Re: Debian on laptops; recommended?
"Eloy A. Paris" <eparis@ven.ra.rockwell.com> writes:
> Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> wrote:
> : Oh, and BTW, my experience has been that most laptops will work fine
> : with Debian, modulo the problems with getting PCMCIA up and running.
> : I've installed on a Dell Latitute, Toshiba? Lifebook, IBM ThinkPad
> : 365X, and Compaq Armada 4130. Except for the Dell which has a
> : non-supported Neo-Magic video chipset, I was able to get them all up
> : and running with just Debian. For the Dell we had to buy
> : AcceleratedX.
> I've install on old Dell Latitude's that did not have the crappy
> NeoMagic chip and managed to run X with no problems. Now with the
> NeoMagic chip things are pretty bad (no X). I've also installed on a
> couple of NEC Versa's with no problems (X included).
But the older Dell Latitude's need a zImage kernel or grub. GRUB
loads bzImage just fine (and it is supposed to do initrd although I
haven't tested it yet).
I'm working on rewriting the install code for GRUB, I will release a
new package ASAP. I have patches for an ext2 1.5 stage of GRUB, so
that it can take up the first 8k from a partition (like LILO), and
then load the rest of itself from an ext2 partition. But I _think_ it
is still bound by a 1024 cylinder limitation _and_ needs correct CHS
addresses in the partition table. The original author plans on adding
LBA support, but I don't know when that will happen.
We still have to use a block list for booting with stage2 on a MSDOS
partition. (This is a problem because stage2 can move when the
package is reinstalled.) If I wasn't so lazy, I could write a MSDOS
stage1.5 for GRUB...
Steve
dunham@cps.msu.edu
[Direct any GRUB-related followups to debian-devel.]
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