Linux notebooks by Hewlett-Packard
alan
alan at clueserver.org
Tue Aug 23 01:08:25 UTC 2005
On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Marc M wrote:
> >
> > >>Nah, that's just old distros for you.
> >
> > >When I first put RH7.3 onto my first laptop, I needed to recompile the
> > kernel for my NIC and soundcard - it's just one of those PITA things.
> > Needless to say that when RH9 came along, everything was picked up. It
> > now sits with FC2 on (it's at the sister in laws) and has everything
> > working.
>
>
> That's understandable - the hardware aged enough until the distro supported
> it more fully and easier. I make sure the software is much newer than the
> hardware - then I am ok. And it depends greatly on what you are trying to
> run. I keep seeing more and more fancy ads for laptops especially, and every
> time I think "what are the odds that I could actually get EVERY part of the
> system to work"? I have seen more posts to the effect of 'I can get
> everything but (fill in the blank) to work'. I know what you mean - the
> modern distros are MILES ahead of where they used to be! But then again
> there are always new features, chipsets, wireless features, etc. added. I
> would hope that they all have support right out of the box. But I don't have
> enough faith in HP to throw unbridled (and largely unearned) brand loyalty
> their way. That may change one day for me if enough company propaganda, I
> mean marketing, comes my way. Debian might be a differrent story - I hear
> that there is a greater range of hardware supported right out of the box. I
> have yet to test that theory at this point.
I would think that Debian would support less as they will not support
"proprietary" drivers. SuSE would be my second choice.
I have an HP zv5200. It is an INCREDIBLE laptop, but no longer made.
(The zv6000 series "dumbed down" a few of the features. Especially the
ones I bought it for.)
It is am AMD64 3700+ with a gig of ram and a 1920x1200 display driven by
an nVIDIA 440go video chipset. It has a SLOW hard drive, but that is usual
for laptops.
There were a few challenges. I have FC4 on it now. I have run FC2 & 3,
as well as SuSE 10.0 beta 1 on it. (For those that are interested, SuSE
10.0 beta 1 is pretty broken. Wait for beta 2 or later.)
Under Fedora I had to hack it a video mode for the 1920x1200 resolution.
SuSE has it by default. (As well as a bunch of other modes.)
SuSE recognised the WinModem, but Fedora did not. (Never use it anyways.)
Nothing I have tried will see the Broadcom wireless chipset or the memory
card adaptor.
Cardbus adaptors are only seen with a kernel patch. (PCMCIA works with a
change to the exclude memory region option.)
Bluetooth worked fine. (Now all I need is another bluetooth device.)
The touchpad works with a grub kernel line option. (SuSE detects this
touchpad and makes it work correctly without having to hack anything.)
I can't think of anything else I have had to hack to make it work.
--
Q: Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas?
A: Because OCT 31 == DEC 25.
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