Ubuntu on Gateway MT3705

Well I have installed Ubuntu 6.10 on my mt3705 and the results weren't what I would call good. The install went fine. However, the fan seems to runs nonstop even when its just sitting there for a while. If I press the Function key and up arrow (to increase screen brightness) the computer resets and takes me to the main login screen for Ubuntu. Also if you allow the computer to enter sleep mode it will not wake up. I have to hold down the power button to turn it off and then turn it back on. I was able to mount my windows drive to get my music, but there is no support for the sound drivers of this computer. I was unable to try the wireless but maybe I will.

So, for now I will continue running Vista .

Also, I was wondering if I decide to try another distro what do I have to do? Can I just reformat the partitions with Ubuntu on them. Is there anything I need to do about Grub being on there? I dont care its there, its no big deal to have to select Vista from the list on boot up. I was just wondering in case I decide to try another distro such as Freespire or something else anyone may suggest.

 

Sorry it didn't work out. If you want, you can post all the questions/comments/concerns here and we can answer them. It takes a little effort, but Linux is well worth it for most of us non-PC gamers.

If you want to try another distro, you can certainly just wipe out the previous Linux install on your partition.

I suggest trying out Linux Mint (wireless and codecs from the get go) or hold off for Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty (which is currently in beta). I think your overall experience will be much better.

 

I agree here; I think you will experience much better hardware compatibility with Feisty when it is released later this month. Wireless should certainly work immediately, and installing graphics drivers will be easy as well. There are new ACPI packages included to help your fan control, and it should be a pretty good to go "out of the box" experience. I urge you to give it a try when it's released, and let us know how it goes.

Also, I will not suggest that you try Freespire. While Linspire has a ton of drivers installed by default, that's because it's a commercial distro. Freespire is free, so they omit pretty much all drivers. Personally, I got not much of anything working "out of the box" with Freespire, including wireless, graphics drivers, or even the correct screen resolution. All of these work pretty easily in Ubuntu 7.04. If you want to try something else just works, you could try Linux Mint, Mandriva, or Sabayon. You can just install these in the old Ubuntu partition and they should overwrite GRUB with their own version. But be aware that if you just delete Ubuntu to stick with Vista, you will get a broken GRUB bootloader, and thus won't be able to boot into Vista. You can restore the Vista bootloader by downloading Vista Boot PRO and restoring the Vista MBR. Good luck.

 

Sabayon 3.2 is another distribution that is well-reputed for having extremely good hardware detection. If you don't want to wait for Feisty, try Sabayon instead.

 

I used to have the same brightness problem with the latest 6.10 on my laptop, I think it's an ACPI bug. It doesn't happen with the 7.04 beta. Are you sure there's no sound drivers? Or is mp3 support just not enabled? Some sound cards aren't standards compliant, but I'd think that yours should at least work with the AC97 drivers.

Yes, you can reformat the partitions with Ubuntu on them. You first want to boot into windows and run "fdisk /mbr" in the console though and test rebooting, because otherwise Grub will be looking for a configuration file that was on the Ubuntu partition that doesn't exist any more, and you won't be able to boot up.

 

thanks everyone. i was considering ubuntu 7.04 even though it is still beta. i just havent had time with my class schedule this past week.

"you sure there's no sound drivers? Or is mp3 support just not enabled? Some sound cards aren't standards compliant, but I'd think that yours should at least work with the AC97 drivers."

ans for the sound, i found this thread on the ubuntu forums http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=352553&highlight=mt3705 and it seems no one has fixed it with ubuntu. someone made mention of xp drivers but im not sure how that helps me.

and somewhere on the ubuntu forums i found a thread dedicated to alsa stuff and it didnt work either. i found my driver listed "snd-atiixp" and then added it to a file to be loaded but it didnt work. it seems there is no support for STAC92xx i believe it is.

but i will keep trying.

 

STAC92XX should work out of the box, that series has been supported for a while. I have the STAC9200 in my Dell, and haven't found a distro that doesn't support it out of the box (apart from Windows XP).

I can only suggest you follow through with this guide.

 

i was trying to follow that guide..but....when i run "sudo ./configure --with-cards=hda-intel" i get the following message "checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details."

any idea what this is? everything was going fine until this point.

 

Have you got the build-essentials package installed?

Code:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

That will let you compile stuff from source code, as is what you're trying to do.

 

well i upraged to feisty. i still have no sound, and if it go to administration, network...my wireless is no longer listed. i did not get a chance to test it under 6.10 but now its not even there to test. i have spent many hours tyring to get the sound to work. it seems no one from the ubuntu forum can get the sound to work on this laptop. i am out of ideas.

 

Sorry bud. Some things just aren't supported, and it looks like you drew the short end of the stick. Try booting a LiveCD again in 6 months or so (when Ubuntu 7.10 comes out) and support for your chip may have changed in the meantime. Linux support of hardware can be spotty because many manufacturers don't release specs, and there's just not a whole lot we can do about that. Unfortunately the MT3705 is a budget laptop, and those often just use the cheapest parts, which means their support is often barely adequate in Windows, and nonexistent in Linux.

As for wireless, when you log in there should be a little icon in your system tray that has a little disconnected plug, and you should be able to connect to your wireless from there, assuming that you have a supported Intel or Atheros or something chip. If it's Broadcom (quite common and cheap), then you'll need to install the ndiswrapper driver to get it running.

Edit: After some searching, it sounds like you have a Realtek wireless chip. You definitely need to install the Windows driver from ndiswrapper to get your wireless working.

 

Not intending to detract or hijack from the thread, but I didn't want to have to make a new thread just for this question:

Can ubuntu run on a macbook?

 

Edgy and Dapper will both run, though if you want your webcam to work, you'll want Edgy.

http://desrt.mcmaster.ca/macbook.xhtml