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#1
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Athlon 64 Laptop for Linux
Hi,
Are there any Athlon 64 Laptops that have complete Linux hardware compatibility? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I have been looking at hp mainly but it appears these units are very similiar. Thank for any input. Alan |
#2
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On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 09:26:17 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote:
Hi, Are there any Athlon 64 Laptops that have complete Linux hardware compatibility? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I have been looking at hp mainly but it appears these units are very similiar. Thank for any input. Alan I have the Compaq R3000z, I put Mandrake 10.0 x64 and Fedora Core 2 x64 on it, both installed fairly easily. Mine has the 1680x1050 screen which requires hacking the XFConfig-4 file because neither XFree86 or Xorg understand it. If I had it to do over I would have gone with the standard sized screen, the bigger screen make the laptop a little bulky and it complicates installing X (although it does work). They bundle it with a Broadcom wireless card which has no Linux support, supposedly ndiswrapper can be used to run the Windows driver but I haven't tried it and I don't know if you can use a 32 bit Windows driver with a 64bit version of ndiswrapper (probably not). I also haven't tried the modem, I'm using ehternet which works fine. There is an HP version called the 5000z which is identical except for color but cost $300 more in the configuration that I bought. CPU clock speed management requires a later kernel then the one in Mandrake 10.0. I built a 2.6.8.1 kernel and the clock speed control works fine with that. Fedora Core 2 uses the 2.6.5 kernel but the 2.6.8.1 kernel is available as an update. The AMD64 is blazingly fast, my benchmarks show that the 3400+ in this laptop is up to twice as fast as my 2.66GHz Xeon server. There is one downside to the AMD64, you can't run Win4Lin. Win4Lin runs DOS/Win98 which requires the VM86 protected mode which is not available when running in 64 bit mode. I had some trouble installing the 32 bit version of Mandrake 10.0 so I don't know if you can get it to run on a 32 bit version of Linux. The configuration that I bought is as follows AMD 64 3400+ 1G DDR 60G drive 54G 802.11G/B (it was bundled in free on the Compaq, it's extra on the HP) 1680x1050 screen 64M Nvidia graphics XP Pro (Home is standard, I got the Pro just in case I ever needed to use XP I figured I'd spend the $50 and get a version that works) $1525 One final thing about HPs/Compaqs. Don't buy a case from them. The case in the $99 starter bundle is little better than a shopping bag. I made the mistake of getting it, I'm just going to use it as a beach bag. I bought a decent Targus case from Best Buy for $49. |
#3
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"General" == General Schvantzkoph writes:
General On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 09:26:17 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote: Great review thanks a lot! 1Gb of ram for that price is nice. I have not seen the compaq around locally but will start looking in the morning. I saw an e-machines today in the newspaper will check that out. I heard a rumor that the same company in asia makes almost all the so called different models anyway. Don't have any clue if this is really true. Thanks again. Alan |
#4
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On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:35:34 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote:
"General" == General Schvantzkoph writes: General On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 09:26:17 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote: Great review thanks a lot! 1Gb of ram for that price is nice. I have not seen the compaq around locally but will start looking in the morning. I saw an e-machines today in the newspaper will check that out. I heard a rumor that the same company in asia makes almost all the so called different models anyway. Don't have any clue if this is really true. Thanks again. Alan I bought it from http://www.hpshopping.com. The ones in the stores all have 512M of RAM which isn't enough for my purposes. BTW I've now installed the 32 bit version of Fedora Core 2. So as of now I've run Mandrake 10.0 x64, Fedora Core x64 and Fedora Core x32. Now that I have a 32 bit version of Linux running I'll see if I can get the wireless working and I'm also going to see if I can get Win4Lin working. Win4Lin can't run on a 64 bit OS because the x86 protected mode used by Win98 is incompatible with the new 64 bit modes. I'm hoping that it can run if you build a 32 bit kernel. |
#5
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On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 21:20:18 -0400, General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:35:34 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote: "General" == General Schvantzkoph writes: General On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 09:26:17 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote: Great review thanks a lot! 1Gb of ram for that price is nice. I have not seen the compaq around locally but will start looking in the morning. I saw an e-machines today in the newspaper will check that out. I heard a rumor that the same company in asia makes almost all the so called different models anyway. Don't have any clue if this is really true. Thanks again. Alan I bought it from http://www.hpshopping.com. The ones in the stores all have 512M of RAM which isn't enough for my purposes. BTW I've now installed the 32 bit version of Fedora Core 2. So as of now I've run Mandrake 10.0 x64, Fedora Core x64 and Fedora Core x32. Now that I have a 32 bit version of Linux running I'll see if I can get the wireless working and I'm also going to see if I can get Win4Lin working. Win4Lin can't run on a 64 bit OS because the x86 protected mode used by Win98 is incompatible with the new 64 bit modes. I'm hoping that it can run if you build a 32 bit kernel. A follow up on Win4Lin. I haven't been able to get Win4Lin to work under FC2 32 bit. I built a patched 2.6.7 kernel, the Win4Lin module core dumps when it's loaded on boot up. The Win4Lin installer crashes the machine. I'll let everyone know what Netraverse's support tells me. |
#6
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"General" == General Schvantzkoph writes:
General I bought it from http://www.hpshopping.com. The ones in the Wow - unreal that basically the same computers but if you buy compaq instead of hp you can save 300-400 bucks with the same configuration. Strange. I wonder what that is all about. Anyway thanks for the tips. Will hit the stores today to see what the super rebates will bring me over the online ordering. Later, Alan |
#7
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On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 09:46:44 -0500, Alan Walpool wrote:
"General" == General Schvantzkoph writes: General I bought it from http://www.hpshopping.com. The ones in the Wow - unreal that basically the same computers but if you buy compaq instead of hp you can save 300-400 bucks with the same configuration. Strange. I wonder what that is all about. Anyway thanks for the tips. Will hit the stores today to see what the super rebates will bring me over the online ordering. Later, Alan When I called the 800 number they said that there was more software bundled with the HP (although that's not clear from the website). In any event the since that software is for XP it's worthless to a Linux user. As I recall one of the apps was something to help you port your applications from your old box to the new box. In Linux that's called rsync and it's free. |
#8
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Avoid Mitac 8355 clones!
Although some of the hardware is claimed to be linux compatible, its a complete hotchpotch! The dvd re-writer works, but the only upgrades to get the full features are for Apple Macs (this is the only PC I've found that uses this drive!) The wlan is only supported with a proprietry driver under kernel 2.4 and 32 bit, and the built in modem only has 32 bit drivers. Won't compile under x86_64. Also, the CMI 9739 audio chip will only work at zero volume (yes, I have unmuted it, but the volume sticks at zero!) A complete turkey, linux-wise! -- Pete (make the obvious amendments to reply!) Alan Walpool wrote: Hi, Are there any Athlon 64 Laptops that have complete Linux hardware compatibility? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I have been looking at hp mainly but it appears these units are very similiar. Thank for any input. Alan |
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