[Techtalk] Linux and Laptops

[Christine Bussman]

Noir wrote:

> The machine is a P-IV 3.2 GHz w/ DVD burner, Wifi,
>
>60GB HDD; it uses Windows compatible sound card
>(AC97(?)), a winmodem and graphics is ATI Raedon
>(spelling?).
>
>My OS of choice is OpenBSD and it won't even boot in
>the laptop. So I switched back to the next best thing:
>Slackware 9.1. Slacky installed fine, excellent X
>window (KDE and xfce) and everything. BUT it doesn't
>detenct the winmodem, the wifi and ATI graphics in not
>supported if you want to do 3D image rendering. Oh,
>and did I say that there's no sound?!
>
>Solution: Slacky currently runs on kernel 2.4.22 and
>to get wifi I need to upgrade to kernel 2.6. And I
>_think_ that will also help me to detect my modem and
>sound card as well (BTW, this sound card is fully
>compatible w/ OpenBSD > 3.5.). If not ALSA project is
>there!
>
>ATI graphics are supported by the latest version of
>X11 so I need to upgrade that one as well. And
>everything should work fine after that.
>
>--Noir.
>
>
>
>  
>
You might find a solution to your graphics problem if you use the 
closed-source ATI drivers.  Of course, this is if your card is new 
enough (Radeon 8000 or newer) and if you don't have 
political/philosophical objections to closed source kernel modules.

The modem might just be hopeless, I've never gotten the modem on a 
notebook working in linux.  Often to get wireless cards working, I have 
to use a 'wrapper' that allows linux to use the windows drivers for that 
card.  LinuxAnt has commercial ones, but I tried them out and found that 
they don't work for me nearly as well as the opensource wrapper from the 
ndiswrapper project (on sourceforge, if I remember correctly).  This is 
the only way as far as I know of getting Broadcom based wireless cards, 
such as the Dell Truemobile, working in linux.  It works very well, 
though. 

Using ndiswrapper for the wireless and the ATI binary video drivers, 
I've gotten my Dell Inspiron 600M working very well in Linux (Gentoo).  
The only thing that doesn't work at all is the modem, and I haven't even 
tried.  The battery monitor works correctly, and without any 
configuration it turns the LCD off (including the backlight) and enters 
a sleep state at apropriate times.  I _think_ I also have speedstep 
working, but I'm not sure (the kernel thinks it's working, but how would 
I know for sure?).  Anyway, it's a very nice laptop for Linux use, 
although I did have a bad experience with warranty repairs. 

Christine