Around the time the switch was made, I was a fairly eager gamer and also wanted something that could tackle Funcom’s latest project; Age of Conan. Of  course I didn’t expect my purchase to run the game at the highest possible settings, but I was confident it would deliver the performance I sought. And it does. I do not regret my choice one second, however, I’ve grown tired of gaming and that basically means the M50Sa sports a fairly higher specification than I currently need. My lack of interest in games also meant this was a good time to toss out the bundled Windows Vista and replace it with a good Linux distribution. Now, I don’t consider myself a Linux savvy person. Although I’ve made the switch from Windows several times and feel confident in my knowledge of the basics, I still wanted an easy to use distribution with as little need for extra configuration as possible. A couple of days before I decided to give Linux another shot, an article at the Norwegian technology site Hardware.no saw the light of day. It praised Mandriva for its ease of use, claiming it surpassed even Ubuntu in that particular area. With this at the back of my head, the choice was made. Besides, I’ve always been a sucker for KDE (and their fourth major release looked too slick to ignore with the new Plasma interface).

I’m not going to dig deep into the basic installation procedure of Mandriva since it’s pretty self-explanatory and straight-forward, but there’s a couple of things I had to prepare and decide before making the step onto the Linux platform I’d like to mention. Earlier in the article I might have seemed pretty determined to get rid of Windows all together, but I wasn’t. Even though my lust for games had been dampened, the possibility of it returning was always there. I’m completely aware that Linux has matured a lot as a platform for games and often Windows based games can be played through different solutions like Wine or Cedega, however, I couldn’t rid the idea that such games ultimately performs better on their native operating system. A dual boot system became the solution.

Partitioning

Depending on how you’ve already partitioned your hard drive, just use the values that fit your system and needs, the best. From before I had something not too far from this:

• 7 GB for partition for Asus rescue
• 80 GB for Windows Vista (I know it’s huge. When I got the notebook it was twice the size and Windows’ built-in solution wouldn’t allow me to make it any smaller)
• 233 GB for junk

Using Paragon Partition Manager I resized the largest partition to allow 35 GB for Mandriva, making the unpartitioned space available right after the Windows partition to get Linux as early in the partition table as possible. That basically left me with:

• 7 GB for Asus rescue
• 80 GB for Windows Vista
• 7 GB mounted for /
• 4,5 GB swap
• 23,5 mounted for /home
• Remaining space for junk

I allowed myself to be pretty generous since there’s 320 GB available to divide. On a side note, the quite greedy Windows Vista has taken hold of 45 GB of the 80 I left for it. The reason I used software from Paragon was that all my partitions were NTFS and I’ve had good results with resizing such partitions earlier with said program. The mounting and dividing of unpartitioned space was done early during the Mandriva installation. When partitioning, take a note of which device is the one holding your Windows installation (if you’re planning on running a dual boot system). Later when setting up GRUB (the boot loader), you’ll need to know this or else you’ll risk telling GRUB to boot the wrong partition.

Selecting installation medium

I wound up with installing from the Mandriva i586 Live CD for various reasons. One of the decisive factors was the ability seeing it running properly on my computer before even having it installed. Being a Live CD means it will boot the operating system from the CD and have it up and running without ever touching your hard drive. In addition, the CD is three to four times as small as the other options (not counting the mini-discs) and it contained proprietary drivers for the graphics adapter. Although the open-source drivers are great, the closed nature of the proprietary ones, allow them to squeeze just a little bit more performance out of the card.

Note that by using the Live CD, you will lose 64 bit support.

Post-installation

As mentioned earlier, I won’t be doing the core installation step-by-step, or the basic post-installation options. Set up your system the way you like it, though make sure you set a strong password for the root account.

There are, however, a couple of things not as easy to figure out. One of the first things I noticed was the two thirds of my memory not being there. Apparently, Mandriva Linux doesn’t ship with a kernel that supports amounts over 1 GB. The less easy way to fix this is to download the kernel headers of the one you’re running, fix what’s necessary, compile it and make the rest of the changes so your system boots the newly compiled one. This also allows you to disable support for hardware you don’t have, making your system use less memory. The second option, and what I did, is to use Rpmdrake and download and install a precompiled kernel. Either use the Rpmdrake GUI or go by the terminal:

urpmi kernel-laptop-latest

This package also includes asus-laptop needed for ACPI events and different shortcut keys on the M50Sa, and the installation edits all necessary files.

What I also discovered after installing, and perhaps when I ran the Live CD to test also, was how dark my screen seemed. This is because of the light sensor. It’ physically situated to the left of the hard drive LED, and if you cover it, you should notice the LCD panel getting slightly darker. You fix this by turning it off as root:

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/asus-laptop/ls_switch

You can also have it enabled and adjust the light sensor level like this:

echo INT > /sys/devices/platform/asus-laptop/ls_level

Replace INT with a value between 0 and 10. Any higher than 10 and you’ll get an uncomfortably bright screen. If you can’t find the paths mentioned above, make sure Asus Laptop Extras are enabled in the kernel and running properly. Run:

 modinfo asus-laptop

as root. You should get an output similar to:

[root@localhost ~]# modinfo asus-laptop

filename:       /lib/modules/2.6.24.5-laptop-2mnb/kernel/drivers/misc/asus-laptop.ko.gz

license:        GPL

description:    Asus Laptop Support

author:         Julien Lerouge, Karol Kozimor, Corentin Chary

alias:          acpi*:ATK0100:*

depends:        led-class

vermagic:       2.6.24.5-laptop-2mnb SMP mod_unload 686

parm:           wapf:WAPF value (uint)

If not, double check it by browsing to the directory holding your kernel source (usually /usr/src/linux-*) and type

make menuconfig

Browse to Device drivers/Misc devices and enable Asus Laptop Extras, either as a module (M) or compiled into the kernel (*).

The problem when setting values for ls_switch and ls_level is that they are only saved for the current session, meaning each time you reboot, you’ll have to set your desired values again. Either create a small script that runs everytime you start, or use an already created piece of software to do this. The script doesn’t have to be more than:

#!/bin/sh

 echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/asus-laptop/ls_switch

Remember to make it executable:

chmod +x filename

Personally, I wound up with Lapsus. This nifty little kicker applet is able to save your settings, as well as it contains a number of other features pretty handy with Asus models. Note that currently it doesn’t run well, if at all, with KDE 4. I was able to compile it under KDE 4, but since it’s made for a 3-series kicker, its uses are limited.

Closing comments

What surprised me when installing Mandriva was how good the hardware was functioning straight after installing. Although I haven’t got all features up and running as of now, I’m very pleased with what I’ve got. Earlier in this post I mentioned I was drooling for KDE 4, however, I wound up with KDE 3.5.9. I think KDE’s latest major needs to mature a bit before really replacing earlier versions.

I would also recommend reading Paul Weiss’ blogpost concerning Asus M50Sv on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy. It’s basically the same laptop, though with a graphics adapter from Nvidia, and most of what he writes applies to Mandriva as well.

Enjoy your new Linux system, and don’t be afraid to ask questions regarding the installation itself or the notebook.