Claude Jones wrote: > The ASUS G2S-B2 is marketed as a gaming laptop, but is also used > extensively by video integrators in the U.S. to build mobile > video editing workstations. So, that's what I bought recently > after looking at the reviews and prices. > > I had one unpleasant surprise when I found it wouldn't run XP, or > at least, that ASUS makes no XP drivers for it. I may yet try to > revert to XP but that's another story for another list. VISTA only? Hard to believe a gaming machine won't support XP. > I did image the drive as soon as the machine arrived, then > removed all partitions and reformatted it, creating two > partitions, one for Windows and one for Linux. (With the image, > I can always restore to exactly how it arrived from the factory) > > So far, no distro has satisfactorily loaded on this machine. > Fedora went on, but failed to figure out a driver for the video > card and came up in text mode. MEPIS went on, but, each time I > tried to upgrade from the VESA driver (the only one that would > boot up from the LiveCD, it lost the ability to startx -- I > tried the nv driver, and two different nVidia drivers. MEPIS > also failed to identify the NIC and load a driver for it, so > that was a dead in the water proposition. PCLinuxOS came up in > LiveCD mode, but, lost video when I installed it. KUBUNTU failed > to find a video driver in LiveCD mode. According to ASUS technical specs, it uses an NVidia 8600M GS graphics processor. According to NVidia's documentation, the 8600M GS is supported by the NVidia proprietary Unified Xorg driver. The current version is 169.07, released on 12/20/07. This is the driver you need to concentrate on getting to work. I'm somewhat surprised that you can't get anything to work except for the VESA driver. The nv driver should at work in 2D mode (without 3D acceleration support). Perhaps the GPU is too new(?) and appears as an unknown/unsupported GPU to the older software? > So, before I start getting specific, and yes, I am googling for > success stories, is anyone on the list successfully running > Fedora or any flavor of Linux on this machine? nope. Have you tried the NVidia user forums? > No lectures about researching before buying, either, please. I > bought this for my Video Editing needs - Linux on this machine > is strictly for my personal edification, and Linux compatibility > would not have been the deciding factor in this particular > purchase. But, that said, I would still like to get it to > work -- so, any success stories with this particular model? NVidia claims that the graphics processor is compatible with Linux, so they must think you can get it to work with their latest driver. So, unless ASUS has done something to prevent anything except VISTA to run right on this mb.... -- Kevin J. Cummings kjchome@xxxxxxx cummings@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cummings@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)
