ASUS M50V

The Asus M50V is a laptop manufactured by Asus in 2009. It features an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 along with 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard disk, and an NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS with 1GB of VRAM.

This article describes the hardware on the M50V and the drivers required to use it.

General Configuration
TODO

Hard Disks and DVD Drives
The hard disk controller should work with the standard AHCI driver:

Make sure that AHCI support is compiled into the kernel, and not as a module, or the kernel may fail to boot.

The DVD drive may lock up spinning a disc upon insertion due to bad firmware. A firmware update exists, but the install tool is made for Windows, so it may be a good idea to install the update first if coming from a Windows environment. Note that installing this update may void the warranty. See this bug for more details.

Memory Card Reader
The memory card reader should work fine with the standard driver:

Video Chipset
The video chipset is an NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS, which has full support for 2D/3D acceleration, CUDA, and OpenCL with the proprietary drivers. At the time of this writing, the open source drivers provide 2D acceleration and partial 3D support. See NVIDIA for details on video card support and driver selection.

Input Devices
The keyboard support for X11 is provided by evdev. Touchpad support is provided through synaptics.

The media buttons on the touchpad are not supported, but normal touchpad and scrollwheel functionality works perfectly.

Ethernet
Networking is provided by a Realtek 8168B Gigabit Ethernet device.

802.11 Wifi
Wifi is provided by an Atheros AR928X wifi adapter:

Sound
The audio hardware is supported by the Intel HD Audio drivers:

USB
USB support is provided by the standard drivers:

Firewire
The Firewire port should work fine with the standard driver:

At the time of this writing, the author has not tested Firewire.

Bluetooth
TODO

Webcam
The built-in webcam is a is supported through V4L with USB2.0 UVC:

Fingerprint Reader
The fingerprint reader should be supported through USB and libfprint. See Fingerprint Reader.

ASUS Extras
TODO