HP Pavilion dv6-2190us Entertainment Notebook PC

I recently got the opportunity to test installations of

- Fedora 13,
- openSUSE 11.3 (RC2), and
- Ubuntu 10.04

on an HP Pavillion dv6-2190us Entertainment Notebook PC. A brief summary of some hardware specifications follows:

- BIOS : F.17
- CPU : Intel Core i7-720QM processor 1.60GHz with Turbo Boost Technology
- RAM : 4GB DDR3 System Memory
- Video : Nvidia GeForce GT 230M
- Network : Realtek RTL8111/8168B
- Wireless : Broadcom 4347

Overall, the laptop was easy to install and use with these Linux distributions.

The volume control/mute and wireless enable/disable worked. The function keys for suspend, lock, brightness control and DVD controls for play/pause/stop/reverse/forward also behaved properly. Both the touchpad and the webcam worked as expected, as did the external video (VGA/HDMI), digital SD media reader, and USB ports. A run through the Ubuntu checkbox (System -> Administration -> System Testing) was rather uneventful as most everything tested worked. Further detailed, specific Linux related information can be found via the collected/contributed SMOLT entry

Of note were the following issues (and possible workarounds):

- restricted (or third party drivers) are needed for the wireless
- if 3D acceleration, or Desktop effects are desired, the restricted, the nVidia vendor driver is required, although even the nouveau driver rendered the same resolution (1366x768)
- a workaround for speaker versus headphone operation may be needed
- the www function key launched the nautilus file browser, while the "?" (FnF1) and the neighboring function FnF2 key had no obvious effect