How about the support of FC for laptop?

[Scot L. Harris]

On Sun, 2004-10-31 at 12:16, Park Lee wrote:
> Hi,
> Would you please tell me How about the support of Fedora Core for
> notebook PC(aka laptop)? and what kinds of notebook PC can be
> supported by Fedora Core (such as FC2, FC3) ?
>  
> Thanks a lot !

Not real sure what questions you have about laptop support.  FC2 works
just fine on the old Dell Latitude CPx laptop I have been using it on. 
Probably the most difficult item to get working is wireless.  This is a
general problem for Linux not just FC.  To get wireless working you need
to figure out what chip set your particular wireless card uses and then
find either a native driver which is available for some or try to use
ndiswrapper and use the windows driver for your wireless card.  In my
case I am using a Dlink DWL-G650 with prism54 driver.  Works well.  It
would be nicer if there were tools that made it easier to detect
wireless networks and make the connection.  iwlist scan works to find
the networks but a better tool that let you detect and then configure
for the network would be nicer.

The other issue I had with laptop support is that for pcmcia network
adapters (wireless or wired) you need to tell it NOT to start at boot
time.  When pcmcia services are started later on the network interfaces
will be started anyway.  

I was surprised that sound worked with no problem.  When I loaded FC2 on
my laptop I did not bother trying to do the dual boot thing.  Personally
I think dual booting causes more problems than it is worth.  I have
found native applications for everything I need to do.  I use this
laptop for work every day.  

Depending on your laptop your mileage may vary.  But all in all it
worked out better than I had originally expected.

All in all I have been very pleased with FC2 on my laptop.  And I do not
see ever going back to a windows based laptop.

-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

Where's th' DAFFY DUCK EXHIBIT??