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GNU/Linux on the Acer TravelMate 290CLi
Image of the laptop

By gammy (gammy at peIGNORETHISCAPITALTEXTan dot org)
Thanks to: David Dawes(video), David O'Rourke(hotkeys), #linux on EFnet
Last updated: Thu Jun 17 04:01:46 CEST 2004

Note: This page has been discontinued, since I have sold this laptop.
However, if you have any info about this laptop worth mentioning here,
please send me an email.


Hardware details:
  • Processor: Mobile Intel Centrino 1.3GHz
  • Chipset: Intel® 855 GM
  • Memory: 256Mb (expandable to 1024Mb)
  • Audio: Intel® 82801DB AC'97 (Rev 03)
  • Video: Intel® 82852/82855 GM/GME 64Mb with TV-Out
  • Display: 15" TFT, 1024x768
  • Network: RealTek RTL8139/810x familty and Intel® PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B PCI Mini adapter
  • Harddrive: 30Gb ATA
  • CD-Rom: QSI CD-RW/DVD Rom
  • Other: 3 USB Ports, One IEEE 1394(firewire), One Type II PC Card Slot, IR, 56k modem, ...


Software details:
  • Shipped with: Windows XP home edition
  • What we'll have: GNU/Linux Slackware


The good news:
  • Video, Audio, NIC(internal and wifi) and other normal stuff is properly supported
The bad news:
  • At the moment, syslinux will NOT boot from this dvd reader. Some people seem to disagree though.


Getting down to business:
    Since syslinux refuses to boot from this dvd reader, and Slackware will not netboot, I cheated and simply put the harddrive into my old HP XE2 laptop and installed Slackware 9.0 as I usually would.
    If you can't get ahold of another laptop or IDE adapter cable, try howls way.
    After normal install I also downloaded and started using kernel 2.4.22(which was the currently latest stable release).


  • Networking
    • The 8139too module works fine.

  • Wireless Networking
    • Yay, properly working internal wifi!
    The new working driver can be found at http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/!

  • Modem
    • Not tested yet.

  • Infra-Red
    • Not tested yet.

  • Firewire
    • Not tested yet(I have no firewire devices!)

  • Video
    • If you're using a later kernel like I am, video drivers are already supported(agpgart, i810,830).
    If you're using an older kernel/XF86, try the modules at http://downloadfinder.intel.com.

  • Audio
    • Works fine with i810_audio and ac97_codec.

  • USB
    • usb-uhci. I'm not sure about 2.0 stuff since I don't have any 2.0 USB devices.

  • PCMCIA
    • Works with the standard stuff. One slight weird thing though. Sometimes, at random,
    the kernel refuses to assign a PCMCIA card with an IRQ address. Rebooting seems to fix the problem for now.

  • Hotkeys
    • Since this laptop only has two hotkeys, "P1" and "P2", I decided to use these for volume control.
    I found a program called xbindkeys which, together with the mixerprogram "rexima" work great.

  • Power-Saving
    • I have recieved a few e-mails about this. I have not looked into this a great deal, but I use ACPI to get battery information.
    I wrote a little shellscript called bp to get the battery data in a format that I liked. You can get it here.


My configuration files:


Links: