Sony VAIO® FS742/W Notebook and Slackware
 

I'm going to be buying my first notebook within the next month or so. I'm l considering this model and will probably want to install Slackware. The wireless is Intel 2200 and Linux drivers are available, but I'll have to go to a 2.6.x kernel. The video is an Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900 and drivers are available, but I'm not sure if shared memory is something that I need to avoid.

I have yet to find any pages on loading Linux on this model. I've looked on this site's HCL and the linux-laptop page.

Is this a notebook that I should consider? I will be using it as the typical user. Web browsing, music playing, DVD playing. I will be dual booting with Windows as I need to ensure that I have internet access and I do play around a lot with the OS (i.e. break stuff) hence the reason I'm trying to learn Linux. I don't do any gaming, I don't do any video editing.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Sony VAIO FS742/W page.

F_M

I think it is a good choice. The Intel 2200 now has a native linux driver and intel supports linux with graphics drivers. I just installed the newest kernel from kernel.org and it works fine on slackware 10.2.

I was mostly concerned with the Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900. It says that it's using shared memory and from what I'm seeing on-line, this means it uses system memory. Will this cause an issue?

F_M