Fedora 11 on HP Pavillion tx1000 - works magically :)

Well, one more edition of Fedora and i had lots to look forward to. With every Fedora release things have been better & smoother. So i was eager to see how much better thing have gotten better. I still remember the first Fedora install on my HP Pavilliion tx1000, a Fedora Core 7 install. Installation itself was a pain, with the install DVD not even booting normally. Once the bare minimum install was done, i struggled to get the features(audio, wireless, video accel. etc.) up and running. Things slowly got better with the next 3 editions of better. And i hoped that the Fedora 11 experience would be even better. Apart from a couple of minor problems, Fedora 11 has been a great experience altogether.

1. Basic Install: I downloaded a DVD using the jigdo downloader and the install was pain free. Even though Fedora 11 provides the option of EXT4 based partitions, i stuck to EXT3 based ones, partly because of the peculiar requirement that the / partition cannot be EXT4 as GRUB still can't understand EXT4. So, if you want a EXT4 based root partition, the solution is to have a separate /boot partition of approx. 100MB. But i stuck to the good old EXT3 itself.
Once Fedora 11 booted, i started checking each feature.

2. Audio: Well, Pulse Audio just works for me. But i did notice some glitches in the audio when switching b/w applications.

3. Display: Was fine, but again their was some latency when switching windows. I decided to install the NVIDIA proprietary driver module. For this i used an excellent application that does all the hard work for me. You can download this application called AUTOTEN from here. Just select the NVIDIA drivers checkbox and it's done. Voila !! The display can not get any more snappier. This gives you all the muscle power you need for the jazzy Desktop effects. Just go ahead and install stuff like compiz now incase you want some bling.

4. Wireless: Well just use AUTOTEN again. It just works. And the Network Manager does a great job at managing your n/w connections.

5. Touchpad: That's been the only piece of hardware that's given me some problem on Fedora 11. The Vertical Scroll was not working properly and the scrolling was area was somewhat displaced to the extreme right of the Touchpad. I fixed the problem as follows:
(a) Generate your Xorg.conf with the following commands.

#yum install system-config-display
#system-config-display --reconfig

Now you have the xorg.conf in /etc/X11.
(b) Edit the xorg.conf sections

In section "ServerLayout" add the follwoing line
InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"

And make an altogether new entry for the touchpad
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
Option "RightEdge" "5000"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection

The "RightEdge" param is the fix for the Touchpad problem, defining the boundary of the Right Edge.

6. Codecs: Installed all the codecs(both audio and video) by following instructions from here.

7. Suspend-Resume: JUST WORKS !!! :) :) ..Yes, i can't stop smiling as this feature has never worked for me prior to Fedora 11. I haven't tried hibernation though, because i don't have a swap partition.

With fedora 11 other problems like the cursor freeze have also vanished for me.

So, all in all - Fedora 11 Rocks !!

UPDATE: TX 1000 has a 64 bit AMDTurion processor. So, i upgraded to the Fedora 64 bit edition. Well, it's just as good as the 32 bit edition. The installation issues were the same trivial ones as that of 32 bit. So, sorted them out in a jiffy. The only difference i noticed was the battery life. The battery life for the 64 bit Fedora isn't as good as the 32 bit's. Wondering if it's due to the h/w or s/w...