openSUSE 11 on Lenovo 3000 G430

My laptop is Lenovo 3000 G430, i don’t really sure what it’s official name. Sometimes it’s called LENOVO IdeaPad G430 953, 953 is my laptop series. I was using openSUSE 11 and Widows Vista as operating system, and here is the result: on openSUSE 11 everything is fine except for the touchpad, wifi, and dial-up modem (maybe), it is not working. on Windows Vista everything is working, thanks to the drivers on Windows Vista version.

Only openSUSE 11 and Fedora 9-10, linux distros that succesfully installed. Ubuntu 8.04 and Linux Mint was failed on installation process.

I think Lenovo 3000 G430 is very Widows Vista oriented, they only provide drivers for Windows Vista. Even I can’t install Windows XP, it’s raised error message when booting from the installation CD. When i try openSUSE 11 installation CD on other laptop, the touchpad is working, but when i try openSolaris 2008 live CD on my laptop, the touchpad is woking 😀 . I spend many time to get the touchpad works, it’s just keep failed, it’s gave me a headache just to make the touchpad working. Maybe someone can help me? And also my wifi device still not working even after i get instruction from this sites.

Overall, i almost satisfied with the colaboration of Lenovo 3000 G430 and openSUSE 11, many of hardware device isn’t working on Windows Vista if I dont install the driver, but openSUSE 11 has done a good job. Maybe if the touchpad and wifi is working with openSUSE 11, I will be very pleased and can get rid off Windows 😛 . Just sharing my experiences….

Updated 03-08-2009:
Finally WIFI is working using Ndiswrapper, because my wireless PCI device is not supported by Linux at this momment.

My wireless is BCM4310 with device PID is 14e4:4315 as state here it is not supportted 😦 , so i install ndiswrapper using OpenSUSE 1-Click Install. Using Ndiswrapper we need INF file from Windows driver which is bcmwl5.inf , i got it from here and here and here, there is 482.1kb and 727.3kb version, just use the 727.3kb version.

Updated 28-09-2009:
Now i’ve got Ubuntu 9.04 installed. Everything work fine except for touchpad need to press Fn+F8 twice to get it working. Wifi NO NEED Ndiswrapper, but sometimes need to turn on wifi from Windows.

Updated 26-03-2010:
Activate wifi toggle first, if the wifi led is not on that’s mean wifi is off. To get wifi on without switching on from Windows, just type “modprobe ndiswrapper” from console as root. The wifi led should light by now. I think this is the way for wifi device that use ndiswrapper to install the driver.