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Linux - Distributions This forum is for Distribution specific questions.
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Old 02-02-2003, 05:25 PM   #1
paook
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Good distro for laptops


I've been trying to use Linux for a long time, but due to various things have never really got around to it. Windows has really been pissing me off recently, so it's time to try again.

I'm using a Micron TransPort GX notebook w/PIII@850MHz, 256MB RAM, 2x20GB HDD. I only need to use it as a workstation. In the past I've tried installing RH7.2, but after much fiddling I was unable to get it to recognize my laptop's screen, a pretty generic TFT LCD running on a S3 Savage/IX video card w/16MB VRAM.

Apparently no one else in the world has tried to install Linux on the type of notebook I'm using, at least as far as I can tell. So can any of you recommend a distro that'll be the most likely to work with my screen?

Thanks.

paook
 
Old 02-02-2003, 09:02 PM   #2
Arcane Kidd
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Hopefully this link will get you going in the right direction.. utilize Google--

http://www.probo.com/timr/savagemx.html

On this page it mentions BSD, amoung a couple of others.

Best,
 
Old 02-02-2003, 11:06 PM   #3
wartstew
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Quote:
Originally posted by Arcane Kidd
http://www.probo.com/timr/savagemx.html
Thanks for the update, I have an all-in-one VIA motherboard (KM133 or something like that) at work that claims to have a "savage-4" video built in, although some people claim it is actually a "savage-pro", that I never could get anything besides the Vesa framebuffer driver to work in it (Hint to the original poster: Use the Vesa FB device X-driver until you get something better to work). Maybe it's time to upgrade the X-server on it and see if I can get it to work better.

Anyway, for your laptop: It isn't going to be a function of the Linux distribution as much as the version of XFree86 that is included with it.

Last edited by wartstew; 02-02-2003 at 11:10 PM.
 
Old 02-03-2003, 07:42 PM   #4
paook
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Ah, thanks for that link. That helps a lot. Do you know if RH8.0 has that version of XFree86 with it?

Keep in mind that I have very, very little experience using Linux, so I'd like to avoid a complicated setup. Although now that I have an idea of what the problem is, maybe you can help me work through it.

Thanks again.

paook
 
Old 02-03-2003, 08:40 PM   #5
Arcane Kidd
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Paook-- I will most definately try and help you; however, I have to warn you that I, too, am a new-born. But with us going back and forth in this forum and others reading-- we'll be able to get this working.

I will do a little due diligence tonight and post something, hopefully worthy, tomorrow. Like I said in my earlier post, go onto Google and look for all the keywords that are in question...lets begin to put these pieces together, and hope that they all fit.

Best,
 
Old 02-03-2003, 09:07 PM   #6
Arcane Kidd
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I guess I should have read before I typed...but I will still help if I can.


Best,
 
Old 02-04-2003, 01:01 PM   #7
kkempter
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I have a sony vaio laptop which I have installed Mandrake 8.0 and 9.0, SUSE 8.1 professional and redhat 8.0 prof.

I like the RH setup the best although there are a few things that you have to setup manually that mandrake tries to do for you. I have the ability to mount my windows drives (its a dual-boot box w/win2k) and I have a wireless ethernet card configures as well.

I've been through lots-o-issues in the process so let me know if you run into a snag and I may be able to help you out.

I would highly recommend redhat 8.0, if you want a great gui and don't plan to use a wireless connection then Mandrake 9.0 is also an excellent choice for a laptop.

Also check out this link if you haven't already found it... it could be helpful even if the exact model you are using isn't listed.
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
 
Old 02-05-2003, 09:52 PM   #8
Arcane Kidd
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Awesome link! Thnkx
 
Old 02-06-2003, 06:01 AM   #9
KayJay
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I installed Mandrake 9 on my laptop (PIII 1.2ghz, 256mb ram)
it worked out of the box...seriously.
the only problem I have is powermanagement (acpi) but not really a big issue by now.

the fun part is, it dualboots windows 2000 for my work. and where win2k couldnt find my: soundcard, videocard and network card, Mandrake 9 found it out of the box. nothing I had to change about it..

Let's say I'm pleased with it.
 
Old 02-06-2003, 08:46 AM   #10
wartstew
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Both Windows and Linux fail to do completely automated installs with various hardware combinations.

The difference is with Windows, you often don't get good or correct hints about what the problem is, then you often have to figure out strange ways to "trick" the installer into doing the right thing.

With Linux, there are methods you can use to toubleshoot and manually configure problem areas. There *is* a steep learning curve to many of these methods, but I still feel it is far better than the random madness that sometimes have to be employed to get Windows installed at times.

I just got through helping someone at work with a difficult Win2K install where I had to use Linux to pre-prepare a disk partition so that Windows would even recognize the hard drive!

So when I have to learn something new to get Linux installed on something, that knowledge is usually something generally useful that I can use over and over again in other areas. When I learn something to get Windows to install on something, it often is only useful as a butt-of-jokes about how stupid the Windows' install process is, unless I stumble across that exact same hardware combination again.

Therefore I feel it is worth *really* learning about some of the problems the can come up installing various Linux distributions. This knowledge sometimes even helps me with Windows installations because often Windows trips over the same things, only to not give you useful information when it does.
 
Old 02-10-2003, 04:08 PM   #11
paook
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I have RH8 up and running -- everything's going well except for:
  1. My soundcard won't initialize. Doing a soundcard detection correctly identifies my ESS Maestro on-board sound, but it says 'Module: disabled.' Where to I go from here?
  2. As directed earlier in this thread, I installed new drivers for my Savage/IX video card, but I'm still having some graphics problems. The cursor is not rendering (it's just a square of junk) and I intermittently get weird lines and stuff drawn across the screen. How do I tell what version of XFree86 I have installed? Do I need to change my xf86config file?
  3. I seem to be getting a lot of system hangs. Out of nowhere the screen'll go funky and I won't be able to do anything, though I can still move my cursor (or whatever you want to call my square I use to select things) around.
Any tips?

Thanks.

paook
 
Old 02-11-2003, 02:04 AM   #12
wartstew
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Quote:
Originally posted by paook
Doing a soundcard detection correctly identifies my ESS Maestro on-board sound, but it says 'Module: disabled.'
Try doing a "modprobe -v maestro" (or a "modprobe -v maestro3" if you have the 3D version) at a shell prompt. You can do an "lsmod" to list loaded modules afterwards to make sure. If this makes it work, then you have to figure out why the RH hardware configurer has a problem with it and I probably won't be much help because I haven't played with RH since version 6.2.

Quote:
[*]As directed earlier in this thread, I installed new drivers for my Savage/IX video card, but I'm still having some graphics problems. The cursor is not rendering (it's just a square of junk) and I intermittently get weird lines and stuff drawn across the screen. How do I tell what version of XFree86 I have installed?
Do a "X -version" at a shell prompt. You probably are using at least version 4, so look in /var/log/xfree86.0.log for hints about what is going on.

Quote:
Do I need to change my xf86config file?


There may be some options that you can tweek. You'll have to dig through a lot of docs to figure it out. Start with "man XF86Config" (watch upper/lower case in this name!). Then try to find any additional options related to the Savage driver alone.

Quote:
[*]I seem to be getting a lot of system hangs. Out of nowhere the screen'll go funky and I won't be able to do anything, though I can still move my cursor (or whatever you want to call my square I use to select things) around.[/list]Any tips?


I think I remember all this using Mandrake 8 on a Savage-Pro-4. That was a couple of years ago. I ended up just using the VESA framebuffer driver, which was slow, but it worked. You can try this too. Hopefully there is a better driver available now. You might try the check and see which one you are using. If it isn't the custom one mentioned earlier, maybe you need to try it (me too!).

Remember, all this is XFree86 stuff. It is not related to RH except for their choice of XFree86 versions/patches they've included in RH8.

Another thing, make sure "GART" support is being loaded if it is an AGP card. Do a "dmesg | less" and look for it.

If I remember I'll grab my Knoppix CD and take it to work where the Savage-pro-4 machine is and see I can figure out what might be going on.

Good luck

Last edited by wartstew; 02-11-2003 at 02:23 AM.
 
Old 02-16-2003, 01:46 PM   #13
TheCarl
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ive tried several distros on my compaq laptop, and the best one ive found so far is SuSE 8.1
 
Old 02-17-2003, 06:40 PM   #14
yngwin
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I'd say Knoppix, it's hardware recognition is just awesome!
 
Old 02-18-2003, 10:24 AM   #15
tcaptain
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I have Mandrake 9.0 running on my laptop (pII 333 192Megs of Ram) and on my fiancee's laptop (pII-400 128Megs of Ram) and both work really great.
 
  


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