Got a new laptop, my old acer's screen died after a couple of months of backpacking (including leaving the laptop under my tent at metal festivals, in my backpack at the front of 75000 crowd mosh pot etc) and rigorous work, i must say, they are pretty good value considering it supplies me with my yearly income, socialising, projects, hobbies etc.

The aspire 5520 is far too big to stuff into your backpack, but the specs are just great, it's like having a real PC again - a REAL video card for a change, the Nvidia GeForce 7000m, windows vista (which did not even get booted, overridden with linux straight away, but in hindsight i should have run the updates for the DVD drive's firmware with windows first), AMD Turion 64x2, 1.8ghz, 15.4 screen

Getting Running

Video was installed via nvidia's installation site but i had to upgrade to 2.6.24 and get all the headers for that kernel too before their driver recompiled its modules correctly, interesting that it did not work for me with 2.6.22 ?
And then I got flashing working under 64bit and i was very happy, yes i was :)

Linux nine 2.6.24-1-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Mar 27 16:52:38 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Sound - worked out of the box even the scrolly volume wheel trigged a cute KDE app

Network - worked out of the box except for the wifi which i just cannot get working with ndiswrapper

Atheros Communications, Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter

ive tried ndiswrapper with the windows .inf driver for this, no error from ndiswrapper but i get

ath5k_pci 0000:05:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
ath5k phy0: failed to wakeup the MAC Chip
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:05:00.0 disabled
ath5k_pci: probe of 0000:05:00.0 failed with error -5

So aah i dunno

DVD burner - worked out of the box but seems to stop in k3b at 50% when burning?

heres my `lspci` output

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP67 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 ISA Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP67 SMBus (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0541 (rev a2)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0543 (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a2)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP67 IDE Controller (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0561 (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP67 AHCI Controller (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 7000M (rev a2) (rev a2)
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
01:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
01:04.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
01:04.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
01:04.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

and /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 104
model name      : AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-58
stepping        : 1
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cache size      : 512 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 2
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch
bogomips        : 1601.83
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 104
model name      : AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-58
stepping        : 1
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cache size      : 512 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 1
cpu cores       : 2
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch
bogomips        : 1601.83
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

update: hibernate now appears to work for this in 2.6.25 !! also NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.09-pkg2.run appears to function just fine for the GeForce 7000M under x.org

Also, 2.6.25 seems to have recognised the built in webcam

Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38456.679375] usb 2-2: USB disconnect, address 12
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38457.059396] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 8
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38457.171393] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 14
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38461.626920] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38461.627485] usb 3-3: New USB device found, idVendor=064e, idProduct=a101
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38461.627489] usb 3-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=3
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38461.627492] usb 3-3: Product: Acer CrystalEye webcam
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38461.627495] usb 3-3: Manufacturer: SuYin
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38461.627497] usb 3-3: SerialNumber: CN0314-OV03-VA-R02.00.00
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38462.170433] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 13
Jul 30 09:43:54 nine kernel: [38462.419829] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

I got this webcam (acer crystaleye) to work with the linux-uvc package which i had to compile and insert as a module

still no resolution on the wireless card, i really hate atheros :(