Linux On dv6137tx

This page is about installing Linux on the HP Pavilion dv6137tx notebook computer. So far, I've experimented with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (v 7.04), Fedora 7 and Gentoo Linux 2006. I will update this page from time to time. This information should be of some use to owners of other HP Pavilions too.

QuickPlay

HP Pavilion notebook computers ship with a feature known as QuickPlay which allows the computer to be used as a music/video player independent of the operating system. For this, a 1GB partition is present by default on the hard disk which stores a basic operating system and the QuickPlay software. If you want to install Linux on your machine, you will have to either repartition your hard drive or remove Windows completely to make space for Linux. As I went for the second option, I had to remove the quickplay partition.

The good news is that if you have made the HP Recovery DVDs, you can always use them to restore your computer to the factory settings, which means you can restore QuickPlay with its boot feature as well. The bad news is that the HP recovery interface doesn't allow manual partitioning, so the only way out if you want to have Windows and Linux on your notebook is to install Windows first, repartition the hard drive and make space for Linux. This might result in some problems and more importantly, it may damage your quickplay partition. QuickPlay can still be used from within Windows as a software program and this does not require a partition to exist on your drive—the partition is only for its boot feature.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

There's not much to write about this, as Ubuntu recognizes almost all the hardware out of the box. I haven't tried using the inbuilt webcam with Ubuntu, but drivers for the Ricoh cam are easily available. If you're interested, you can read a bit I wrote about Ubuntu on the HP Pavilion [here]. The Ubuntu guide is an especially useful resource.

Fedora 7

I use Fedora 7 x86-64 on my notebook. Fedora 7 does not come with out of the box support for the inbuilt wireless adapter (Intel 3945ABG) and the webcam, but I've been able to get them both to work, together with sound (the snd-hda-intel module is installed by default, but the default volume settings need to be changed). Elsewhere on this wiki (click on the linux page tag) I have put together all the information required to get this hardware up and running in Fedora. Some of this information applies equally well to other Linux distros.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License