I have just ordered an HP DV2000T Laptop. Should be here in a few days. I have been using Suse for awhile now on my old laptop and I feel pretty comfortable with the distribution.

I would like to stay with SuSe but I am a little nervious about my distro selection, the new Core 2 Duo and using an SMP Kernel. From the research that I have done, none of which had senarios of SuSe and a Core 2 Duo chip, it was usually with another distribution, nothing SuSe related.

Will SuSe automatically detect that it is a multi core processor and select the appropriate kernel? From what I have read on other distributions is that you have to either roll your own kernel or select a packaged smp kernel if your distro provides one. So how do you go about doing that?

Is anyone presently using a Core 2 Duo processor and SuSe 10.1 that could go over their setup? Or tell me their issues relating to using a SMP kernel?

Thanks,

rentz

I run SUSE 10.1 on a Core Duo system with no issues. However, I don't know if this can be transfered on C2D.

Seems like it would be the same. Did SuSe automatically detect it was a multicore processor? Did you install 64bit SuSe?

rentz

Yes, it did autodetect the dual-core and installed the smp kernel. But Core Duo is 32bit and so is my SUSE.

I just installed SuSE Enterprise Desktop with the SDK on a new Alien m5550i with a 2.0g Duo Core and all is VERY well ;-)

Don't expect long battery life on a notebook though, I get about 1.5 hours but I have a 256m nVida card with it's own fan ;-) The XGL 3-D is the best desktop since a Mac....

I dumped my SuSE 10.1 for the SLED and I'm VERY happy and it's well worth the 50.00 a year.

Was it a Core 2 duo? Why would I not expect to get good battery life? I sure hope I would get a decent battery life.

rentz

Yes, Core 2 Duo 2.0g

Well, my old Toughbook could only get about 2 hours on Linux and I think my new Alien m5550i probably only gets about 1.5 hours.

Basically even though I'm utilizing the CPU throttling, I think there is a lack of low-level communication between Linux and the system that controls stuff like the CPU fan and video card fan, Etc...... I mean, sheeeet it's got a 256m video card with it's own fan dumping warm air out of the bottom of it. I want the best U.I & 3-D graphics possible and you can't run all of that off a little battery for long.

You should look at HP laptops that you CAN get pre loaded with Linux (don't know what flavor of Linux)

Us Lunix heads are still in a position of buying new machines that are NOT officially tested by the manufacturer and many manufactures will even void your warranty if you load another OS.

At least Alienware doesn't do that. They will still help you but you have to reload the shipped OS.

core 2 duo is in fact a single CPW with 2x 2.xxGhz core with 64 bit capability...

so installing a 64bit OS will work fine, SMP support will be automatically detected

How do I know this...

I have a Dell XPS M1710 Laptop with Core Duo 2 running at 2x 2.00Ghz, with a GeForce Go 7900GTX with 512MB 17inch(1920x1200!) and I get 2h53m of battery life on normal use, this comes down to 2h30m running Doom 3. And it runs Suse 10.1 x86_64

Suse 10.1 64bit SMP works fine on it, just get the Remastered one.

Oh and when it comes to nVidia driver or anything where you need to choose your architecture, you will choose usually between: ppc etc, x86 (32bit), 64AMD/EMT (64 bit, this is the one you need, don't worry that is says AMD in it, it's a set of standards for how the processors work), IA64 (there are specifically Intel Xeon and Itanium processor standards, these won't work as I made the mistake of downloading the nVidia driver for linux and it says this is incompatible, you need 64EAMD version).

Good Luck

Very Interesting.........

I installed SLED 10 and I don't *think* it installed the 64bit version... How do I check ? (I DO have 2 CPU's showing up in the Gnome System Monitor)

Also what' this SMP module? I need to look into that... I have the nVidia 7600 card with 1gig of Ram and the nVidia driver that SuSE installed by default...

To check go into Yast2 Software Management and click on an installed piece of software, check which version/architecture (mouse over) it is... it should have x86_64 at the end of it.

Chances are the Linux Kernel automatically detected the need for SMP (multiprocessor support) at boot time, to check this, again go to Yast2 Software Managemet, then search for the installed kernel... mine is 'kernel-smp' version 2.6.16.21-0.25-x86_64.

To get 64bit Suse, you gotta choose it when buying/downloading, maybe the commercial version comes with both 32 and 64 it versions. Took me 4 hours to download a 3.7Gb DVD Iso for openSUSE 10.1 64bit.

All quite magical now.

Yup,

Because I'm STILL waiting on the DVD I purchased from the On-Line Novell Store (3 weks and still hasn't shipped, they suck about that) I burned 5 CD's of SLED 10 and they are only 32 bit.

I DO see I have the kernel-smp installed, same version as you, I'm just missing the 64 bit version. I'm not a huge math-cruncher nor am I running any Mod-Sim software that would use the 64 bit effectivly, so I'm set.

This Alienware laptop rocks but runs warm and I think it's just a natural battery eater, but I don't care I love it's speed and power, especially running the XGl Desktop, which is the BEST desktop I have ever seen apart from a Mac.

Thanks for the info.

i have had issues with xgl/compiz and beryl on 64 bit smp, i then went to 32bit smp and things are better now... maybe a small issue somewhere on the laptop, but just my experience.

Cool,

I have been working the heck out of my 32 bit for a month now and no bad issues have come up. I run webservers, Eclipse and a version of windows inside of a Parallels VM and it's all rock solid.

I have a 256 meg NVidia Go 7600 card and it's very powerfull card (but it run's hot and sucks my laptop battery)

I enjoy showing off the ability to plav a video in full quality on the corner of the desktop cube ;-) I have never seen video power like that....

I still feel Beryl needs some work done. I will delve deeeeep into it when Suse 10.2 Beta 2 comes out, and really rag it. Should be quite fun, yes it is a powerful tool which looks really nice. I see people talking down XGL/Compiz/Beryl because they think it's eyecandy, but it's so useful, the eyecandy is just bonus. May try it all in 64b/smp on beta2, not had much luck on 64b/smp with suse 10.1.

As mentioned by nuro305 one of the reasons for poor battery life is the Nvidia card and lack of power management for it. ACPI power management on Linux is currently quite good, but independent devices such as video cards need vendor support. Nvidia does have something called PowerMizer (http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_powermizer.html) to minimize the power usage of Nvidia cards. Sadly, they only currently support Windows. Please support this initiative by adding to this thread: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=79444