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Hardware specifications of the MX3560 (from the Gateway spec page and from Linux system status data):

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.17.

My setup modifies the factory XP Home installation to create a dual boot system with Ubuntu Edgy.

This is not a full howto on installing Ubuntu on this laptop, but it does address the tricky areas I encountered: repartitioning, video configuration, sound configuration, and suspend/resume. Everything else worked as flawlessly as in Windows with no additional tweaking.

1. Repartitioning, preserving the factory XP Home installation, and installing Ubuntu

Boot into Knoppix, resize the XP partition using ntfsresize from the command line, and then partition the new empty space using qtparted. (Don't mess with the recovery partition; Ubuntu will list it as an additional boot option, and I know from experience that recovery works just fine after these procedures. Of course, recovery also wipes your non-Windows partitions.) I partitioned the 80 GB hard drive as follows:

/dev/hda1	Windows XP Home	(NTFS) -- shrunk to 25 GB
/dev/hda2	Windows recovery partition -- unchanged at 4.7 GB
/dev/hda3	[Extended partition]
/dev/hda5	/	(EXT3)	9.7 GB
/dev/hda6	Linux swap partition -- 1 GB
/dev/hda7	/home	(EXT3)	34 GB

The exact values and ordering were constrained by various mysterious opinions held by qtparted.

Installing Ubuntu resulted in a proper rewrite of the /dev/hda MBR, and on reboot the GRUB menu shows options for Ubuntu, Ubuntu maintanence, and Windows XP.

2. Graphics Device / Monitor

In the X configurator (either at install or later via the command "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg"), I used the i810 driver. The generic VESA driver works, but poorly (slow and choppy) and only up to 1024x768. This resolution is unsatisfactory because it stretches everything horizontally. As seen from the Windows side, the ideal resolution for this rather wide screen is 1280x768.

(14 July 2007) Feisty note: I have now installed Feisty from scratch on this computer and I had trouble again with screen resolution. The answer was to install the 915resolution package, a hack of the Intel graphics chip firmware. After restarting X, 1280x768 loaded by default and also appeared in the System/Preferences/Screen Resolution menu. I'm glad that's over.

I cannot find detailed specifications on the LCD monitor. I used the default horizontal/vertical ranges suggested by the configurator: HorizSync 28-64, VertRefresh 43-60. This seems to work fine. Default bit depth was set to 24. I enabled all of the resolution choices, but only the following are provided as options by the Gnome Screen Resolution utility:

1280x768
1024x768
800x600
600x480

Refresh rate: 60

3. Sound Device

Getting the internal speakers to work:

Open the Volume Control Applet on the Panel by right-clicking and selecting Open Volume Control.

With Edit-->Preferences, select all of the tracks to be visible.

On the Switches tab, make sure that both Headphone Jack Sense and External Amplifier are unchecked. (The former setting is the opposite of what you would expect -- this seems to be an alsa-mixer bug.)

Now the speakers should work until headphones are plugged in; then the headphones should work, assuming that the mixer settings enable them.

See this LinuxQuestions thread for a discussion of the same problem.

4. One remaining problem: Suspend/Resume + log in

For reasons unknown, authenticated log-ins after a sleep, hibernation, or even a screen lock will not work. When I enter a password, the dialog rejects it as incorrect. To make sleep and hibernation possible, I have had to remove both xscreensaver and gnome-screensaver. Of course, this also removes password security when returning to the computer after an interruption.

David W. Robinson
dwrob@oneeyedman.net
http://oneeyedman.net