NOTE: Mandrake 9.2 is working fully functional.

Finally Mandrake 9.2 is RUNNING FULLY FUNCTIONAL IN MY HP pavilion ze4400.


I am currently using Linux Mandrake 9.1 as part of a robotics project for NDSU, as a result of this I was forced to install Linux Mandrake 9.1 in my HP Pavilion ze4420us. I has been using Linux for a couple of years, and if you are probably reading this documentation is for one of these reasons:
- You believe Mandrake 9.1 is the best distro
- You are new into linux and want to install mandrake in your laptop
- Or you probably have no idea what you are doing, specially if you are reading this
Whatever your reason might be, this document is a very usefull and complete guide of what you should do for installing Linux Mandrake 9.1 in the ze4420us.
For this documentation, keep the following in mind. I dont want to use complicate and confusing terms, first of all English is not my native language, second of all any documentation is useless if nobody knows what it might be about. Also, this documentation is a guide for all levels of expertise.

I. Installing Linux Mandrake.

First of all you must have to get the installation discs, there is other ways of installing linux, but CDs are a more generalized way of installing it.
Get them at: http;//www.mandrake.com
Once you got the CD's (Usually 3 CDs). There is something you have to do. For some reason the keyboard may not respond as a result of the detection of the USB port. Therefore it is necesary to deactive the USB support of the BIOS. Configure your BIOS and deactivate Legacy USB support. I guess you know how to this otherwise linux, might not be an option for you.
Once you did that, go ahead jump into the installation, follow the screens and install the packages that you need, BUT BEFORE YOU FINISH YOUR INSTALLATION YOU MUST HAVE TO DISABLE PCMCIA SUPPORT, from the system options there pcmcia support, uncheck the box. The reason behind it is that the PCMCIA module will make your computer hang at the load of linux. Just disable the sucker and it will avoid you a lot of troubles ( Myself i have to go to many forums with answers that were wrong, and nobody knew how to solve this problem, until I went to a newbies forum and somebody sugessted that. Keep that in mind, a lot of people might wanna try to convince you to do something weird that doesnt even make sense to them, keep it simply and understand what you are doing!).
Then you might want to reboot your laptop. After this linux will start very happy. Suddenly you will notice that the fan keeps running and the laptop is getting hotter and noisy. The reason is that the kernel 2.4.21-013mdk that you are currently running does not support acpi very well for the BIOS of this laptop.
At this point you have to make a decision:
- Leave you computer as it is, noisy and warm. I am an electrical engineer and let me tell you a lot of amateurs will scare you about the temperature of the Processor and the life of the processor. This people just read Magazine PC, Microsoft magazines, and such things and suddenly they become experts. If you really want to know about processor go to the datasheet of the processor, you will find accurate information about your processor. All this is just for telling you that despite the noise and heat comming out from your toaster nothing bad will happend. Yes, the life span of the processor might be reduced but when that happend your computer will be obsolete and will not be worth no more than $100 bucks. So you decide if you want to live with this. This is the end of the documentation for this choice.
- Or you decide to recompile your kernel to 2.6.0-test3 and I will show you how deep the rabbit hole is.
It is actually not too deep, because I will tell you generals step to get it work. Caution, there some trade offs that you have to take into account. I will guide you through a system with relatively decent power management, battery management and some other features. But your CD ROM might not work properly when you get at the end of this documentation. My priority right now is my robotics project, I just need a quiet laptop and my black screen for programming in assembly and c. Thats all what i need for now, therefore it is up to you to find how to make it work the CD and USB.

II. Kernel configuration and compilation.

At this point a lot of people will start saying that this is a complicate point, but probably this is for them. Dont be scare, experiment, try and try, read and know what you are doing. Dont let computer amateurs deprive you from the privelege of experimentation and research. Compiling a kernel can be a hard task therefore I put here at your service, the config file that i used for my kernel.
This is what you need(The name of this file description might differ from the name of the files):
2.6.0-test3 kernel
My .config file
acpi module
acpid module
Assuming that you put all this files in you home directory (i.e. /home/user/)
As root,open a console and type the following:
# kfmclient openProfile filemanagement
This will open a file manager window with root privileges. Then do the following, using
the right clic over the linux-2.6.0-test3 file extract it, and copy the directory to the
following path:
/usr/src/
Now go to the console as a root, press crt+c to close the Xwindow, and type the following:

#cp /home/user/myconfig.txt /usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test3/.config

This copy the config file to the kernel directory, dont forget the dot behind the config file in the linux-2.6.0-test3 directory.

#cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test3/
#make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install

This might take a while,take a break.

#make install
#lilo

Thats it, you are ready to have a quiet system. Reboot your computer.
You should not have problems, it might display at the booting some configuration of harware problems, go to the menus in detail otherwise just swing through them.
Once you are in the KDE environment,
install the acpi module and acpid module.

#rpm -i acpi-0.6-5mdk.src.rpm
#rpm -i acpid-1.0.1-3mdk.src.rpm

Reboot your computer, and enjoy the power management!
Some of your hardware or just the CDROM might not work properly, but now it is up to you to solve this problem, because I am busy finishing some assembly code for my robotics project. You can check it out at the following address: http://www.oocities.org/robotech54

UPDATES:
* After the installation check that the LILO file has NOT the following: acpi=ht or acpi=off. If the LILO file has it, delete all the recurrences. Here it how to do it,
#vi /etc/lilo.conf
look for the piece of code, delete it if necesary. Save it, press ":wq" and then reboot.
* Im working with Mandrake 9.2 and linux-2.6.0-test9. CHECK OFTEN THIS PAGE, THE UPDATE IS COMMING SOON.

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