The laptop works perfectly with Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit.

The same model number sometimes has different processors and RAM configuration, so the one I have has
1. An Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2Ghz processor.
2. 1GB of RAM
and is straight from HP.

Connectivity:

1. Wireless - It worked right off the bat. All I had to do was select the network and enter my WEP key. Very simple, and really nice. Intel 3945 PRO Wireless.
2. Bluetooth: Bluetooth worked perfectly and pairing/bonding works straight off. However you’ll have to install the gnome-vfs-obexftp package to be able to transfer files by obexftp. I hope this is fixed in the next release. You can find the bug here: 131530. Until then, open a terminal and type in:
   sudo aptitude install gnome-vfs-obexftp
3. Ethernet: Broadcom card, works perfectly out of the box.
4. Firewire: I don’t have a firewire device, but they’re rumoured to be compatible.
5. USB: All ports work.
6. Modem: I no longer have a dialup line so I can’t test this. However the modem is recognised.

Input:

1. Touchpad: It’s a Synaptics touchpad and works perfectly. You can even enable a horizontal scroll option even though the touchpad doesn’t have such a place marked. I like to turn off tap-to-click. It’s annoying while typing.
2. Keyboard and buttons: All the buttons work perfectly including the volume controls and the bluetooth/wireless button. Power button brings up the ‘Shut down, Restart,…’ screen by default.

Display:

1. Graphics work well. 1280×800 out of the box. Desktop Effects work perfectly (except for Blur - which you shouldn’t turn on. It nearly freezes the desktop, supposedly a bug in the Intel driver. The driver itself isn’t great but it works just fine unless you want to play something like Spring). There is one bug, there are 2 or 3 flashes before GDM hits the right resolution and starts up. I’m not sure how to fix this but I don’t think it’s hurting the monitor.
2. Dual monitors are still a pain. If I remember right they were easier to set up on the 32-bit version of Gutsy and that makes no sense. Anyway, if you boot up with another monitor connected it will be recognised and your laptop screen will be set to that monitor’s resolution and one will mirror the other. In this setting you can use Desktop Effects. It’s a lot of trouble getting the two monitors to be separate screens and I don’t think you can get Direct Rendering then, so Compiz is out of the question.
3. If you use the Fast User Switcher tool to switch users, or if you switch users any other way, the second user will not have hardware acceleration. If you have Compiz enabled you’ll get a grey screen or a white screen. Some people have suggested increasing the VideoRAM through an xorg.conf setting but it hasn’t worked for me at all. I believe it’s a limitation of the Intel driver.
4. The dimming-when-off-battery works, and you can also set the brightness using the Fn key and the brightness keys, but I think that’s a hardware setting anyway.

Processor:

1. CPU scaling works. If you want to scale the cpu yourself (instead of letting the computer automatically shift) you will need to reconfigure the CPU scaling applet for the Gnome Panel to be root.
2. The CPU allows Virtualisation, but you will have to enable it in the BIOS. Hit F8 while the boot screen with HP logo is showing and then go to the advanced settings (I forget what they’re called, it’s one of the right most menu items) and enable VT or virtualisation technology or whatever it’s called in your firmware version.

Sound:

1. Output works fine, I don’t have a mic or headphones to test though I suppose they’d be fine.

Power-saving:

1. As above, frequency scaling works just fine.
2. Suspend works perfectly.
3. Hibernate works but it’s slow, take around 20-30 seconds to return from hibernate. It also displays a lot of text (errors?) before hibernating, but restores just fine.

It worked nice and neat out of the box. But then, this laptop has always worked fine with Ubuntu (and probably with other distros too)

LiveCD:

The LiveCD works flawlessly and you can even turn on desktop effects (an older Compiz) to get fancy transparencies and fading. There will be slight tearing on windows if you move them around too much. The video resolution will default to 1280×800, higher resolutions will be enabled by default in the next version of Ubuntu.

Installation:

Installation is straightforward and all the drivers necessary are already included on the Ubuntu CD. There is only Restricted Driver needed, for the Intel PRO 3945 Wireless Card. All other hardware is recognised out of the box. After installation you might want to change the names of the other partitions in grub or you might end up trying to boot your recovery partition when getting into windows.

Usage:

Touchpad:

The touchpad works fine and scroll and click work without any problem. For further configuration you might want to install the gsynaptics package. There is a bug where switching users will cause the touchpad to stop working for the new user. To work around this, either Lock Screen on the first user before switching users (use the Switch User… button in the locked screen dialog) or switch back to the first user and then back again to the new user using Ctrl+Alt+F7 and Ctrl+Alt+F9.

Desktop Effects:

The default effects are nice, but not nearly nice enough and there isn’t a nice application to manage all the settings. Besides, on this computer Compiz doesn’t work as well as Compiz Fusion does, though Compiz Fusion does sometimes fail to start. Compiz Fusion also works better and there is no tearing of windows or slight redrawing that happens sometimes. However, if you’re prepared to wait till October, you might as well do that, because Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon will use Compiz Fusion instead. However, if you do want to go ahead, follow this simple HowTo and then at the end, also install the emerald package.

To make Compiz Fusion run automatically, add it to your Sessions list (System » Preferences » Sessions). Here’s an image of how to add the two programs. Now that Compiz starts as soon as the session begins you can no longer log on to this user on anything but the first display since X.org only provides direct rendering on the first display. Also, since Compiz Fusion is still in development and not stable, it may crash as soon as you logon to the session. In this case, just Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and login again.

If that doesn’t solve the problem and you can’t login to your GUI, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to reach a virtual terminal, login there and then execute killall compiz followed by killall compiz.real Now login and disable Compiz in your Sessions manager.

Bluetooth:

To make Bluetooth much easier to use install the bluez-gnome package.

That’s about it. Enjoy.