Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) on the HP Compaq NX6325

Ubuntu Hardy is a mixed experience on the HP NX6325. On the one hand, there are many improvements in general, but also some NX6325-specific regressions, compared to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) on the NX6325.

I. WLan

Wlan works (sort of…) after you downloaded and installed the WLan driver via the System Administration - Hardware Driver menu entry.

If you experience problems when trying to connect to a Hot-Spot althiugh the blue WLan indicator is on, you might need to clean and re-install the WLan driver. It is an easy and quick solution, as you can see yourself here.

In order to get a more stable connection, force your Hot-Spot / router into the 11 MBit / 802.11b mode. Reason obviously seem to be a missing feature (collission handling) in the new B43 driver.

II. Hibernation

Hibernation works - with 2 limitations:

First, the screen stays darkened after resume, even while on AC, just as if you were on batterie. Solution: Either switch to one of the virtual console windows with i.e. CTRL-ALT-F2 and then back to the desktop with CTRL-ALT-F7 or follow the suggestion in /etc/default/acpi-support and uncomment the following entry:

# Uncomment the next line to switch away from X and back again after resume.
# This is needed for some hardware, but should be unnecessary on most.
DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true

III. Backlight / brightness dimming

Adjusting the brightness is working with the open-source ATI driver that comes with the standard install. This driver however lacks full 3D acceleration support on the NX6325 (570 frames per second with glxgears). The proprietary fglrx driver from the repositories even in its latest incarnation provided by Envy is fully supporting 3D (1900 fps with glxgears) but does not support the brightness function keys

IV. Headphones

Plugin in headphones does not mute the speakers anymore. That can be embarrassing when you sit in a train, believing that you will not disturb anybody while listening music with your headphones and wondering why people stare like mad at you

UPDATE: This issue got fix with one of the recent updates - I can not reproduce this problem anmore, speakers are turned off when headphones are plugged in.

If you still experience problems, drop me a message here or have a look at this or this thread in Launchpad.

V.Other issues???

Do you have other issues with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron specific to the HP NX6325? If so, please drop me some lines.