Fedora suffers from various common hardware issues. Here are the fixes and/or comments.

Wireless

The B43-Wireless ? project works for Broadcom support on Fedora 10. This project is stable

Video

You want to install the proprietary video drivers. The following are some popular drivers and methods:

nvidia

Nvidia is in the rpmfusion repository. Just do this :

 sudo yum -y install kmod-nvidia

ATI

On the Compaq r4000, it would function fine on the generic drivers and would no longer boot when I installed the ATI drivers. I had to add the following kernel parameters to /boot/grub/grub.conf in order to recover the system:

nohz=off
nolapic

Note that you will need to go into runlevel 3, which takes you to the commandline, where you will login as root. That means if you are reading this from the computer, you will need to write down the instructions because it is going away. Goodbye!

 sudo yum -y install kmod-fglrx
 sudo init 3
 Log in as root
 fglrx-config-display enable
 reboot

Power Management

All of my computers will suspend to ram initially, but none of them will recover from suspend. Installing the proprietary nvidia driver fixes the suspend problems with the HP tx1000. I'm still working on the Compaq r4000.

Sound

Microphone

After installation, the microphone only picked up background noise and not real sound. The final fix was to remove pulseaudio. You have to leave pulseaudio-libs for a wide variety of software, and afterwards there doesn't seem to be any negative affects. The mic works great now.

Also, Fedora does not automatically switch to a plugged in mic when you plug it in, nor does it automatically use the in-machine mic if there is no mic plugged in. This is profoundly annoying.

Procedure to Get the Microphone to Work

Open Volume Control by right-clicking on the volume on the toolbar
Go to Edit >> Preferences and make sure the following are all available:
- Front Mic
- ATAPI Mic
- Capture
- Input Source
Make Sure the following controls are set correctly :
- Playback Tab
  - Front Mic is on and not muted
  - ATAPI Mic is on and not Muted
- Recording Tab
  - Capture is on and not muted

Now you'll need to remove pulseaudio

 sudo yum -y remove pulseaudio

Procedure to Easily Switch between a Plugged in Mic (Front Mic) and the built-in Mic (ATAPI Mic)

Open Volume Control
Open the Options Tab
Choose Front Mic or ATAPI Mic

Hardware