Acer 8104 and Linux...

Hi everyone,

I bought my 8104 last week, and so far I'm extremely pleased with it. The only problem I'm having thus far is getting Linux to play nice with it. I installed FC3 and got the wireless working properly, but I'm having a hell of a time getting the resolution above 800x600. I've been working in the xorg.conf file, but the best I've managed to do is cripple X.
If anyone out there has gotta a distro up and running (any distro..) please let me know how you got it configured properly!
Thanks in advance!

--------------- UPDATE -----------------

For anyone who might eventually read this:
Finally got it working... sort of.
Steps:
- Booted into run level 3 (typed 'a' during grub loading, added '3' to the end of the kernel parameters).
- installed ati binary rpm, (rpm -ivh --force filename.rpm) ran fglrxconfig to make a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
- editted the new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:
-> replaced "AUTO, AUTO" on the MonitorLayout line with "LVDS, AUTO"
-> added "ChipID 0x5D57" in the "Device" section right after the "Driver "fglrx"" line.
-> added "1600x1050" as the first element in my "Modes" line in the "Screen" section... if you're not sure what I'm talking about, it should be around line 510 in the file generated by fglrxconfig if you stuck mainly with the defaults.

Those changes allowed me to at least start X (by typing "startx" at the command prompt, for fellow neophytes). However, I seem to have a syncing problem now. When X starts up, everything seems to get duplicated horizontally on alternating lines... it's hard to explain. In the morning, I'll try to update my system, and I'll see if that helps.... urg.

Again... don't be shy if you know what I'm doing wrong

I was starting to wonder if ANYONE was going to reply

I'm actually heading into final exams right now, so I probably won't be able to do much more research until I head back home to Montreal. Right now, I haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with my display. I don't know the term for what I'm seeing.. maybe "tearing"? If I can get a pic that shows it off, I'll post a link.
I don't think it's a H/W issue, as my everything works fine in Windows and with the default xorg.conf. However, as soon as I use the ati drivers, I get the artifacting I mentioned at all resolutions.
I'm trying to synthesize whatever I can find online, and it seems that some people have gotten Ubuntu onto their 8104's, with no mention of what I've seen. When I have time, I might give that a try, so I can at least narrow down the scope of the problem.
At the moment, I'm not really sure where the problem lies, there are a number of things I suspect (not that I have any real experience with this stuff).
Primarily, in the "Device" section of the xorg.conf file, I needed to use ChipID 5D57, which is actually the id of the PCIE x800, as there's no current id assigned to the mobility x700. If someone has an idea of how I can test this wild guess.. please speak up!
Anyways... back to studying for me!

Hi TrancerSteve. Well, you might just be lucky. I finally gave up on FC3 earlier today when I took a break from studying (don't tell my University... Waterloo would probably just work me harder if they knew I had free time!).
I quickly got a copy of Ubuntu and burned it to a cd, ran the installer, and within an hour I had Ubuntu installed and working. I had to send in "acpi=off" and "noacpi" as boot parameters (you can add them too /boot/grub/menu.lst if you prefer) to be able to boot up properly, but after that things went smoothly.
Right now I'm having some problems with my usbkey, and I dunno if wireless will work because I haven't had the chance to try it on campus.
Overall, it's been far easier with Ubuntu than with FC3, and there seems to be more people out there who've gotten Ubuntu running on the Acer 8104 than any other distro from what I've seen.
When I have a chance to tinker around some more, I'll try to update, but right now, it looks like Ubuntu is what's going to stay on my 8104.

Hey,
I installed Ubuntu on the 8104 and (after dealing with the initial acpi problem) it booted up by default into the native rez of 1680x1050, no poking or prodding needed.
I was just happy to get it into the right res, but there are some issues that remain.
Namely: acpi is still screwy (but there seem to be fixes out there), wireless needs some work (haven't had the chance to tackle this yet, still got four finals left this week). USB is defective, but I'm sure I can figure that out once I have time to work on it.
So.. you can see that trying to get Linux to install on the 8104 isn't a walk in the park, but it's certainly been nicer with Ubuntu. Also, regarding wireless: I was able to get wireless working in FC3 using the intel drivers, so I'm hoping that the same kinda thing will work in Ubuntu... to be revealed at a later date.

Just to update briefly:
I have two finals left... I'll be back home by Friday and will hopefully have time to work on it then.

glaswynn,
In gentoo, is the wireless workable, and do usbkeys work?
I'm not spending much time dealing with the videocard right now because I use my linux partition mainly for development work. My priority is getting usb/wireless working, but so far I've made little progress.
usb was briefly working the other day when I removed the ehci-hcd module, but since then I haven't been able to reproduce it. I haven't had any progress with wireless.. none whatsoever.
This is starting to get frustrating...
It seems like some people have had success getting the wireless/usb to work with some acpi patch that's floating about, but I don't know how to update the kernel to 2.6.12 in Ubuntu and don't know how to apply the patch that people are referring to... any of you guys have any good resources/tutorials that may steer me in the right direction?