OpenSUSE 11.0 is definitely a good distro to use for the 2133. I just finished putting 11.0 KDE 4.1 onto mine and have had very few problems.
Some notes…
SUSE 11.0 KDE live CD works fine, no changes required on my 2133 to make this work. Installed with no problems to get a very basic system working with wired ethernet and 800x600 graphics.
First thing I did was add the community repos for KDE factory, backport and community so I could update to KDE 4.1 sharp’ish. KDE 4.0 is complete pants and isn’t worth spending the time of day on. 4.1 works well for a basic user, more advanced users will rightly ***** and moan.
Getting the wireless to work is a sinch if you forget the binary drivers and stick with ndiswrapper which is what I use for ALL my builds now. There’s so much documentation for this so take a look around. You only need to type 3-4 commands TOTAL so ignore the 10,000 word explanations from “experts”.
Video is the real p***ser for the 2133, at some point Via and HP will maybe read some of the posts and realize what a disaster this chip is or more specifically the lack of software that works is a disaster. DRI this, AGP that, patches and all that… for crying out loud lets just have an RPM that works please, HP you sold it, you do the development to make it work… not us.
Rant over…
Other people have had luck with Openchrome but for me the standard Vesa driver works fine. Video playback is pretty slow but if anyone bought this machine for video they only have themselves to blame. UMPC’s are not exactly intended as portable DVD players are they…? Still flash is not great but good enough for me.
Sound all works fine in 11.0 I haven’t tested the mic jack yet but basic sound is working OK.
Bluetooth again works straight out of the box, I have a PAN setup to my K800 mobile which is currently taking some strain with emails.
Suspend to RAM doesn’t work as a “known machine” configuration so I have yet to test and get this to work… Suspend to disk (aka hibernate) works a charm.
Web cam works out of the box although performance in Cheese (Google app) is very poor, Skype detects it fine although I must confess to not being sad enough to ever try that on a world wide call!!
I’m a recent convert from Gnome (sorry guys) but I have tested the Gnome version on 11.0 on the 2133 with much the same results.
So far these are the distros I have tried.
SUSE Ent Desktop 10 (Nothing more to say, just get rid of it)
OpenSUSE 10.3 Not a great experience
OpenSUSE 11.0 definitely my favorite now on KDE 4.1
Minbuntu Not bad at all, not better than 11.0 though in anyway
I think the big one here is to stick with ndiswrapper for wireless. It works fine with both KDE and Gnome network managers or their variation of and I have it working with full WPA security.
Don’t waste your time either trying to improve graphics, I’m no expert but after 4-5 different distros all not doing the business I’m not wasting anymore time on it.
Drop me a message if you have any specific questions and good luck.
If you don’t have a USB DVD-ROM (I do from and older Compaq model) then you’ll need to research the USB option.
