Installing Debian on the Asus F3Ka

The Install

Started with standard Debian 4.0 amd64 (Etch) disks and install.
I compiled my own kernel from the start, most of the setup instructions should work with a stock Debian kernel
My 2.3.23 kernel config

Should work out of the box:

ethernet
sata
usb
firewire

Wireless

Chipset is an Atheros AR5007EG

This chipset requires the development versions of the madwifi drivers with a patch to work. Details
Driver snapshot + patch tarball

The driver uses a newer version of the Wireless tools API, so you may want to install the newer wireless tools from testing, there are backported versions available at the Backports Repo
wireles-tools
libiw29

Copy the driver tarball to a dir, I used /usr/src/wireless-drivers
cd to the dir with the tarball and tar -xzvf madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz
cd into the madwifi dir and compile the driver
- make
- make install
Load the module with: modprobe ath_pci

If all went to plan, iwconfig should list your wireless interface as ath.

You can either use the X.org ati driver for 2D video or if you want/need 3D support you will need the propietary ATI drivers.

Some docs for installing this driver
ATI Support page
Guide to installing the drivers the Debian way

Quick and dirty install from the above Debian installation guide (all as root)

apt-get install module-assistant build-essential fakeroot dh-make debconf bzip2
Grab the driver from the above ATI support page
run ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-x86.x86_64.run --extract fglrx
cd fglrx
./packages/Debian/ati-packager.sh --buildpkg etch
cd ..
dpkg -i fglrx-driver_8.42.3-1_amd64.deb fglrx-driver-dev_8.42.3-1_amd64.deb fglrx-kernel-src_8.42.3-1_amd64.deb fglrx-amdcccle_8.42.3-1_amd64.deb
module-assistant prepare
module-assistant update
module-assistant a-i fglrx
aticonfig --initial

At this point the module should have been installed, lsmod | grep fglrx will verify that. If it didn't install check the logs, a common error is having a module already using the framebuffer, make sure to disable any other video drivers, sometimes a reboot helps here.

Sound

apt-get install alsa alsa-utils
alsaconf
Choose the HDA module

Cpu Frequency Scaling

apt-get install powernowd

Suspend/Hibernate

Should work out of the box, allthough I've had issues with resuming and the fglrx drivers

Test with 'echo mem > /sys/power/state', (as root )should suspend to ram.

You can also install the gnome-power-manager to map the power button/lid close to what you want

apt-get install gnome-power-manager
Edit /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf
At the bottom of the file you will see a block with SystemPowerManagement, change user= to your user so you can suspend/hibernate as a user

Make sure apcid isn't installed as it will steal the power button and lid events