I am planning to buy an Athlon 64 laptop: a desktop replacement, so weight and portability are less important than power. The two models which seem be the best so far are the Compaq Presario R4000 and Gateway 7426GX.

I would like make the laptop dual-boot (Linux and Windows XP), voiding the software warrantee, but not the hardware warrantee.

Does anybody have any recommendations or warnings?

Does anybody have experience installing Linux on an Athlon 64 laptop?

/francis wilson

>Does anybody have experience installing Linux on an Athlon 64 laptop?

There is an active mailing list, with archives at : http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin...fo/linuxr3000.

It has been primarily an R3000 emphasis there, but the R4000 is the 'replacement model' so a lot of the info will apply. People have gotten everything except the built-in card reader working under many distro's. The R4000 will have ATI graphics however, so your mileage may vary.

Thanks for the quick reply; I've subscribed to the list you recommended (although I think LinuxAMD64 would be a better name for the list than LinuxR3000).

I hope to find information more directly related to the questions I asked.

I am getting the impression that an nvidia chipset would be preferable to ATI, both the machines I'm currently considering come with the latter.

/francis wilson

I installed alternately Mandrake and SuSE 64 bit versions on an HP Laptop. The only problem is with wireless configuration. My laptop uses NVidia. It has a 1280x800 screen, which earlier versions of the distros wouldn't set up the best, however, I used the
gtf 1280 1024 60
command to generate a mode line that works perfectly.

Me and a couple of others from the R3000 mailing list have set up a wiki here, where we intend to funnel most of the useful information from the list. Being a wiki, it is in constant change but I am confident you will find some useful tricks there whether you get an R3000 or any other AMD64-based laptop.

And, on a side note, the R4000/zv6000 is available with nvidia graphics as well - at least in Europe.

I have an R3000 model, only it's called HP/Compaq Business Notebook nx9105. Mine came with an AMD64 crippled to use only 32bit mode, but I'm looking to upgrade as soon as my economy allows me to since these babies are user upgradable.


Håkan

I can't make any personal recommendations about which laptop model(s) may be best, however, in terms of the video question, you might want to search for existing threads on ATI as well as nVidia installation questions, in order to get a glimpse of what kinds of issues others have encountered. That way, whichever choice you make, you'll go into it with your eyes open. Good luck with it -- J.W.

Welcome to LQ!

There are two versions of the Compaq R3240. The one I got has an 15.4" widescreen LCD with native resolution of 1680x1050 !!! I use it at 1440x900 or 1280x800 for most things, but watching DVDs at max res is really amazing quality-wise. Anyway, only complaint is nVidia 440 GO chip is really on par with a GeForce2 rather than GeForce4. Fine for 2D but a little behind the times for 3D. Some of the HP models have the FX GO chip, which is much better, but HP laptop was more expensive too. In any case, my Athlon64 3200+ with 1MB L2 is definitely a fire breathing monster though.

The GeForce4 420/440 Go really is a GeForce2 chip.
For most users (including myself) it will provide enough oomph though (for playing Racer among other things), but the name is very much misleading.


Håkan