Re: debian oriented laptot suggestions
On Tue, 2007-09-11 at 16:34 +0100, André César de Sá wrote:
> Get a Toshiba / Asus.. :P
I've been using Debian on a Toshiba M105-S3074 for nearly a year now and
it runs great, despite all the talk about Toshiba ignoring Linux. As
long as the hardware inside is not exotic, having official vendor's
support is not so important. Here most things work out-of-the-box with
standard drivers, and those that do not - usually minor gagdets - can be
made to work with "unofficial" drivers. For anyone having doubts:
* the GPU is Intel's 945GM Express, works pretty well with
i810/intel X.Org driver (3D acceleration included); I've also
successfully tested the VGA output, which needs no configuration
to "just work"
* the sound chip is Intel HDA Controller -> standard ALSA
snd_intel_hda driver module
* touchpad is made by ALPS - supported by X.Org's synaptic driver,
though requires some xorg.conf tweaking (default settings, which
assume a Synaptic touchpad, result in really slow cursor
movement and no tap-clicking)
* Ethernet (Intel PRO/1000) works with standard e1000 driver,
Wi-Fi (Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG) with ipw3945 (requires
non-free binary firmware, though - but runs smoothly)
* built-in Texas Instruments 5-in-1 flash card reader works with
the tifm(xx) driver - tested with SD cards
* setting LCD brightness by software works with the omnibook
module (http://omnibook.sourceforge.net/); people on some forums
report that on similar laptop models you can get this
functionality through standard kernel's ACPI video driver by
flashing Toshiba's new "Vista-only" BIOS (sic!)
* multimedia keys work with omnibook, too
* fingerprint reader (not-very-useful gadget as it is) works with
ThinkFinger driver and software
* PCMCIA seems to work, my friend's Wi-Fi card got detected once
* suspend/hibernate is tricky, though I got it working with some
combinations of kernel version and loaded modules
It may be reasonable, however, to buy a laptop with GNU/Linux
preinstalled - everything should work nice then, and you save money
you'd otherwise pay for a Windows licence. In any case, checking
http://linux-laptop.net/ for the model you want to buy can help.
Regards,
--
Krzysztof Lubanski
Reply to: