[NTLUG:Discuss] LapTops - was: Dallas Morning News article

[Steve Baker]

briank at hex.net wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Mar 25, 2000 at 02:05:01PM -0600, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> > Can you explain why you think this is?  PCMCIA info is just based on the
> > pcmcia-cs stuff, and video hardware is XFree86...
> 
> As I recall, the SuSE release I was using (6.0) was unable to
> recognize any of a number of PCMCIA network cards I attempted to use.
> RH6.1 accomplished the task with no problems.  In the context of the
> question Kendall had answered (first-time installers), this would be a
> significant drawback.  The SuSE 6.1 release may have improved upon
> this, but the correct PCMCIA drivers for the cards I have were
> certainly available when SuSE 6.0 was released. I believe the SuSE
> distro may have been using an older version of the PCMCIA code.

Yep - but now we are up to SuSE 6.3 with 6.4 coming "soon".  The
6.3 version seemed to have installed all manner of PCMCIA stuff on
my laptop automatically.

As it happens, I don't need any PCMCIA stuff on my Laptop since it has
all the peripherals I'm likely to need built-in - hence I don't know
whether it would have sucessfully auto-detected specific cards. However,
it evidently realised that this was a laptop.  I don't see where it
installed PCMCIA stuff on my desktop machine and I didn't TELL it I
had a laptop or anything - so I presume it auto-detected it.

> As for the Xserver, neither the VGA16 or SGA drivers shipped with SuSE
> 6.0 would properly recognize the video hardware on the Dell Latitudes.
> I could get some video working, but only low-resolution.  Thisi, coupled
> with the inability to get on the 'net to download the correct X
> servers, severely crippled the laptop install process.  RH6.1 had no
> problems with recognizing the hardware, leading me to believe the
> server they were using was more current than the one shipped with the
> SuSE distro.

SuSE 6.3 picked up the graphics adaptor in my Compaq LTE-5000 OK - although
I can't seem to get it to kick into 16 bits per pixel mode without shredding
the display into semi-illegible mush.  It's not a 'high res' thing though,
I can get all the resolutions at 8bpp - and can't get 16bpp even at 640x480
even though the machine claims to be capable of it in the Compaq spec and
SuSE 6.3 correctly autodetected 1Mb of video RAM.

I'd really like to get 16bpp working - but I don't think I want to go to
the hassle of installing RedHat just for that.

> Like many things in life, though, I did not have the luxury of time to
> investigate exactly what went wrong with the SuSE laptop installation.
> There was enough anecdotal evidence, though, for me to conclude that I
> would recommend the RH 6.1 distro for laptop installs.

It's just impossible to keep up isn't it!  With new SuSE releases
coming out every couple of months, there's just no way to compare
each and every release for each and every kind of hardware.  It
sounds like either SuSE have fixed whatever was wrong with 6.0 and 6.1
...or I was just lucky and didn't ask it to do what it could not.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker at hti.com      (work)