Installing Fedora Core 6 on an HP Pavilion DV9225US laptop.

System specs as purchased

Hardware components	Status under Linux	Notes
HP Pavilion DV9225US		P/N RP122VA#ABA (part of the HP Pavilion DV9000 series). 7.8 lbs
AMD Turion 64 x2, TL-60, 2Ghz. Dual core, x86_64 architecture	Works	recognized correctly as SMP
2GB ram, DDR2, in 2 dimm	Works
Nvidia GeForce Go 7600, 256MB	Works	Works at full resolution out of the box (nvidia binary drivers not required)
2x 512KB L2 cache	Works
Lightscribe 8x DVD+/-R/RW w/ Dual Layer	Works, partially tested	DVD reading OK (unencrypted out of the box, encrypted once additional libraries loaded), rest untested
17" WXGA+, 1440x900	Works	Modes: 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x720, 1440x900, all 60 Hz
56K modem	Untested
10/100/1000 wired ethernet, Nvidia Nforce	Works
802.11 a/b/g wireless ethernet, Broadcom BCM 43xx	Doesn't Work	Couldn't get to work, even after trying to download firmware.
HP Pavilion webcam	Works with driver effort	Made by Microdia, USB ID 0c45:62c0. According to http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html, supported by the V4L2 Linux-UVC driver. FC6 install instructions at https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/linux-uvc-devel/2007-February/001406.html. After following these instructions and running "modprobe uvcvideo", the camera works fine in Ekiga under V4L2.
101 Key compatible keyboard	Works	Media buttons above keyboard do not work
ExpressCard/54 slot, supports ExpressCard/34	Untested
5 in 1 card reader	Partially works	SD card automatically mounted fine. XD card not recognized at all.
4x USB 2.0	Works, with workaround	Works after interrupt problem resolved, see below
15.16"L x 11.65"W x 1.57"H	Works	Wide screen may be too long for some laptop bags
90W		The optional auto/air/ac adaptor has a button to "run laptop only" as opposed to the normal "run laptop and charge battery at the same time" mode, so it's more likely to work in planes and cars. 8 cell Li-ion battery.
Synaptics touchpad	Works	With scroll feature on right side
160GB HD: ST9160821AS, SATA 150, 2.5" 5400RPM	Works	Nvidia Nforce 430/410 SATA controller
Nvidia MCP51 soundcard	Works	OK, sound autodetected by system-config-coundcard, uses snd-hda-intel module. Sound works fine. Using headphones does not disable speakers.
Infrared remote	Partially works	Inserts standard navigation keys fine.

Additional notes:

Fedora Core 6 uses the 2.6.18 and 2.6.19 kernels. It also uses ALSA by default.

Issues

ACPI and lockups

The laptop would lock up approximately 30 seconds after boot each time. After looking at boot options, I turned off ACPI at first (kernel option: "ACPI=off"), which allowed the laptop to boot and run stably indefinitely. It did report "irq7, nobody cared, disabling" in a kernel message (see below); this was the interrupt assigned to ehci_hcd, the USB 2.0 support.

That error message suggested adding "irqpoll" to the kernel command line; I later went back to try that and got the same lockups. Here are the combinations I tried:

No kernel parameters	lockup in ~30 seconds
acpi=off	Stable, "nobody cared" warning, no USB 2.0
acpi=ht	Stable, "nobody cared" warning, no USB 2.0
irqpoll	lockup in ~30 seconds
pci=routeirq	Stable, "nobody cared" warning, no USB 2.0
pci=usepirqmask	Stable, "nobody cared" warning, no USB 2.0
acpi=off irqfixup	Stable, no warning, USB 2.0 good
irqfixup	lockup in ~30 seconds
acpi=ht irqfixup	Stable, no warning, USB 2.0 good

In the end, I stuck with "acpi=ht irqfixup". Since ACPI is mostly disabled, I can't get battery charge information, and can't suspend, but it's better than locking up. The scant references to "irqfixup" imply that it hurts performance a little, but other than that, it seems to work quite well.

Kernel output:

irq 7: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)

Call Trace:
 [] show_trace+0x34/0x47
 [] dump_stack+0x12/0x17
 [] __report_bad_irq+0x30/0x7d
 [] note_interrupt+0x1bd/0x200
 [] handle_edge_irq+0x102/0x134
 [] do_IRQ+0x100/0x151
 [] ret_from_intr+0x0/0xa
 [] default_idle+0x2c/0x4a
 [] cpu_idle+0x8b/0xae
 [] start_kernel+0x240/0x245
 [] _sinittext+0x15a/0x15e

handlers:
[] (usb_hcd_irq+0x0/0x52)
Disabling IRQ #7

Wireless

The Broadcom BCM4310 doesn't seem to be supported under Linux, even by the bcm43xx module and some effort trying to track down the right firmware to download at module load. I'm wired only at the moment, as this has no PCMCIA or cardbus slots.

System details

lspci

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PMU (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev f1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev f1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 UART (rev 01)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce Go 7600] (rev a1)
07:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
07:05.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
07:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
07:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
07:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)

/proc/interrupts

           CPU0       CPU1       
  0:  156669993    7920483    XT-PIC-XT        timer
  1:         56       1364   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
  2:          0          0    XT-PIC-XT        cascade
  5:         34          0   IO-APIC-edge      libata
  7:   49515547  156658454   IO-APIC-edge      ehci_hcd:usb2
  8:          1          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc
 10:          3          0   IO-APIC-edge      eth0
 11:          1          0   IO-APIC-edge      ohci_hcd:usb1, sdhci:slot0, ohci1394, HDA Intel
 12:         97          0   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
 14:         19          0   IO-APIC-edge      ide0
NMI:          0          0 
LOC:  164562831  164565162 
ERR:          0