HP Pavilion zd7000 & zv5000z series

[Megatron X]

Hey I would like to know if the HP Pavilion zd7000 & zv5000z series work with Linux and are any good?
I want to use it for music mainly (Final Scratch, Terminator X, etc.).
Of course I will be customizing it and also wanted to know if the 802.11b Wireless LAN, 54g(TM) Integrated Broadcom 802.11b/g Wireless LAN, & 54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth work in Linux?

Thank you.

[JohnT]

Plug each name into http://google.com/linux and observe the results.

[Megatron X]

I need help.
I just received my HP Pavilion zv5000 today and I'm having problems with the screen when I log out of KDE. The screen starts to go loco...like scramble type.
I can't even install the nVIDIA drivers since the screen goes loco.

My screen is a 15" LCD widescreen and using SuSE 9.1 Pro 64.

Please Please help me? :(

Thank you.

[JohnT]

If you could be more descriptive, possibly, than "loco" it might be a place to start from. I've already been to loco and you cant get here from there. :D

[Megatron X]

Originally posted by JohnT
If you could be more descriptive, possibly, than "loco" it might be a place to start from. I've already been to loco and you cant get here from there. :D
Well after logging out to either shutdown, restart, or console mode (Ctrl + F2) the screen is VERY jumpy crazy (kind of hard to describe). I also have a nVIDIA GeForce 4 440MX Go 64MB in case.

[JohnT]

Have you checked the help files ...locally
http://justlinux.com/nhf/X_Window

[Megatron X]

Originally posted by JohnT
Have you checked the help files ...locally
http://justlinux.com/nhf/X_Window

No actually I didn't. Thank you. I will try it tomorrow when I come back from work. I hope and pray that it works.

Thank you. :D

[JohnT]

A step at a time. :D

[Megatron X]

There is this message that I get when I boot up in Linux. Something about the X & Y axis not configured for the LCD monitor. :confused:

Has anyone had this problem?
No I haven't searched yet, but will do so later.

[pezplaya]

lol, this is good. I was researching this today since I was about to order one tonight. I found a sweet link on gentoo forums. Check this out:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=95994

That guy wrote a how-to get this laptop setup. :)

[Megatron X]

Well I kind of fixed the problem. All I had to do was install the nVIDIA driver (AMD64 ver.) and all went well. I couldn't install it because of the screen jumping like crazy, but I did it in my terminal and all went well.

Thank you for your help.

[timothykaine]

Ive found that SuSE takes VERY well to HP products. Ive had a few HP laptops and a couple desktops and SuSE is the only RPM distro that worked with all hardware on all of them. (even crapmodems!)

Slack worked on all too, but for a quick and easy laptop distro that you dont wanna screw around with, just get your stuff done on the go, SuSE takes the cake.

[paj12]

Glad you got everything working. I've been looking into getting a zv5000z (and running SuSE on it) and you're post kind of scared me when I first saw it. Good to know it wasn't anything serious.

Megatron X:
Other than the thing with the video driver, how do you like the laptop so far?

[Megatron X]

Originally posted by paj12
Glad you got everything working. I've been looking into getting a zv5000z (and running SuSE on it) and you're post kind of scared me when I first saw it. Good to know it wasn't anything serious.

Megatron X:
Other than the thing with the video driver, how do you like the laptop so far?

I like it. :D The only thing I hate is the touch pad, but everything is cool.
I haven't tried out the wireless stuff yet. I guess I have to add some stuff to the kernel to make use of the volume buttons on my laptop and others.

Other then that I like the laptop.

[paj12]

Originally posted by Megatron X
I like it. :D The only thing I hate is the touch pad, but everything is cool.
I haven't tried out the wireless stuff yet. I guess I have to add some stuff to the kernel to make use of the volume buttons on my laptop and others.

Other then that I like the laptop.
Great to hear. Yeah, touchpads are a pain in the a**. If I got one, I'd definitely get a mouse and keep it in the case.

As for the wireless, I think you can get it up and running with ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers. Testing it might be tougher, though. I can't think of any hotspots around here except the airport, and that's hell and gone from where I live.

[AgelmarJagad]

I bought a hp pavilion zv5260us a couple of weeks ago, and I think that is identical to the laptop in consideration in most aspects.

I have tried half a dozen different linux distros on the laptop, and have managed to get everything but the Broadcom wireless card working.

A couple of things that may help anyone struggling with this laptop:

First, I have found that it is the nv driver that causes the regular consoles to stop functioning when X is started. If you use the nvidia driver it will taint your kernel with non-GPL software, but you will actually be able to use the console after you after you have started X.

Second, you can get the touchpad working by appending 'i8024.nomux' to your kernel boot arguments. I have found that the IMPS/2 protocol works best for your X config file.

Finally, I have not yet found a way to get the Broadcom wireless card to work. I have installed ndiswrapper, loaded the windows driver, loaded the module, have the kernel compiled correctly, and can even see wlan0 in iwconifg. Using the command 'iwlist wlan0 scan' turns up nothing, even though I have configured everything else correctly. I think I have narrowed down the problem to the toggle switch on the laptop that is used to turn on/off wireless. It works fine with WinXP, but in linux pressing the button doesn't turn it on.

That is because, as far as I have been able to determine, that switch is software based and needs specific drivers. There is a project on sourceforge (http://rfswitch.sourceforge.net/) that develops drivers for these software based switches, but they have not yet released one for the switch on the hp zv5000 series. I'm afraid that there really isn't anything out there yet that can get wireless working on this series of laptops yet.

[zevin]

I have a zv5000 custom with the broadcom card. i just put in the hp drivers disc, copied the inf and sys files from the cd to ubuntu, built ndiswrapper, did a make deb, and i was up and running.

I still can't get my nvidia drivers to work though. have tried the mobile=0 and such, with no luck. i just get a white/tan screen when X starts.