Compaq/HP 8710W Laptop running Ubuntu Linux

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This short post is to answer a question potential Compaq/HP 8710W owners may be asking. Just in case it’s useful to anyone who may be wondering if they can run Ubuntu on a Compaq/HP 8710W laptop, I can tell them that you can.

I’m running the Intrepid 8.10 release on one of these and I have all the hardware I use running ‘out of the box’. The only thing I can think of which doesn’t work is the Finger Print reader which isn’t a great loss, although I’ve no use for the firewire and modem so I haven’t tried to get them running.

The display uses the Nvidia driver and runs at 1680 x 1050 and if you like that sort of thing all the 3D effects will run if enabled.

The wireless network runs on a G class network, but I haven’t got it to connect to an N class network

I’m running the standard Ubuntu version rather than the Kubuntu KDE version because the KDE release on 8.10 changed to kde4 and I find I just can’t get on with it so I’ve changed to Gnome (actually there are kde 3.5.9 binaries available here I just haven’t bothered to set them up).

All in all it was simple to set up and I found it quite trouble free and painless to run.

Specs.

This is a 17inch dual core laptop, with DVD Writer, NVidia Quatro FX 1600M graphics, Intel 4965 Wireless Network and a full size keyboard with separate numerical keypad. The full lspci output is :

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:03.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965 MEI Controller (rev 0c)
00:03.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965 PT IDER Controller (rev 0c)
00:03.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965 KT Controller (rev 0c)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HBM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Quadro FX 1600M (rev a1)
02:06.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b9)
02:06.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b9)
02:06.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 03)
02:06.3 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 20)
02:06.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev ff)
02:06.5 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 10)
02:06.6 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 10)
10:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)

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3 thoughts on “Compaq/HP 8710W Laptop running Ubuntu Linux

  1. Well I do not agree that wireless is working ok. If you can check it out and report that issue with RFKill switch is fixed… afraid that it is not..

  2. Well obviously there seem to be some issues with the wireless network. However I've not experienced any problems and the kill switch works fine on my example – perhaps there are different build states to these laptops. It would indicate however that some caution needs to be exercised if you are thinking of getting one.

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