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This guide is being developed on a Debian 64bit Unstable system. It should, with some small adaptations, also provide relevant information for any Pavilion in the dv6500 and dv9000 series.

Sound Card

Sound should work when version 1.0.15 of ALSA is used. The mute button on the keyboard will glow red if the proper drivers have not been loaded, blue otherwise.

Video Card

This particular model uses a mobile Nvidia card with dedicated memory. Configuration instructions can be found in NvidiaGraphicsDrivers.

Wireless NIC

This laptop comes with an Intel Wireless 4965. see iwlwifi configuration page.

Multimedia Keys

The 'new and elegant' way to process multimedia keys seems to currently utilize the Hardware Extraction Layer, hald. Unfortunately, Debian's current version of HAL doesn't include information on dv6500 models.

 aptitude install hal hal-info wget
 wget http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=hal-info.git;a=blob_plain;f=fdi/information/10freedesktop/30-keymap-hp.fdi
 sudo cp ./30-keymap-hp.fdi /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop
 /etc/init.d/hald restart

This should properly bind your extra keys to the appropriate functionality.

You now need to configure the X Server to handle the kayboard by the 'evdev' driver, nto the okdskill 'kbd' one. The appropriate section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf should look something like this:

You can adjust the Identifer and Device directives if you want (hint: less /proc/devices/bus/input)

If using GNOME or KDE, you need to configure them to handle the keyboard using 'evdev'. In KDE this setting can be found in *Control Center->Peripherals->Regional->Keyboard Layout*

Remote Control

The buttons on the included remote seem to simulate keyboard buttons. As long as the laptop buttons are configured correctly, this device should work perfectly.

Power Management

Currently, the 's2ram' command works but you have to pass it the '-f' parameter. If you do not, the program complains about not detecting compatible hardware. Invoking 's2disk' works fine for me, out of the box.

5-in-1 Memory Card Reader

Driver support was included in the standard Debian kernel. This works perfectly with ?SecureMedia Cards but didn't detect my Sony memory stick.

Touchpad

This laptop uses a Synaptics Touchpad. To configure, see SynapticsTouchpad.

Soft Modem

I have not attempted to configure or test this functionality.

ExpressCard

I do not have any appropriate cards so am unable to confirm whether this works.

FingerPrint Scanner

I have not attempted to configure or test this functionality.

Integrated Webcam

Use ModuleAssistant to install the 'linux-uvc-source' package (linux-uvc stands for Linux USB Video Class). For the impatient, run:

DVD Support for Lightscribe Discs

While regular DVD/CD burning should work out of the box, this laptop also supports the ability to produce custom images onto specially purchased media. The required drivers are proprietary and can be found at Lightscribe's official site. Note that, while .debs are provided, the software is 32-bit only. I have not tested this functionality.

References

Technical Specifications at hp.com