In general this build should work perfectly on Acer laptops, Acer Aspire One netbook, IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads and HP laptops. I didn’t tested the kernel on HP laptop, but it was tested already on Acer Aspire One and Lenovo T61. One issue which you may find in this kernel is that it might not work usplash on some Ubuntu releases. If you have some issue when using this kernel please drop me a comment, it is possible that some parts where left out even if in the tests everything worked fine.

Instructions:

First download the kernel image and headers:

wget http://dl.robertalks.com/kernel/2.6.30-flyleaf/linux-image-2.6.30-flyleaf_1_i386.deb
wget http://dl.robertalks.com/kernel/2.6.30-flyleaf/linux-headers-2.6.30-flyleaf_1_i386.deb

Now we need to install them:

sudo dpkg – i linux-image-2.6.30-flyleaf_1_i386.deb linux-headers-2.6.30-flyleaf_1_i386.deb

when asked what to do with this new kernel image please select “Install new kernel image“.

NOTE: This is intended for Debian/Ubuntu systems, as its a deb package.

I have tested before openSUSE and always there was issues with it or problems, as you wish. I was thinking after some time this problems where fixed and now this new version 11.1 should work without too many issues, but I was wrong. On openSUSE, as weird this might sound, the Atheros wifi adapter worked out of the box, but the Broadcom didn’t work at all, even when I downloaded some drivers and with b43-fwcutter added it to /lib/firmware. Besides this screwed up thing, well more a vice-versa problem between Ubuntu and openSUSE, the rest seemed to work… well not really. It took me 4 reboots to be able to install from the LiveCD. The first time it worked, but openSUSE didn’t format the disks… and there where some left overs from Ubuntu. Then I tried again, but the stupid HAL was mounting my disks and the installer was crashing all the time. After 4-5 tries, HAL stopped doing that and then somehow I did install openSUSE.

After the succesfull installation, I tried to update the system using Yast -> Online Update, which at the beginning totally stopped my networks… meaning it shutdown the network adapters (wifi + lan) and of course the update failed. I started the network myself and then started the update and it worked… kind of. When I finally updated the system, 3 reboots and 2 network shutdowns, I wanted to enable the desktop effects, which worked like the Atheros wifi adapter, out of the box… but it did totally frees my laptop when I was using Ring Switcher, which even now I don’t get why.

Overall openSUSE is the worst of any OS that I have ever tests. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a total specialist in the Linux area or in the general OS area, but I do know some stuff and I can handle my Linux, lets say. But the distro is shit, besides this issue which I have explain upper, there where much more, like the icons on the desktop just disappeared and so on. I don’t know what the developer from openSUSE or Novell are doing, but whatever it is, its just wrong and not worth the trouble.

In conclusion, if you are thinking of moving from Windows to openSUSe or from Ubuntu or other distro to openSUSE, just don’t. Stick with the rest of the stuff or just go with small distro’s like LinuxMint, PCLinuxOS, SimplyMEPIS or the big ones like Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu. It will save you a lot of time and headaches, also they are more stable then openSUSE will ever be.

Cheers!