[XCSSA] 64bit distros on laptops

[xcssa@xcssa.org]

I have an HP zv6000 laptop, which is an Athlon64 with ATI IGP chipset and an 
Xpress 200M, which I picked up in April of 2005.  It has a Broadcom 43xx 
64-bit wireless card.

I have always used Ubuntu on it (though I have tried others and failed). 
The first release I used was 5.04, which didn't work out of the box for me, 
but I was able to get a fully functional system working after a custom 
kernel build with some patches for the buggy chipset.  However, every 
release since then has worked like a champ.  It was really a kernel problem, 
not a distro problem, and once 2.6.11 was released I never really had any 
more problems with the kernel.

I did have some video driver problems, and the ATI binary drivers still 
don't support the integrated video memory correctly for accelerated/DRI 
graphics, but I don't really use 3d on linux anyway.  If I did, I could use 
shared memory, but I don't want to spare it :)  Still hoping the open source 
radeon driver will support my chipset someday, but for now the ATI driver 
works without DRI (I comment out the dri module in xorg.conf) just fine, 
with hardware suspend and everything.

And then the wireless.  Lord, what an adventure.  For the longest time I 
successfully used ndiswrapper, but of course it didn't support WPA so I had 
to use WEP exclusively, and the functions were minimal.  But it got me 
online no problem.  Eventually :)  As I said, Ubuntu 5.10 and 6.06 worked 
great, though, and I didn't really need to do any extra configuring. 
Getting 5.04 working was a bear though, but that's ancient history now. 
Also, the latest Ubuntu, 6.10 (Edgy) broke just about everything, including 
ndiswrapper.  Never got ndiswrapper working again, but the kernel supports 
the Broadcom 43xx card now, and I just needed to rip the firmware from a 
closed driver using fwcutter or some such thing.  Works better than ever 
now, but again that's thanks to kernel improvements.

By the way, I did get my system working 100% again under Edgy, but it was a 
chore.  If anyone is reading this and is thinking about "upgrading" from 
Dapper to Edgy, don't.  For the love of god, don't.  Just trust me.  Use 
Dapper + backports.

Good luck, Tweeks... I hear FC supports x86_64 decently, and probably better 
than Ubuntu 6.10, out of the box.  That's probably the first Ubuntu version 
since 5.04 that I would say that, as the early versions supported 64-bit 
better than the other distros I tried.

Nick

xcssa-admin@xcssa.org wrote:
> Anyone want to share their 64bit distro/laptop experience?  I'm doing FC6/x_64 
> and have heard a lot of laptop driver doom and gloom.  I just picked up this 
> laptop for $950 with tax:
> http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?catg=535&item=350860&prDeTab=2#A
> 
> (will be at a few early morning Black Friday places for $599 I hear)
> 
> Any experiences (specific hardware and distros) would be appreciated.
> 
> Tweeks
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