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Running CrunchBang Linux 10 "Statler" on HP mini 1000

I was a big Ubuntu fan until they decided to use Unity in netbook remix and moved windows border icons to the left. I then switched to LinuxMint, it was alright but I'm a Chrome user and I hate the fact that they won't let you remove firefox (the package manager forces you to install "abrowser", which is still firefox but with brand removed).

Now CrunchBang Linux is my new favorite Linux distro. I hesitated before puting it on my HP mini 1000 netbook because the latest version "Statler" is based on debian, which is famous for being "Pure Open Source" and hence lack of proprietary drivers. However, I was totally wrong, nearly all hardware worked out of the box for me except for the usual wireless driver, network port and bluetooth.

Wireless

To be fair the b43 driver did work but it was fairly unstable and disconnects randomly. The solution turns out is pretty simple, all you have to do is to enter:

options b43 pio=1 qos=0

in the following file:

/etc/modprobe.d/b43.conf

and reboot.

Bluetooth

My cheap bluetooth dongle was detected but there were no software installed to interact with it. Therefore, I installed blueman by:

sudo apt-get install blueman

and add blueman-applet to the end of autostart.sh:

## Launch blueman applet
(sleep 4s && blueman-applet) &

Ethernet

Finally, the ethernet port has got the same problem as Ubuntu where the cable needed to be plugged before the system was booted up and it will freeze the system if you unplug it. To get network working properly you need to open up /etc/default/grub, find the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"

add option acpi_os_name=Linux

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_os_name=Linux"

save the file and then run

sudo update-grub

reboot your laptop and the ethernet port should work properly now.

Comments

  1. Oscar, thanks for putting this together. It sorted out my only remaining issues. Well done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I use a mini 1000 for work all day, plugging and unplugging ethernet over and over. I am slowly working back towards my pre-hard drive failure state of xubuntu with a sub-minute boot time into chrome, and this is the biggest hitch so far.

    Does the ethernet fix you mentioned work for ubuntu as well, and does it correlate to the occasion crash when unplugging ethernet?

    Thanks in advance...

    ReplyDelete
  3. hey, thanks for the bluetooth tip. I was trying that with gnome-bluetooth,and have some missing dependencies. for blueman, didn,t know the sintax. now it,s all fine.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just installed crunchbang on my hp mini and was having the wifi dropping and even dns requests stopped working. After I did that fix I haven't had any issues so I just wanted to say thanks.

    ReplyDelete

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