On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Marc M wrote: > > > > >>Nah, that's just old distros for you. > > > > >When I first put RH7.3 onto my first laptop, I needed to recompile the > > kernel for my NIC and soundcard - it's just one of those PITA things. > > Needless to say that when RH9 came along, everything was picked up. It > > now sits with FC2 on (it's at the sister in laws) and has everything > > working. > > > That's understandable - the hardware aged enough until the distro supported > it more fully and easier. I make sure the software is much newer than the > hardware - then I am ok. And it depends greatly on what you are trying to > run. I keep seeing more and more fancy ads for laptops especially, and every > time I think "what are the odds that I could actually get EVERY part of the > system to work"? I have seen more posts to the effect of 'I can get > everything but (fill in the blank) to work'. I know what you mean - the > modern distros are MILES ahead of where they used to be! But then again > there are always new features, chipsets, wireless features, etc. added. I > would hope that they all have support right out of the box. But I don't have > enough faith in HP to throw unbridled (and largely unearned) brand loyalty > their way. That may change one day for me if enough company propaganda, I > mean marketing, comes my way. Debian might be a differrent story - I hear > that there is a greater range of hardware supported right out of the box. I > have yet to test that theory at this point. I would think that Debian would support less as they will not support "proprietary" drivers. SuSE would be my second choice. I have an HP zv5200. It is an INCREDIBLE laptop, but no longer made. (The zv6000 series "dumbed down" a few of the features. Especially the ones I bought it for.) It is am AMD64 3700+ with a gig of ram and a 1920x1200 display driven by an nVIDIA 440go video chipset. It has a SLOW hard drive, but that is usual for laptops. There were a few challenges. I have FC4 on it now. I have run FC2 & 3, as well as SuSE 10.0 beta 1 on it. (For those that are interested, SuSE 10.0 beta 1 is pretty broken. Wait for beta 2 or later.) Under Fedora I had to hack it a video mode for the 1920x1200 resolution. SuSE has it by default. (As well as a bunch of other modes.) SuSE recognised the WinModem, but Fedora did not. (Never use it anyways.) Nothing I have tried will see the Broadcom wireless chipset or the memory card adaptor. Cardbus adaptors are only seen with a kernel patch. (PCMCIA works with a change to the exclude memory region option.) Bluetooth worked fine. (Now all I need is another bluetooth device.) The touchpad works with a grub kernel line option. (SuSE detects this touchpad and makes it work correctly without having to hack anything.) I can't think of anything else I have had to hack to make it work. -- Q: Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas? A: Because OCT 31 == DEC 25.
