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Installing Fedora Core 3 on Compaq Presario R3000Z (v1.0)
Last modified: Monday March 23, 2026

I'm trying to get as much working as possible as quickly as possible. Your continued feedback below would be greatly appreciated.

The Compaq Presario R3000Z is a low priced but fairly high performance laptop. It was available in many different configurations by special order only, so you could basically pick and choose your options to some degree. The configuration I chose was as follows.

I've also starting working on my Fedora Core 3 Tips & Tricks.

Hardware Summary

Fedora Core 3 & 4 Compatibility

Preparing for the install

The Compaq R3000Z comes pre-installed with Windows XP which I shank using Partition Magic 7.0 to a much smaller size. I'm told that Knoppix can be booted on such a system and then you can use the ntfsresize  program to shrink the NTFS file system. I just recommend you do that BEFORE booting the laptop for the first time as it doesn't work well with even a slightly fragmented filesystem.

Install Fedora Core 3 & 4

The basic concepts behind using this laptop on Fedora Core 3 and 4 are mostly the same. Both are based on a Linux version 2.6 series kernel so the issues are going to usually be identical

You should be able to install Fedora normally on this laptop. Just make sure you choose the a configuration with the development environment. You won't be able to rebuild the kernel below without it. When prompted for monitor type choose "Generic Laptop Display Panel 1024x768". Otherwise install it as you like. The trackpad does not work in the installer by default so you'll have to struggle along using the keyboard or use an external USB mouse. To make the trackpad work you can add the following to the kernel boot line: 

i8042.nomux

Enable ALPS Touchpad as a PS/2 Mouse

I was finally shown the secret to making the mouse work without re-compiling the kernel. Once you have the kernel installed add the same line mentioned above to your /etc/grub.onf  configuration file. Here is an example I use. Your kernel version may be different depending on which version of the kernel you're currently using. 
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.678_FC3)
        root (hd0,1)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.678_FC3 ro root=LABEL=/ quiet i8042.nomux
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.678_FC3.img
You will notice I've also disabled rhgb . This is because if the NVIDIA drivers aren't properly installed for whatever kernel you're booting the boot process will hang shortly after rhgb fails to start. Until you have the NVIDIA drivers installed I recommend you just leave off that option. Also make sure that option is always there after you've upgraded the kernel.

Configuring the video

 If you go to the NVIDIA website you will find a Version 6629 or even newer version of the drivers. That version has been nothing but trouble with a 2.6.9 based kernel, which is what Fedora Core 3 ships with. The previous version works but won't install on a 2.6.9 kernel without hacking.

Fortunately there is a modified version of the Version 6111 driver that will install successfully on a 2.6.9 based kernel. You can download it from here: http://ngc891.blogdns.net/kernel/patches/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-jp1.tar.bz2. Just extract it and run the installer as root to install: 

# gtar xjvf NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-jp1.tar.bz2
# cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-jp1
# ./nvidia-installer
Follow the prompts and it should install cleanly.

If you are running kernel version 2.6.10 (and presumably newer) you can use the NVIDIA driver Version 6629 but you need to add the following line to the bottom of /etc/modprobe.conf : 

options nvidia NVreg_Mobile=0

With Fedora Core 4 (and probably 3 as well) and newer versions of the NVIDIA driver you should use the following line instead to make sure screen blanking works correctly 

options nvidia NVreg_Mobile=1 NVreg_SoftEDIDs=1

Once you have the driver installed you'll need a different xorg.conf  if you are using a WXGA 1280x800 resolution display like I am. No guarantees this is perfect but this xorg.conf.r3000z works if you have the 1280x800 WXGA display. Just copy it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and restart your X server. For some reason the display gets corrupted if you enable power management to turn off the LCD backlight after a certain amount of idle time. The workaround isn't too bad. When that happens hit CTRL-ALT-F1, wait a few seconds, then hit ALT-F7 and the display should come back. If anyone has any ideas how to fix this please let me know.

Another thing that's odd is that usually the nvidia  module won't automatically load for some reason. The workaround to make it work is to run the following to get the nvidia  driver to load properly: 

# modprobe nvidia
# cp -a /dev/nvidia* /etc/udev/devices
# chown root.root /etc/udev/devices/nvidia*

Configuring the Wifi

 This laptop includes 802.11b/g support through a Broadcom BCM4306 chipset. Unforunately there is no open source driver yet available for this chipset so until there is one available you have to use the ndiswrapper available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ which is version 1.5 at the time of this writing then grab a copy of the Windows driver for this chipset. I have a copy of the driver I'm using successfully available at here bcmwl5a.tar.gz. Now with all this in place you can build and install the driver as root as follows: 
# gtar xzvf ndiswrapper-1.5.tar.gz
# cd ndiswrapper-1.5
# make install
# cd ..
# gtar xzvf bcmwl5a.tar.gz
# cd bcmwl5a
# ndiswrapper -i *.inf
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# dmesg | tail
	.
	.
wlan0: vendor: ''
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:90:4b:97:e2:c8 using driver bcmwl5a, 14E4:4320.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA; AES/CCMP with WPA
# ndiswrapper -m
Do this last step only after everything is working

There you go, you now have a device called wlan0 that you can configure just like any other wireless device. Remember that any time you install a new kernel you'll need to go back to the ndiswrapper source code directory and do the following make clean install ; modprobe ndiswrapper to get it to work with the new kernel. It's a pain, I know.

Configuring the modem

TBD

Other Odds and Ends

 CPU Frequency Scaling does work on this laptop and just needs to be configured. Just edit /etc/cpuspeed.conf and make sure the following line is in there: 
DRIVER=powernow-k8
This will cause the correct module for this processor to be loaded automatically when the cpuspeed service starts up. Then you can make sure it's actually working: 
# service cpuspeed restart
# dmesg | grep powernow
powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09e)
powernow-k8:    0 : fid 0x8 (1600 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV)
powernow-k8:    1 : fid 0x0 (800 MHz), vid 0x18 (950 mV)

Glitches/Problems

There are a few things that don't work (yet):

If you have any leads on getting any more features working please drop me a line.

Other Useful Resources

I used the following websites describing getting this or similar laptops to work with various versions of Linux in the process of getting this laptop to run Fedora Core 3. None of them had all the answers in one place however.
Running Fedora Core on a Compaq Presario R3004 - This was the closest guide but it covered the Athlon 64 which has some other minor issues.

Installing Debian-AMD64 GNU/Linux on a Compaq Presario R3000 Laptop - Another good site, help me get wireless working quickly and easily.

Compaq Presario R3120US (R3000Z series), Linux (Slackware 9.1), XFree86 4.3.0 - Yet another site with some more low level details, obviously needed since he's running Slackware. Good info.

R3000 / z5000 Forums - A site with discussions groups containing a while variety of information about this line of Compaq laptops. Lots of good hardware hacking info here.