Debian GNU/Linux (Woody) on a HP Omnibook XT 1500

Introduction

In September 2002, I bought a laptop from Hewlett Packard, an Omnibook XT 1500. Since I am mainly using Linux, I wanted to run Debian on it. I had a couple of problems to solve, but now I can use everything I need. A great help for me was the website of Stefan Bellon which inspired me in publishing my experiences on the net. I also recommend you "Linux on laptops" and tuxmobil (formerly mobilix) which give great help in getting Linux running on mobile devices. I will not comment much on how to install Debian, as there are many other good sites on the net which cover this subject. You will mainly find here some information about hardware specific things in combination with Linux. I hope it helps!
Update: Since quite a while I'm using Debian unstable (aka Sid) instead of Woody. Therefore, some of the information here may be outdated.

Specification

Mobile Pentium 4 1200/1700 MHz with SpeedStep Technology
15'' TFT (1024 x 768)
512 MB RAM
ATI Radeon Mobility 7500
30 GB Harddisk (Toshiba)
CD-RW/DVD-ROM (QSI)
USB floppy drive
10/100 Ethernet Card (Realtek 8139)
2 USB ports
1 Firewire port
PCMCIA (1 Slot)
56K modem
Bluetooth

Kernel

At the moment, I am using kernel 2.4.27. Here is my actual configuration. I used the original kernel sources from kernel.org and applied the ACPI patch. Update:The ACPI Patch is no longer needed because it is included in the plain vanilla kernel.

X11

This was one of my great problems, as the default X Server version (4.1) from Woody doesn't support my graphic card. So first I had to run it with the VESA Drivers. After I updated to Debian testing (Sarge) and with this to XFree 4.2, I was able to use it with the radeon drivers. Here you find my configuration file for the X Server. If you want to use it, be sure that you adapt to your display to prevent you from hardware damages. I still have a problem with 3D hardware acceleration. If I enable 'Load "dri"' in the section "Module", I get a crash when switching to a virtual console and then back to the X Server. So, if you find a solution to this problem, I would be very happy if you inform me. I didn't yet try the TV Out, so I can not say anything about it. Update: This is no longer a problem (it was solved after an X11 update in Debian unstable quite a time ago).

Sound

There is an Intel AC97 sound chip on the mainbord which is perfectly supported by the kernel's OSS driver. So I had no reason to test it with ALSA.

Network

The Realtek card works without problems with the kernel driver 8139.too. If you compile it as a module, be sure to add it to your /etc/modules.conf. For more informations, see Stefan Bellon's Homepage.

USB

USB support is no problem. You just have to compile USB support and support for the USB devices which you want to use into the kernel and to install a hotplug agent. I use murasaki, but hotplug should also work without problems.
To use the USB floppy drive which is delivered with the laptop, be sure to have USB Mass Storage support, SCSI and SCSI emulation in your kernel. You need SCSI, because the USB Mass Storage driver uses it to give you a drive as /dev/sda. In my /etc/fstab I have the line

/dev/sda /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0

I can mount the drive with mount /floppy.

CD-RW/DVD-ROM

The CD drive works without problems with CD-ROM's. If you want to use it for writing CD's, you have to compile SCSI and SCSI emulation into your kernel. Be sure to deactivate "IDE CD-ROM support". You then can use the drive as /dev/scd0. If you want to have the drive available at boot time (and I'm sure you want that :-)), you have to pass the option "hdc=ide-scsi" to the kernel. I added this to my /etc/grub/menu.lst. See the Linux CD writing How-To for more information.

Modem

I didn't check the modem because I don't use it.

PCMCIA

I once put a 3Com Ehernet card into the slot and the cardmanager showed the correct informations. So there's no reason to believe that it doesn't work. Just be sure to have PCMCIA support in your kernel. You also can use the CS (Card Services) which you can get with "apt-get pcmcia-cs" (if you use Debian, of course). Update: Since September 2003 I've got a wireless network card from Netgear (MA401). Had no problem with this one, works just fine.

Firewire/IEEE 1394

I didn't test the port, because I don't have any Firewire devices. But I'm planning to buy an external harddisk, so perhaps I then can say something about it.

Power Management (APM / ACPI)

See Stefan Bellon's homepage for information to this section. He has also written a little script for the acpid which works good for me.

Omnibook kernel module

There is a project on sourceforge which has written a kernel module with some Omnibook specific support. With it, you can get information about your laptop out of the /proc/omnibook directory. It also supports an "APM emulation" which is very useful, if you want to use a tool which looks into /proc/apm for getting informations about battery charging.

Stefan Bellon's XT1000 page

Last Update

2006/01/25 Removed the link to Ulrich Poeschl's website as it seems to be not available anymore.
2005/02/17 I'm working on a new stylesheet for my website. If you don't like the default, you can switch to the clean (white) alternative.
2004/10/01 Fixed some typos, written some update stuff.

	Dominik Meister (neptoon@gmail.com)
Site layout inspired by Stefan Bellon	Home