Re: Installation on Sony Vaio VGN-A417[S|M]: Opinions
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 08:10:57AM +0100, j.a.m.e.s@btinternet.com wrote:
> I'm a Debian newbie (used Sarge for ~6 months) but
> need to buy a laptop as I will be travelling and
> living in continental Europe (on business) during the
> next two years.
>
> I was referred here by the debian-laptop mailing list
> because I'd like to know if this laptop will be an
> installation nightmare, given my lack of experience.
>
> The laptop in question is a Sony Vaio VGN-A417S and
> has a 100Gb SATA harddisk (HTS541080G9SA00) on the
> ICH6 chipset . I believe the installer has struggled
> with these in the past:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/07/msg00758.html
So far my experience with SATA in laptops is on a Dell. It basically
doesn't work because they run it in combined mode at all time, which
means you can access either the HD or the CD but not both. Enabling
SATA atapi support in the kernel (not yet complete) gives access to both
but means compiling your own kernel.
2.4 kernel does seem able to at least access both at once using the
older ide driver although of course without DMA.
> The graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon X600.
Well same laptop above has an ATI X something, and I recently read that
the latest CVS of X.org may actually work on it. ATI's drivers did not,
and XFree86 certainly didn't either.
If you want something that just works you want:
- intel or nvidia video not ati.
- no sata.
- intel or nvidia chipset not ati.
- intel wireless (one of the few that have decent linux support). Some
others can be made to work with ndiswrapper, and a few chips also have
native drivers although they are almost never actually built in to a
laptop.
> The most detailed laptop specs I could find are:
> http://tinyurl.com/btl54
Hmm, I personally would never buy somethign where the video chip steals
system memory to help out it's own puny amount of video ram. The memory
bus doesn't need extra load, and you have better things to use your
system ram for.
Funny how their specs could be read as 'this laptop has no harddisk' :)
It is never mentioned as far as I can tell.
> Could anyone tell me how easy it is likely to be to
> use the official NetInst for Etch or Sarge on this
> laptop? I think it would be wise for me to stay away
> from a daily NetInst release.
With the hardware list you gave, it will most likely be very hard to get
it installed.
Len Sorensen
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