HP DV2-1030US with Ubuntu 8.10
The HP DV2 is a lightweight (3.8 pounds), fairly low-cost 12″ laptop with a great keyboard, a sharp screen, and plenty of ports (VGA, HDMI, 3xUSB, Ethernet). Its main limitations are a fairly short battery life (2.5h) and a CPU that is somewhat slower than Intel Core Duo machines. The machine also comes bundled with a USB-based DVD burner.
The Windows Vista installation that shipped on the machine didn’t work properly.
Ubuntu 8.10, on the other hand, works correctly out of the box:
- audio: OK
- WiFi: OK
- video: OK
- suspend: OK
- CPU frequency scaling: OK
- built-in camera: OK
- accelerated video: OK (selecting ATI driver under Ubuntu)
I haven’t tested Ethernet, Bluetooth, or external displays yet.
Pre-release versions of the Ubuntu 9.04 installer do not boot properly, but that will hopefully be fixed by the time 9.04 is released.
Additional comments after using the machine for about 10 days:
- the wired Ethernet is working properly
- projectors on the external VGA connector are not recognized
- CPU frequency scaling is not working reliably after wakeup
- very occasionally, after waking up from sleep, the disk drive does not respond anymore
- the machine doesn’t have an internal Bluetooth
There is a BIOS update available; I will give that a try and see whether it fixes some of these problems. Except for the external VGA, these are quite minor for me.
Additional comments (4/30/09):
- booting 9.04 from USB sticks and CD-ROM is apparently possible by using debug=mount during boot and unplugging & replugging the boot device
- I upgraded the 8.10 installation to 9.04 and the upgrade worked without problems
- external VGA works after booting with a monitor plugged in; it continues to work after suspend and can be configured via ATI’s tool (automatically included in 9.04); I don’t know yet whether, after being configured, it works even when booting without an external monitor and then later plugging in the monitor
