Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-amd64 (449 mails)

[patheve2 <patheve2@xxxxxxxx>]

Hello Len,

My experience with an AMD64 laptop began on last July. In France, the 
choice of
AMD64 laptop is not very large : Acer Aspire 15xx, Asus L5D series, 
Targa Visionnary
(only one time in LIDL shops). I bought the Asus L5D : Athlon64 3000+ 
1Mo L2, 512 Mo DDR
(3200 or 2700, I don't remember), HD 60 Go, video card nVidia gForce 
5650 64 Mo,
screen SXGA (1400x1050) (very beautiful colors !), chipset nVidia 
nForce3 Go150,
wifi Broadcom, ethernet 10/100/1000, DVD reader/recorder -R/RW, 2 PCMCIA 
slots,
//, serial, 4 usb 2.0, VGA output, SVideo output, ieee1394. A card 3n1 
reader. IrDA. Battery : 2 hours.
A very good laptop to my mind. On it : WinXP Pro (sorry), SuSE 9.0 AMD64 
and SuSE 9.1
AMD64 with all updates by SuSE. Between the two SuSE AMD64, the 9.0 is 
better :
the kernel 2.4.21 is "old", the 2.6.5 is too much young. With nVidia 
chipset and video
card, no problem with drivers : they are available on the website of 
nVidia, for Linux
X86_64, and they work fine (up to now; you need only the video driver in 
fact) : they are
not "beta". This is not the case for ATI : the video driver 64 bits is 
not available at this moment
So do choose an AMD64 laptop with nVidia chipsets ! Which does not work 
: PC card,
wifi, card 3n1 reader. For wifi : no driver 64 bits (by Broadcom or by 
other people of
open source; for 32 bits linux : the windows driver can be use). For 
PCMCIA : there is a bug
in the kernels 2.4.21 and 2.6.5; the problem should be solved with 
kernel 2.6.8 of the
next SuSE 9.2.  For card 3n1 reader : in the future .... About USB 2.0  
memory stick : it
does not work the SuSE 9.1 (the stick : HyperDrive 256 Mo USB 2.0), no 
problem with
SuSE 9.0. I use an ADSL modem on ethernet port : OK. DVD or CD burning : 
OK with K3B..
Video : OK. Sound : OK (without nVidia driver). Not yet tested : IrDA, 
//, serial,  ieee1394,
S-Video output, VGA output but all should work. Ah, about the internal 
modem : this is a
new Conexant chip. The driver 64 bits is not avaible, only a 32 bits one 
on the Linuxant
website.
Ask me more info if you need

Regards

Pascal

NB : the price : 1750 euros in Paris on July, now 1680 euros




==================



would like to replace a 4 year old Sony VAIO with a an AMD64 laptop. What
experience is there ? What works?


I looked at the AcerFerrari 3400 which looks good, except for the broadcom
networking (both the 10/100/1000 RJ45 and the wireless are broadcom )
which I hear doesn't work well with OpenBSD. How does this work on linux??


I can also look at a more customised system below
Both laptops are based on:


VIA K8T800+VT8235CE chipset:


Should I comnsider any other lamd64 laptops?


The laptop will be a dual boot


OpenBSD 3.6 / Suse Linux 9.1 (and hopefully no windows)


Customised solution:


EUROCOM D400K PYTHON


Summary
Base System 15-inch XGA (1024-by-768 pixels)


Wireless WLAN 802.11b/g WLAN; internal miniPCI; Intel® PRO Wireless 2200


Processor 3200+ AMD Athlon64 Mobile; 62W; 754-pin; 1MB cache


Memory 1024MB (2x512MB) DDR333 PC2700 200pin - 1 SODIMM
Video Module 64MB ATi Mobility Radeon 9700
Hard Drive 60GB (2.5'') 7,200rpm w/8MB cache


Internal Card Reader 3-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MS/MMC)


Optical Drive 4x Slot Super DVD Multi Drive (DVD-RAM/+RW/-RW; CD-RW;
DVD/CD-ROM) with Software


or


System 17-inch Wide-Screen UltraBright WSXGA+ (1680-by-1050 pixels) -
EUROCOM D470K PYTHON


Wireless WLAN 802.11b/g WLAN; internal miniPCI; Intel® PRO Wireless 2200
Bluetooth Module


Processor 3200+ AMD Athlon64 Mobile; 62W; 754-pin; 1MB cache
Memory 1GB (2x 512MB) DDR333 PC2700 200pin - 2 SODIMM
Hard Drive 60GB (2.5'') 7,200rpm w/8MB cache


Operating System


Keyboard (Language) Keyboard - U.S. English


Internal Card Reader 4-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MS/MMC/MS-Pro)


Optical Drive 4x Slot Super DVD Multi Drive (DVD-RAM/+RW/-RW; CD-RW;
DVD/CD-ROM) with Software