Greetings,
I have just purchased a new laptop and can't stand Vista. It is SO slow, crashes ALOT, and doesn't support much hardware/software-wise. I am not new to the world of linux. My previous desktop ran Gentoo and my old laptop (before it got thrown into a wall during a tornado) ran Gentoo. I am considering putting Gentoo on this laptop but had some questions. First my specs:

HP Pavilion DV9000 Series
AMD Turion 64 X2
2GB Ram (Video shared, vista reports 1,918Mb)
NVIDIA GeForce GO 6150
Conexant Audio (I believe)
Broadcom Wireless
DVD/CD Burner w/ Lightscribe
Multi Memory Card Reader

Now the questions:

Will the touch-sensitive media buttons function correctly?
Should I consider 32 or 64bit?
Will I be able to sync my Blackjack (The samsung smartphone)?
Will I be able to connect my Blackjack and get it recognize so I can copy photos and music?
I play WoW, Fable, and Morrowind. Will there much performance degredation in linux?
I have the little remote control (IR) to control music, movies, volume and such. Will linux be able to adapt this as well?

Those are the questions that have jumped out at me. My last laptop used a broadcom chip and after some trial and error I got it working. I am NOT expecting any of the above to work "out of the box" I know I will have to work on some of it but I want to know if the functionality is there and if anyone has any tips or warnings to give. Thanks in advance for any answers/advice

The broadcom will almost certainly work, the models that don't work well with the native bcm43xx do work pretty well with ndiswrapper. I have a bcm4318, and it works with ndiswrapper. Regarding the LightScribe - linux has a closed source lightscribe driver, but no one has written a very good application to use it yet. Two years ago I would have told you to just go 32 bit, but now I'm not so sure. The IR will hopefully work through LIRC, but definitely not out-of-box. The games will work better if you use Cedega.

I would suggest that you install Ubuntu as a dual boot with Vista for at the least a month or two...so you get a good idea of what you're getting yourself into...before totally moving into the Linux world.

Linux can be difficult to learn and to configure correctly even for advanced users...but once you got a good feel of how to install updates, install and locate applications...you'll find yourself as productive using Linux as you are using Windows

Plus, if you have any problems using Linux, the amount of support you would get from the community is unheard of for windows users

Patrick, thanks for the reply. My last laptop used ndiswrapper so if it comes down to it I shouldn't have a problem

Ess, Thanks for your advice too. I'm not a big Ubuntu fan, I give it a whirl back when I was "distro hopping" and it just didnt tickle my fancy. I prefer Gentoo, I really enjoyed setting it up and learning with it so I will most likely stick with it. I agree with ya, The community support from other linux users is simply amazing.

Can u post here your experience installing linux to your laptop, I'm kind of looking towards the same and I'm trying to grab some information before changing.(Actually wrote a post like yours a few days ago stressing how much I hate this new Vista)

Yeah, I definantly will post my experience. I'm still gathering info and hopefully will began the transition later this afternoon. It's not a decision of "Am I going to", I absolutely can't stand Vista and I am not about to go throw $100 away on XP.

if you are a newbie, I would suggest opensuse 10.2...

He's clearly not a newbie, and he's not looking for distro suggestions. He's already identified himself, both in his profile and in his post, as a gentoo user. He's just saying that he's been away for a while and wanted to know how well Linux device support has kept up.

From my general experience, I would say that everything will work well except perhaps the blackjack. I know the mobile phone type devices don't like to sync well with linux, and a bit of research tells me that blackjack is windows mobile based - which probably means that it syncs with some obscure closed proprietary protocol. I don't know this for sure, it's only a suspicion.

Hi,

I would recommend to run a LiveCD first like Ubuntu or something else. Then you can see if all the drivers are recognized and if everything is working fine. Once you've tested it long enough you can install Linux on your desktop and replace Vista.

Regards,

Julix

@PatrickNew: ok, he is not a newbie, but obviously doesn't like google*g or he does not know how to use it*g (there is plenty of information there to see if your hardware is supported and I don't think it is our job to search google for others to tell them if their hardware is supported or not....) BUT anyway, serious:

@justanothersteve
1) if your blackjack has wlan integrated you could try finchsync, its a java application to synchronize sunbird calendars, but also works e.g. with korganizer, I use it often... if it does not offer wlan this will be the only stuff most probably not working well... synchronizing phone stuff like addresses and files works also using bluetooth, if the laptop offers that... it's sometimes hard to get working but with mine it works...

2) wireless should work out of the box but perhaps you give google a try...

3) mmc/sd stuff is provided either through a combination of kernel 2.6.18 and the tifm-drivers (just google) or by using kernels > 2.6.19 which have already included this

4) if you want to use 3d just install the proprietary nvidia drivers, if not, perhaps the nv driver works with that card (google)

5) lightscribe question was already answered

6) personally I would consider 32bit since the performance of 64bit is marginal. you could also have problems with flash, java and other browsing stuff, at least I experienced this in the past

7) games? no idea... but suppose performance is not the problem... if there is a linux version of these games, just give it a try..

8) media buttons most probably will force you to invest some time but there are several terminal type solutions...

9) remote control? no idea, too...

sorry, that I was to lazy to google the details for you*g (please don't take my comments to google too serious, but everybody of us invested days or weeks to find out a working solution for this or that hardware component, drivers etc. and there is no garantuee that it will work if we tell you "this and that works". if you want to be on the safe side give it a try and search on your own once again. it is worth it...)

I use Debian Sid on my Gateway MX6445 Laptop:
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M
AMD Turion 64
Texas Instruments 4 in 1 Memory slot
Broadcom Wireless
1GB Shared
Conexant Audio


It came installed with WinXP. I had originally installed Debian Etch(when it was still testing) to dualboot with WinXP on this laptop. Mostly everything worked out of the box, even more so than WinXP!

I booted into a 1280x800 screen with working audio, working touchpad, working wired network. The only thing I had to work on was wireless using ndiswrapper. I'm not sure about the media slot since I never tried it. Also installed ntfs-3g to use a shared NTFS partition between Linux and WinXP.

As for the Media Keys some work some don't.
I can adjust brightness up and down, turn the external LEDs on and off, enable/disable wireless, use the externel VGA port. I can't adjust volume, use the play, pause, skip, etc.. I've never tried to play with the ones that don't work.

You can check out http://www.linux-laptop.net/ for more info...

You should have no issues installing Linux on your laptop

EDIT: My media slot does work out of the box!

Sabayon is a polished up and pretty Gentoo that runs as an installable LiveDVD, perhaps that would answer some of you questions before going the hard-core route of taming a Gentoo installation.

Looky what I found.

It doesn't look to bad... about an average Linux on Laptop experience, really. I imagine that the stuff that doesn't work, could be fixed with a little elbow grease (WARNING: SLACKWARE USER. "LITTLE BIT OF ELBOW GREASE" IS IN RELATION TO THE SLACKWARE EXPERIENCE. SATISFACTION NOT GUARANTEED FOR *BUNTU USERS. GENTOO USERS SHOULD BE USED TO IT ALREADY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)

Judging from the pace of development in several areas lately, I'd suggest running with a 2.6.22 kernel. I'd even suggest a 2.6.23rc (I use 5), but it may not be stable enough for your uses. rc6 fixed some issues I had to manually patch in rc5, so there you go. I can't really give any advice on the Broadcom wireless, as that seems to run into similar issues as the rt2500 in my old laptop has. Media key wise, I see that KDE 3.5.7 has lots of keyboard layouts for HP machines. Perhaps one will give you all your media keys, perhaps not. I was really surprised when simply changing my keyboard layout gave me my volume buttons. Go figure.

Good luck!

hy, i`m new to the linux world and i already need some help. I have a notebook, hp pavilion dv9000z, amd turion 64 x2, 1 Gb RAM, geforce go 7600, and running vista. I am trying to install openSUSE 10.2 but after i boot up my sistem trying to install opensuse, i encounter an error...something..."could not copy files". i have 15 Gb of unpartitioned space on the Hdd in hope to install a linux version...i don`t know what to do...i tryied to install ubuntu 7.04 but it doesent work either...it gives errors..."fail to load"..many things..


please help me, thanx