This page documents my efforts to get an everyday-usable Linux installation onto a Compaq Evo N1015v. With a little effort, the computer can be made into a very nice, fast linux platform. You must, however, be selective with your distribution, and don't expect the default 'easy' install to do the job for you.

This document is published in the hope that it will be useful to someone. However, it must be stressed that these are only my personal experiences - don't take them as gospel, don't be blase about partitioning the drive, be sensible with your bootloader, and don't blame me if you screw up your laptop!

This laptop is, for the money, a seriously good piece of kit. The build, finish, speed, overall feel of the system, and amount of documentations etc you get with it, all just ooze quality. For around £700 (April 2003) you get the following specifications:

For full specs, go to: http://www.insight.com/uk/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=CPQYA03BCG

PAGE UPDATE:
I no longer have my Compaq Evo N1015V. As such, I can no longer test any patches/fixes that any one suggests, nor can I fairly maintain this page or provide information about new distributions on the laptop. Below is a summary of the information I have been able to compile and test whilst running this page.

I, and the others assisting with this project, have found that there are three current mainstream distributions that work fairly well on the Evo, but they all have little problems.

Mandrake 9.1. All works apart from USB and PCMCIA. The PCMCIA problem appears unsolveable.
SuSE 8.2. All works apart from the graphics drivers. USB works out of the box, as does PCMCIA. However, we have been unable to get the display to run at more than 800x600, which pretty much renders the display unusable.
Red Hat 9. All works bar USB and power monitoring.

The best way of running Linux on the N1015v as of 15th November 2003 is to use Red Hat 9, with a few tweaks. Instructions for installing and getting most things working are shown below.

As far as I can tell, everything works apart from the USB, and I'm fairly confident that this will work with a little effort. Uniquely so far, the PCMCIA slot works 'out of the box', and I can quite happily connect to my
wireless lan using a Netgear MA401 wireless PC card. Also, all the keyboard mappings work - no more dodgy cursors and function keys!

1. Boot from the cdrom, and when you are asked to choose whether you want a graphical or text install, type 'linux nousb' which will boot the kernel without usb support and prevent the kernel panic which we're all so sick of.

2. Install Red Hat as you normally would - if you haven't before then it's a pretty simple process, and doesn't take too long. The partitioner isn't quite as friendly as Mandrake's but works fine.

3. Nothing too special required with hardware, but bear in mind that yet again the ATI driver doesn't work. You will need to select the VESA display type from Generic or Other within the list. You will only be offered a resolution of 800x600 unless you choose a monitor. You should go for generic and then select the flat TFT 1024x768 model. You will now get the graphics you want. When X first loads, you will get a screen of static for a few seconds - don't worry, this clears and leaves you with a perfect image!

4. Finish the install. All done. However, the system still won't boot as the kernel is set up for USB. You need to change the grub settings:

a) Highlight the Red Hat entry and press 'e'
b) Move to the line that starts with 'kernel' and add 'nousb' to the end of it. Press enter to accept the change
c) Press 'b' to boot.

This will boot the first time but you will have the same problem on every boot unless you change the grub configuration in /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the non-usb change.

I am hoping that with the next stable kernel release from Red Hat that the USB problem will be solved.

Until a suitable USB fix is built in to the kernel, you can use the following instructions to get USB working.

The following comes from Ondrej Pacay - Balique from Slovakia - thankyou very much!!!

1) i ve aplied the patch    "patch-2.4.21-pre4"
2)i ve applied the patch   "patch-2.4.21-pre4-ac7"

3) the most important think is when no "noauto" option is used the boot sequence will hung at the detection of USB devices

the cause is: evo 1005/1015 have two main usb contollers, each of them having 2 inputs but in reality there are only 2 usb slots on the back of my evo n1005v. i hope it is the same with n1015v .

the solution is:
in the source file "usb.c" we have to allow to system to try to detect only the first one of those contollers. it is easy , there is a sourcefile "drivers/usb/usb-ohci.c" in that file there is a function (somewhere at line 2593):

ohci_pci_probe (struct pci_dev *dev, const struct pci_device_id *id)

this function is called twice to register two busses. all that we have to do is return just in the begining of this function when it is called for the 2nd time so we write (modify):

static int   mycount = 0;                                      /*this line is new*/
ohci_pci_probe (struct pci_dev *dev, const struct pci_device_id *id)
{
 unsigned long mem_resource, mem_len;
 void *mem_base;
 int status;
 if (mycount == 1) return -ENODEV;                    /* this line is new*/
 mycount++;                                                     /* this line is new */
 if (pci_enable_device(dev) < 0)
  return -ENODEV;

        if (!dev->irq) {
         err("found OHCI device with no IRQ assigned. check BIOS settings!");
  pci_disable_device (dev);
            return -ENODEV;
        }
.... the file continues then as it was....

ok , change this (in fact somebody should make this change automatic and create a patch, if
you have time lets go on.)

4) and then configure the kernel as usual and recompile et voila!

Instructions for applying Radeon drivers, and getting proper power management working, can be obtained from http://tooleweb.homelinux.com/EvoN1015v/

Thank you very much indeed to all of those who have helped with this project.

This page was last updated at 16:25 15th November 2003.

Tom Moore (tom@192dot168.co.uk)