Mike Roy wrote:

Hello everyone: Has anyone experienced major problems running SuSE 9.3 / 64-bit on an AMD 64 laptop? Either install, running or mechanical problems, such as overheating, hardware not being recognized, etc. Any help greatly appreciated. Cheers, Mike

Hi, Mike. At the risk of preaching the choir, I will detail my experiences with 64-bit SuSE 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 on an AMD64-based laptop. I got my first 64-bit laptop last October. As you will see, most of my problems were hardware-related and had nothing to do with operating system. I have been using a Compaq Presario R3000 series laptop since October. It is based on the nVidia chpset, which is why I bought it. Inside, it is identical to the Pavillion 5000-series. I started with SuSE 9.1, then moved on to 9.2, and now 9.3 (all 64-bit). All the hardware was recognized (SuSE directed me to download the latest nVidia drivers). I only had to tweak the '/etc/pcmcia/config.opts' file for proper PCMCIA operation. I have not been able to get the modem nor the built-in media reader to work (the modem reportedly works in the 32-bit environment). For the wifi I used the Linuxant drivers (this laptop has a Broadcom chipset). All other hardware worked right out of the box. The most vexing problem I've been having is ALSA. SuSE pakcages Firefox as a 32-bit application, so it can invoke flash and Realplayer (both available only in 32-bit binaries). However, neither of them seems to obey ALSA and it monopolizes the sound card. (See my postings "QUESTIONS FOR THE GURUS" on this board last month.) You may also have problems with MPlayer/xine, but they work for the most part. (After SuSE was acquired by Novell, they have been crippling their distribution's ability to play media, possibly to avoid getting sued.) In general, you may be better off not installing any media players from the SuSE CD/DVD if you are doing an initial install; you can install them from the apt-get repositories later. Overall, I have seen a drastic improvement from SuSE 9.1 to 9.3. I personally believe (partly based on postings on the board pertinent to this laptop) that SuSE is the PREMIER 64-bit Linux distribution out there. Yes, I had to do my tweaks, but compared to the problems others running other distros have been through, it was a breeze. SuSE makes it easy to install 32-bit applications in their 64-bit environment. The 32-bit libraries retain their original names and the 64-bit libraries have "64" appended to their names (so, you have, for example, '/lib' for 32 bits and '/lib64' for 64bits). You may have to tweak the makefiles if you are compiling programs from source, so the compiler refrences the correct libraries. The excellent SuSE manual has a special chapter dedicated to compiling and running 32-bit programs under the 64-bit kernel. (I wish their otherwise excellent manual were more helpful about ALSA.) Unfortunately, HP/Compaq has discontinued this laptop. They now offer the R4000 (and its identical twin Pavillion 6000) from what I read. The new series, unfortunately, utilizes ATI graphics. From what I read, people have a lot of problems getting 3D to work. For your own reference, you may check this link: http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 Now, a word of caution. My personal experience with this laptop (R3000Z-series) has been dismal! This has nothing to do with the operating system. At first, the laptop I received had an overheating problem. It took HP two tries and a "system board replacement" to fix it. However, when the computer got back, it had another problem: If I turned it off and then on shortly afterwards (doing a power cycle, say), it would not turn on! I had to leave it for over 10 hours and/or remove the battery and AC adaptor and then press the ON switch to get it to work. So, back to HP for repairs. When it came back (now in its THIRD "system board"), I ran the battery low, down to 18%. I plugged in the AC adaptor. Shortly afterwards, I hard a buzzing sound (like arching) and smelled "electrical smell." Linux (SuSE 9.2, 64-bit) indicated that the battery was not charging, which seemed to be true. At that point, HP offered to take the --obviously junk-- laptop back and give me a newer, but refurbished one. I agreed because I had no choice (the other choice was to return what I had for a refund of 65%-70% of the initial price I paid). Now, the laptop I had at that point had a resolution of 1920×1200 and HP told me they no longer offered that resolution. So, they offered me a laptop with 1680×1050 resolution and upped the RAM from 512 MB to 1 GB to compensate for the lower resolution. I've had no problems with the newer laptop and its battery life is over 4 hours (I bought the high-capacity battery), which is not too shabby given its power (2.2 GHz AMD64). However, given my recent experience with HP, I would think twice before buying any of their products any time soon. Their customer support was great, but what can they do if a product has flaws from the drawing board? In short, I would avoid HP/Compaq laptops (64-bit or 32-bit) and stick with SuSE, especially if I needed a 64-bit distribution. I would also consider installing apt-get and its synaptic GUI. CF