

Ontrob. Thank you very (!) much for posting your experience. Now that you had it for a while, do you have anything to add? What's your experience by now? Did you get hibernate and suspend-to-ram to work? Do you have a 64 or 32 bit installation?
Is the battery 7% problem still there? Could you explain what it means? Is it showing the right percentage when not fully charged?

Any other issues? What maximal battery time do you reach?
best, J

 

There are several issues with Ubuntu in this notebook.

Neither suspend-to-disk works nor Suspend-to-RAM. Suspend-to-RAM seems to work, but the box doesn't come up again, the screen stays black and the box can't be pinged.

There is an issue with the r8169 module, i.e. Gigabit Ethernet. It won't work after a cold start, which is really serious. This will probably fixed in the future, but right now this is a headache, forcing me to connect through WLAN, which does work out of the box.

The hotkey to switch WLAN on/off doesn't work under Ubuntu. WLAN is always on, which is not quite good for battery life, I suspect.

The fan is not very loud, but is always on and may be annoying in a quiet environment.

I have yet to measure battery life.

On the other hand, the display is superb, the best notebook display I have worked with so far.

 

According to these threads,
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=51937
http://my.opera.com/knuthy/blog/index.dml/tag/r8169
there is a driver "r8168-8.003.00.tar.bz2" from realtec fixing the
network card problems.
Another solution is the r8169 module in kernel 2.6.24-19 , according to these threads: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/141343 and http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/10/448

Could you try If any of these work for you?

Hibernate and suspend is important for me so I'll research that and get back
here if I find some hints.

Can't you stop wlan by unloading the right module?

[note that I haven't bought a p300 yet, just researching]

best, J