Linux notebooks by Hewlett-Packard

[alan]

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.