Acer Travelmate 5720:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (64-bit compatible)
Card reader: 5 in 1 card reader
Display Type: 15.4" TFT
Max Resolution: 1280 x 800 ( WXGA )
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon X2500 HyperMemory up to 1GB
Audio Output: Sound card
Integrated Crystal Eye Webcam


+ Fedora 8

My installation went fine, however the first noticeable problem after installing is the screen resolution is set to 800x600 or 1024x768. So first thing to do is to install the graphics drivers for the ATI X2500, however as there are no official linux drivers for this (because ATI are being a weird about that :/) as far as i know there are 3 ways to do this which are listed in the link below.

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Fedora_8_Installation_Guide

The one which worked best for me was the 3rd option, the official drivers however as X2500 is not listed use the X1600 driver and this seems to work. (however I guess that some functions of the graphics card may not work because its using drivers for an older card?)

Once you have installed the drivers for this you might like to get compiz-fusion up and running which should not with your newly installed drivers however some things may not be working in this (for example the widget layer) to fix this check this thread for how I did it.

http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=7305&highlight=widget+F9

At this point I started to realize my laptop was getting a little hotter than usual, this is because my heat sensors were not detected and my fans were not running due to this. To fix this:

become root
su -
then type
sensors-detect

it will ask you if it can load some stuff, read through this and once your done reboot then type
sensors
to check what temp your running at.

Once this is all done as far as I can tell everything else seems to be working, I have yet to check my card reader and will update if I find its not working when I try.

Labels: 5720, acer, fedora 8, howto, linux, travelmate, travelmate 5720, tutorial, Ubuntu