HP Presario CQ70 running Kubuntu 8.10

I got myself a new notebook after my almost 8 year old workstation stopped working.
The CQ70 came with Vista preinstalled. Of course I wanted to load Kubuntu on it, but at home I found out that the WLAN chip wasn't from Intel but from Atheros. Hmm what to do... ?
I insterted a Kubuntu 8.10 Live-CD to see what was working and what not. The WLAN chip was detected, but no wireless access was possible. Sound and graphics (nVidia) are working however, so I decided to go forward. The Live-CD did resize and partion the harddisk and installed Kubuntu. Everything went very smooth. I got it running in almost 1 hour with everything installed. But what to do with WLAN? Well there is a new MadWifi HAL layer available, and following the instructions from here it was really no different or more difficult than using the Intel WLAN chips... One thing - at least for me - was not well documented. The kernel modules compiled from the Madwifi source should be automatically loaded upon startup. Because of that, here come the two commands which will do just that:

~$ echo ath_pci | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
~$ echo wlan_scan_sta | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Now you even have WLAN access right after starting your computer ;-)

Other specs of the notebook:

• 17" Screen with 1440x900 pixel
• nVidia Geforce 9200M GS
• Intel Dual Core T3200 @ 2GHz
• 250GB SATA Harddisk - 5400 Rpm
  
• 3 GB RAM
• Atheros WLAN AR5007
• HDMI Video port
• Webcam
• DVD double layer burner with lightscribe

I do not have any problems with the notebook. Sound, webcam, WLAN is all working well.