On 17/07/12 16:28, Vadym Krevs wrote:
On 17/07/12 15:34, Lívio Cipriano wrote:
On 17 July 2012 13:41:12 Vadym Krevs wrote:
You can get an ivy bridge i7 with integrated graphics only Do you know if that works well. Traditionally it's better to have a dedicated graphics chip.
L.
It is better of course, especially if long battery life, low heat & noise emissions are not that important for you. Apparently, the integrated video card in ivy bridge chipset - HD 4000 - is a bit faster than the one from sandy bridge chipset. An Nvidia 6xx video card (or a dedicated recent AMD card) would still outperform it of course.
I am looking for a 17'' full hd laptop to run opensuse myself, and here is my take on the UK laptop market after several weeks of research:
* Most laptops have some kind of switchable graphics technology in them (NVIDIA Optimus or AMD's Enduro, etc)
* Linux support for NVIDIA Optimus is fairly poor (please don't say that bumblebee is usable ...)
* Linux support for AMD switchable graphics is okayish (via the AMD Catalyst driver)
* Only high-end gaming/3D laptops (and CAD mobile workstations) have dedicated NVIDIA/AMD video cards without Optimus/switchable graphics, and they cost an arm and a leg, and are usually noisy, and/or have overheating problems
* The vast majority of "desktop replacement/high-end multimedia" 17'' full hd laptops have an NVIDIA video card with Optimus which cannot be turned off in BIOS
* The only "desktop replacement/high-end multimedia" 17'' full hd laptop with an AMD video card I can find in UK is the Sony VAIO E Series 17 (http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Sony_VAIO_E17_17.3_Full_HD_Core_i7_Blu-Ray_La...), and there are no reports of anyone having managed to install Linux on that.
* There don't seem to be any full hd 17'' laptops with integrated graphics only
So, as you can see, it is not an easy decision to find a full hd 17'' laptop to run Linux. Let us know what you end up buying and how successful you end up in installing opensuse on it :-)
I ended up buying the 17-inch Sony Vaio with the same specs as above. Ivy Bridge quad core i7 cpu, 8 Gb RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7650M video card, backlit keyboard. It was with some trepidation that I removed the hdd from the old Dell Studio 1737 with openSUSE 12.1/x86_64 and inserted it into the Vaio. Booted into runlevel 3, did a full update via zypper (including the latest 12.8 catalyst driver from http://linux.ioda.net/mirror/ati/openSUSE_12.1/), rebooted and switched to runlevel 5. To my great relief, everything worked, including keyboard backlight and function keys such as volume control, etc. There was no need to edit any config files, or reconfigure anything via Yast. It seems that Sony simply disabled switchable graphics in this model, and thus the catalyst driver has no problems detecting and using the discrete video card. The fans are barely audible, and in fact seem quieter than on the old Dell Studio laptop. The only minor glitch I have discovered so far is the well known issue with the r8169 kernel driver for the Realtek RTL8111/8168B gigabit adapter described here http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Realtek_8169_driver_problem along with 3 workarounds. If you choose to use wifi instead of wired ethernet, then this is not an issue. So if anyone's still looking for a modern desktop replacement laptop to run openSUSE on, I highly recommend the Sony Vaio E series 17. -- Regards, Vadym -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org