Looking for experience with a HP Compac nw9440 running Linux and then Windows XP as a VMWare Guest OS on top of an HP notebook.

1) Has anyone installed Linux on a nw9440 notebook? I know this machine has been certified for certain functionality:

» SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
» Novell Linux Desktop 9 (NLD)

in specific configurations and I'd like to hear from someone who has installed Linux to what may or may not be working correctly/fully?

2) Secondly, I would like to repartition this machine removing Windows XP, and then install VMWare and then install Windows XP on top of VMWare as a Guest OS. Does anyone have any experience doing so with the nw9440 or HP notebooks? Will I be able to do that with the HP recovery disks that are created from the recovery partition?

Thanks,

-- Mark

 

I've used Fedora Core on an nc8430.

Not quite the same but similar systems. Works great, although for some reason, while I can see the Core Duo at 2.0 GHz CPU, cpuspeed won't set it above 1.6 GHz. This doesn't seem to be a Fedora issue, but I haven't really looked into it much.

As for whats working/not working, the only thing I haven't been able to get working on the nc8430 is the fingerprint reader (no driver). I'm told the SD card reader isn't supported either, but haven't tried that.

As for Windows XP, there are instructions out there on how to construct a Windows XP CD using bcd. That should give you a working XP CD as well as the license used to install the system. I haven't tried that though, so YMMV. A recent post on the HP forum regarding nc8430 included a good step-by-step on using bcd.

VMWare is, well VMWare, with all the Fedora related quirks.

 

Thanks for the info.

I had thought of trying out XP on top of Xen 3.0 but HP appears to have disabled the Intel processor VT support in BIOS. See http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1051601.

I plan to experiment with QEMU as well.

I don't have a processor demanding need for XP on top of Linux but I do have a need.

 

does the broadcom wireless card still need to use ndiswrapper? or are there drivers in the kernel for it now?
specifically, i'm looking at the dv6000z

 

maf9339r,
I sure hope they haven't disabled it in the Turion X2s (I had read on the Xen mailing list that they hadn't). I just ordered the dv9000z and bought it with the intent of running Xen HVM. Pacifica (AMD-V) is technically better than Intel's VT since more of the hardware virtualization is done in hardware rather than software (ironic since they are both supposed to be purely hardware solutions ). I'd be one very upset customer if I had bought the CD or C2D and found virtualization disabled. Finally, if you're going to use Qemu, make sure that you use the kqemu driver/module for better performance.
Also, you should be able to install Windows XP inside VMware without any issues. However, the HP recovery disks might refuse to install since they won't be able to detect that it's an HP laptop (in VMware, they'll see VMware hardware and not the real physical hardware). At least that's the case on my Toshiba.

zachtib,
As far as I know the dv6000z will need to use the NDIS wrapper although I'd read somewhere that there are Broadcom drivers that they're working on to run without NDIS.

 

I do not believe I have run across any information suggesting virtualization is turned off in the AMD BIOS. I believe I read otherwise or that it cannot be disabled. However, I've concentrated on Intel VT and my recollection may be off.

 

AMD does not allow OEMs to turn off VT functionality

Read http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1051601

for the status of VT on HP notebooks (short of it is, its coming, eventually)