Install Acer 1410/1810 and openSUSE 11.2

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I installed openSUSE 11.2 on my Acer 1410 netbook today. Here’s how the experience compared to the previous install with openSUSE 11.1:

  1. Ethernet port worked out-of-the-box. (11.1 required installing a driver fix.)

  2. Audio worked after adding Speaker to the Mixer and turning it up.

  3. Microphone worked after adding Capture to the Mixer and turning it up and on.

  4. Fn Volume Up/Down only works for Down. Up is broken.

  5. Fn Screen Brightness Up/Down works. (11.1 had both broken.)

  6. Power Management properly controls screen brightness for power saving to extend battery life.

  7. Other Fn key sequences…
    Fn F1 Power manager - doesn’t bring up one, Window’s thing
    Fn F2 System Property - doesn’t bring up system info, Window’s thing
    Fn F3 Bluetooth - not available on 1410, not tested
    Fn F4 Sleep - doesn’t work, whereas in 11.1, it did
    Fn F5 Display toggle - didn’t re-test
    Fn F6 Screen blank - works
    Fn F7 Touchpad toggle - works
    Fn F8 Speaker toggle - works
    Fn F11 NumLk - works
    Fn F12 Scr Lk - works
    Fn Home - works
    Fn End - works

  8. Skype (with video) and Gizmo5 both work. (Worked in 11.1 as well.)

  9. Wireless didn’t work quite out-of-the box. Had to fiddle with the Network Manager to set Connection Secrets to “Do no store (always ask)” or “In file (unencrypted)”. Wireless chipset was recognized properly and connections could be made, but for whatever reason, Connection Secrets set to “In secure storage (encrypted)” would prevent connections. (11.1 had wireless working right away.)

  10. One-click for codecs got mp3, Flash, etc. up and running.

(For those interested in the install process, look up my experience with “Acer 1410 and openSUSE 11.1”.)

#2

Important detail…

  1. Suspend to RAM and Suspend to Disk both work. Fn F4 key sequence doesn’t work, like in 11.1, but selecting from the Leave menu does the trick.
#3

Thanks for sharing your information/experience.

If you get the chance, perhaps you could update the HCL for this ?
HCL/Laptops/Acer - openSUSE
… the HCL syntax is very unfriendly, and if that looks too complex, no worries, just advise via a post or PM, and myself or someone else can update the HCL based on what you provided.

#4

How do you update the HCL I have a Emachines E627 that I would like to post my experience about. Most everything works great out of the box, ATI 3200HD works great with 10.2, suspend, wired, sound, 2d, 3d, TV out, SD card reader, and USB all works great.

Two bugs that I have found
a) KDE power-management via icon does not detect my adapter being plugged in or removed(acpi does however). I have to manually switch the power profile file.Not that big of a deal.
b) I believe is more kernel 2.6.31.12 related is that my AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) seems to be unstable and poor signal, but this has been and issue with every distro that I have tried so far.

#5

Tuxattack80, I updated the HCL for your E627 here: HCL/Laptops/[b]E machines - openSUSE
… please check and confirm/advise/correct if I made a mistake.

linuxvinh, I updated the HCL for your Acer Aspire 1410 here: HCL/Laptops/[b]Acer - openSUSE
… please check and confirm/advise/correct if I made a mistake.

#6

Looks good on my end, the wireless does work but extremely buggy so “Does Not Work” would be a good answer. Suspend does work but with the bug in KDE PowerDevil not detecting the AC adapter its probably safe the way you have it. Thanks a lot for posted that!

#7

Thanks for sharing. The instability in the ath9k driver is fixed in newer kernels, there should be a kernel update for 11.2 in the making.

#8

Sounds great thanks for the heads up:) I am currently running openSUSE on both of my machines:

Desktop= eMachines Official Site - Desktop - ET1331G-03w Product Details Everything runs great although I haven’t got a chance to test the onboard GPU since I have upgraded to a EVGA GT 240 SuperClock Edition 512MB GDDR5 that runs perfect with the openSUSE 11.2 one-click nvidia proprietary drivers.

Laptop= Walmart.com: eMachines 15.6" eME627-5279 Laptop PC with AMD Athlon 64 Processor: Computers Which I have already discussed earlier.

#9

Thanks for adding it oldcpu! I was going to work on it this weekend. I’ve added my changes for 11.2 as well as 11.1.

#10

OK, for the ET1331G I put a very brief entry here:
HCL/Desktops/eMachines - openSUSE
… hopefully thats not too inaccurate and if you have any suggested additions to that entry please advise.

#11

Great ! Thanks for the contribution.

#12

Looks Good;)

#13

I started looking into the Fn key situation and Fn Volume Up works on my 1410! I didn’t change anything, so it’s puzzling but a happy coincidence. Any clues on where the Fn keys are configured? I’ve been searching…

#14

On 03/07/2010 06:16 PM, linuxvinh wrote:
>
> I started looking into the Fn key situation and Fn Volume Up works on my
> 1410! I didn’t change anything, so it’s puzzling but a happy
> coincidence. Any clues on where the Fn keys are configured? I’ve been
> searching…

These are handled through something called the Windows Management Interface. You
need to look for a module that is named acer-wmi. Check to see if it is loaded
by using the command ‘lsmod | grep wmi’ If that command returns nothing, type
the command ‘sudo /sbin/modprobe -v acer-wmi’. If that helps, you need to add
it to the modules loaded on boot.