Arch Linux on the HP Pavilion DM1-3xxx notebook (AMD E-350 “Zacate” based series)

Computer specs

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c02694402&lang=en&cc=us&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=5032670&prodTypeId=321957

Specs will vary, my model is the 3130.

Goal of this tutorial

To quickly setup a functional, lightweight Arch Linux system, optimized for our portable computer.

This guide may evolve during time as I try to improve my Linux experience 🙂

HP DM1 3130 and some Linux distributions

(Sorry this is a messy post!)

 

Update 01/08/2012

Wake On Lan seems to be active by default, and no option in the BIOS to disable it.

This will cause your battery to discharge when the computer if off…

Solution : disable Wake On Lan

Edit your distro’s rc.local and put this line in it :

ethtool -s eth0 wol d

 

Update 08/16/2011 for french readers : Article en français de Carmelo sur le paramétrage d’Ubuntu sur ce netbook : http://c.ingrao.free.fr/blog/?p=450 )

I recently purchased an HP DM1 3130 netbook (AMD Zacate E-350 based) and quickly felt the need to install Linux on it.  (before that I did backup the whole hard disk containing the pre-installed windows 7 and stuff. For this task, I used a Clonezilla Live USB drive to save the whole disk to a Samba share – 32Gb free storage needed!)

Update 22/07/2011 : when using Clonezilla for restoring a disk image, you might encounter problems with GRUB not being properly rebuilt.  I have noticed such problems using the standard Debian-based Clonezilla Live, but found that the “alternate” (Ubuntu-based) version solved the problem!

First, I chose to install Mageia 1 Linux 64 bits, the KDE edition  (Note: the AMD Zacate platform is supported since Linux kernel 2.6.38).

As I don’t have an external DVD drive, I installed Mageia using a PXE boot environment. You’ll need to use the network boot iso, right here.