hp dv2000z

alright so Ive got an HP dv2000z thats dual booting windows and gentoo right now. Before gentoo I had ubuntu. Both of these OSs were set up for me by people who new alot more about linux then I do, Im close to a complete newbie.

I liked ubuntu alot but I had problems getting the wireless card to work, whenever I tried to get it to connect it would freeze 99% of the time. my friend then put gentoo on there, but its too much for me, getting anything to work takes me atleast an hour or so (for instance my hardware clock is going nuts, and I cant fix it), and I liked ubuntus plug and play capabilities for things like an iPod. So Im looking for any recommendations on a OS that is fully compatable with the dv2000z with little to no tweaking to get it up and running right (media buttons, wireless, etc.) Anyone have experiece, or friends with experience on this machine? Thanks.

 

Ubuntu is about as good as it gets right now in terms of things working out of the box. Is your clock running too fast? I bet you're getting errors about it in dmesg. If so this can be fixed in the kernel. I had the same problem with a turion (if this is what's wrong). Unfortunately if you can't find a distro that has this problem taken into consideration by default you will need to recompile your kernel.

If ubuntu didn't work for you maybe try out fedora or opensuse. Hopefully they behave better on your machine.

 

There is a relatively new distro out (which means that it might be a little bumpy at first) called DreamLinux. This distro claims to be fairly multimedia oriented, so things like your ipod should be very much plug and play.

I actually just downloaded and was fairly impressed with how easy Dreamlinux was to install. Unfortunately I am trying to get the wireless setup as it was not automatically done. This should be a simple matter of downloading a driver and installing it though.

The only Distros that have detected wireless automatically for me are Ubuntu 6.06LTS and Elive. Check them out at www.Distrowatch.com

 

RefinedPower, did you try ubunto 6.06LTS and Elive on a dv2000z, and are you trying DreamLinux on a dv2000z? Apparently broadcom isnt very linux friendly and it takes some tweaking to get the wireless card to work, which is fine, I just want it to work easily with an adjustable GUI once the tweaking part is done.

When I put Ubuntu on my computer, I actually installed Kubuntu on top of it, and I think there might have possibly been two things trying to control the wireless which then led to my computer crashing anytime wireless came into play =/

 

I honestly have not tried the forenamed distros on a dv2000z, but downloading and burning the ISO for them is not difficult so give them a try. Also I was just looking around and read that Sabayon comes with Wireless support. They have a minicd ISO which will fit, as the name implies on a CD were as the regular Sabayon is a 3.5 gig DVD affair. Sabayon is a derivative of Gentoo but from what I have read its a little easier to use. I am going to be giving it a try so well see how it goes

Like I said though, download a few Distros and see how they work, either that or find a forum that has tutorials on setting up the broadcom card.

Hear are a few sight to check out for starts:
http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/downloaddrivers.php
http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_broadcom
http://www.opendrivers.com/categorycompany/1113/11031/network-broadcom-free-driver-download.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=61198

The broadcom seem to work fine with ndiswraper though this guide is for the 64but version
http://starbase-12.blogspot.com/2006/09/compaq-presario-v3000-with-ubuntu-606.html

Also try searching www.linuxquestions.org with the model number of your wireless card