Hardware Reviews And Possible Issues With Linux

[Wentworth]

I've decided which notebook to buy and want to install LInux Mint. I tried to search for Hardware Reviews and also any possible problems that may arise with installing LInux, especially Mint if possible. A Google search only seems to return general spec details and suppliers. It's no problem if the hardware is intended for the US or European markets, but I can't find anything on hardware for Asian markets. The Linux MInt website does have a section for people reporting issues but mostly US/European models.

I'm not sure if the Asian models differ solely in say keyboard layouts but wondering if I could find out a comparable US/European equivalent. If I could get that then perhaps I could then search for any issues with Linux.

[BugJackBaron]

I wouldn't worry too much. Asian models just differ in keyboard.

Don't forget that you can test drive Mint and other distros in live mode first -basically you just turn on your computer and it will run

from the DVD without installing anything,

If there are no problems running it from the live DVD, you probably won't have issues with it installed.

Another good one to try for notebooks is Fuduntu (fuuntu.org) as it uses a different base than mint.

If your notebook has hardware issues with both mint and Fuduntu then chances are l

the hardware is too recent(bleeding edge) for linux.

[urandom]

only two things matter:

video card,

wireless chipset,

everything else should work.

/edit: holy crap, the webkitgtk bug is still there,/edit2: what's the model, we'll find out for you,/edit3: holy sh!t, this formatting bug suxb4llz

Edited March 2, 2011 by urandom

[dave_boo]

I disagree. There's a myriad of things to be concerned about.

First and foremost is suspend. Intel chipsets are supported very well for this. Since you're talking about a notebook that's one of the biggest issues. Next thing I would consider is the Wi-Fi as mentioned although ndiswrapper and built in drivers have come a long way. Video card is covered any-ways even if it's only though the basic OSS driver. If there's bluetooth that's something that could be an issue. Webcams continue to be problematic although that's getting much better. Expresscards can be an issue although I haven't heard of the actual controller causing problems but rather the cards themselves. Stay away from anything with Hybrid graphics as support is a bit wonky (for instance my UL-80vt won't allow me to use the Nvidia card-even though the card is powered up and using juice-unless the SATA controller is set to 'compatible' instead of 'performance'...go figure).

[Wentworth]

only two things matter:

video card,

wireless chipset,

everything else should work.

/edit: holy crap, the webkitgtk bug is still there,/edit2: what's the model, we'll find out for you,/edit3: holy sh!t, this formatting bug suxb4llz

Grateful for the help.

Here's the make and model: Samsung NP-RF408-S01TH

[urandom]

it's difficult to find out the details of the wireless chipset, which is, for me, the main remaining concern. it seems that the video card is nvidia and you should get really great performance with the closed source drivers from nvidia (vdpau is great). i'll search again for the wifi

[urandom]

one simple way to be sure about the hardware specs would be to go to the drivers download page from samsung. their website is so much crap that couldn't reach it. if you are more succesful than me than we could make an in-depth compatibility check.

[Wentworth]

I'm extremely grateful for all the time and energy you've spent on this. I've spoken to alot of people about the general specs and it seems to be quite good. I'm trying to get and buy the machine today. I'm just going to cross my fingers that it's alright. I have MInt 10 on DVD ready and will try it as soon as I can. With me not knowing that much about specs, in terms of what you've just mentioned, is there something specific you think I should do as a test? I say that as I think that I really have been holding back buying it and just itching to go. Apart from that, I wonder how much luck I'll have if you found it frustrating.

Many thanks, again.

[urandom]

you're most welcome.

what I would really test is wireless.

just pray that it's not realtek. broadcom has some downsides too. intel and atheros should work without any issue.

broadcom recently opensourced their drivers so hope is there but you may suffer for a bit. realtek has some drivers available but they really really suck. it may work but you may have connectivity/signal strenght problems.

if you have the opportunity to fire up mint before buying, just open a terminal and issue the lspci command, look at the "Network controller" line to see what is the chipset.

[BugJackBaron]

you're most welcome.

what I would really test is wireless.

just pray that it's not realtek. broadcom has some downsides too. intel and atheros should work without any issue.

broadcom recently opensourced their drivers so hope is there but you may suffer for a bit. realtek has some drivers available but they really really suck. it may work but you may have connectivity/signal strenght problems.

if you have the opportunity to fire up mint before buying, just open a terminal and issue the lspci command, look at the "Network controller" line to see what is the chipset.

Just thought I would try that to see what I have(it's a company laptop)

02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)

08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)

are the two relevant lines of output.

My wireless is good as long as the signal strength is about 50% or more. How does your wifi do?

[urandom]

your wireless chipset is intel, they are very well maintained, supported and are *in* the kernel tree http://git.kernel.or...c3dd20b;hb=HEAD . best choice. I bought a thinkpad x201i a few months ago and just replaced the crappy realtek chipset with a brand new shiny intel 6200. costed about THB1,300 but i'm so happy i did it. i can enjoy any kind of wireless fun (packet injection and the like) and reliable connection.

/edit: not sure about the minimum percentage but connection still works in the toilets which are more far then another machine using a PCI wireless card (atheros chipset) and it works better on the lappy

Edited March 4, 2011 by urandom

[Wentworth]

you're most welcome.

what I would really test is wireless.

just pray that it's not realtek. broadcom has some downsides too. intel and atheros should work without any issue.

broadcom recently opensourced their drivers so hope is there but you may suffer for a bit. realtek has some drivers available but they really really suck. it may work but you may have connectivity/signal strenght problems.

if you have the opportunity to fire up mint before buying, just open a terminal and issue the lspci command, look at the "Network controller" line to see what is the chipset.

I just got my shiny new machine and I'm using a CD to check out what you asked above; and here's the result of the lspci in terminal:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

I'm using a fixed land line at home and without a wifi connection nearby - I'll try and get to a friend's house or coffee shop.

[urandom]

you're most welcome.

what I would really test is wireless.

just pray that it's not realtek. broadcom has some downsides too. intel and atheros should work without any issue.

broadcom recently opensourced their drivers so hope is there but you may suffer for a bit. realtek has some drivers available but they really really suck. it may work but you may have connectivity/signal strenght problems.

if you have the opportunity to fire up mint before buying, just open a terminal and issue the lspci command, look at the "Network controller" line to see what is the chipset.

I just got my shiny new machine and I'm using a CD to check out what you asked above; and here's the result of the lspci in terminal:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

I'm using a fixed land line at home and without a wifi connection nearby - I'll try and get to a friend's house or coffee shop.

this chipset is one of those that is supported by the opensource driver. the driver is already in linus' tree but still in staging http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=tree;f=drivers/staging/brcm80211;h=a6b62ae7f1d3e263db3e999908382d645819008e;hb=HEAD . anyway, you shouldnt get too many troubles with it and if you do have some, then you wont have to wait too long for a stable, reliable driver. depending on your distro, it may use an older kernel in which the code wasn't merged yet but they may have added the modules independently anyway. a good way to know this is to issue the lsmod command and see which module is loaded. if you see brcm80211 then you're using the opensource driver, if you see something like wl then you are using broadcom proprietary driver which is known to be limited. anyway...

enjoy your new machine !

[Wentworth]

you're most welcome.

what I would really test is wireless.

just pray that it's not realtek. broadcom has some downsides too. intel and atheros should work without any issue.

broadcom recently opensourced their drivers so hope is there but you may suffer for a bit. realtek has some drivers available but they really really suck. it may work but you may have connectivity/signal strenght problems.

if you have the opportunity to fire up mint before buying, just open a terminal and issue the lspci command, look at the "Network controller" line to see what is the chipset.

I just got my shiny new machine and I'm using a CD to check out what you asked above; and here's the result of the lspci in terminal:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

I'm using a fixed land line at home and without a wifi connection nearby - I'll try and get to a friend's house or coffee shop.

this chipset is one of those that is supported by the opensource driver. the driver is already in linus' tree but still in staging http://git.kernel.or...819008e;hb=HEAD . anyway, you shouldnt get too many troubles with it and if you do have some, then you wont have to wait too long for a stable, reliable driver. depending on your distro, it may use an older kernel in which the code wasn't merged yet but they may have added the modules independently anyway. a good way to know this is to issue the lsmod command and see which module is loaded. if you see brcm80211 then you're using the opensource driver, if you see something like wl then you are using broadcom proprietary driver which is known to be limited. anyway...

enjoy your new machine !

I ran the terminal lsmod command and this is the result, which, with me being a newbie, means absolutely nothing.

ec,snd_rawmidi,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device

soundcore 880 1 snd

snd_page_alloc 7216 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

bluetooth 50500 9 rfcomm,sco,bnep,l2cap,btusb

parport 31492 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp

dm_raid45 81721 0

xor 15136 1 dm_raid45

btrfs 489451 0

zlib_deflate 19266 1 btrfs

crc32c 2531 1

libcrc32c 887 1 btrfs

nouveau 517628 2

ttm 56825 1 nouveau

ahci 19013 0

drm_kms_helper 30200 1 nouveau

libahci 21731 3 ahci

sky2 45456 0

drm 168726 4 nouveau,ttm,drm_kms_helper

i2c_algo_bit 5168 1 nouveau

video 18712 0

output 1883 1 video

intel_agp 26720 0

agpgart 32075 3 ttm,drm,intel_agp

[urandom]

you're most welcome.

what I would really test is wireless.

just pray that it's not realtek. broadcom has some downsides too. intel and atheros should work without any issue.

broadcom recently opensourced their drivers so hope is there but you may suffer for a bit. realtek has some drivers available but they really really suck. it may work but you may have connectivity/signal strenght problems.

if you have the opportunity to fire up mint before buying, just open a terminal and issue the lspci command, look at the "Network controller" line to see what is the chipset.

I just got my shiny new machine and I'm using a CD to check out what you asked above; and here's the result of the lspci in terminal:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

I'm using a fixed land line at home and without a wifi connection nearby - I'll try and get to a friend's house or coffee shop.

this chipset is one of those that is supported by the opensource driver. the driver is already in linus' tree but still in staging http://git.kernel.or...819008e;hb=HEAD . anyway, you shouldnt get too many troubles with it and if you do have some, then you wont have to wait too long for a stable, reliable driver. depending on your distro, it may use an older kernel in which the code wasn't merged yet but they may have added the modules independently anyway. a good way to know this is to issue the lsmod command and see which module is loaded. if you see brcm80211 then you're using the opensource driver, if you see something like wl then you are using broadcom proprietary driver which is known to be limited. anyway...

enjoy your new machine !

I ran the terminal lsmod command and this is the result, which, with me being a newbie, means absolutely nothing.

ec,snd_rawmidi,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device

soundcore 880 1 snd

snd_page_alloc 7216 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

bluetooth 50500 9 rfcomm,sco,bnep,l2cap,btusb

parport 31492 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp

dm_raid45 81721 0

xor 15136 1 dm_raid45

btrfs 489451 0

zlib_deflate 19266 1 btrfs

crc32c 2531 1

libcrc32c 887 1 btrfs

nouveau 517628 2

ttm 56825 1 nouveau

ahci 19013 0

drm_kms_helper 30200 1 nouveau

libahci 21731 3 ahci

sky2 45456 0

drm 168726 4 nouveau,ttm,drm_kms_helper

i2c_algo_bit 5168 1 nouveau

video 18712 0

output 1883 1 video

intel_agp 26720 0

agpgart 32075 3 ttm,drm,intel_agp

strangely, there's nothing about wireless here... what we can see is that the nouveau module is loaded, this means you're not using nvidia closed source driver which is very likely to give you the very best performance.

[urandom]

so how is it going with the shiny lappy and linux?

[Wentworth]

so how is it going with the shiny lappy and linux?

Thanks for asking.

I recently changed my internet provider. I used to share a wired port modem with my wife using CAT. The service got to be really bad in the last month or so. I think it was a problem local to my city because when I changed to 3BB, after a few recommendations, the 3BB engineer has been rushed off his feet with a mass migration. I now use a wireless modem with my wife using the single wired port as she's using a desktop.

At first I couldn't get my wireless to work but I found from the Mint Forum that it was me still thinking the Windows way ie, do a search for wifi hotspots. They told me that I just needed to go into Mint Control Centre and download only the relevant driver for using Wireless. They explained that the difference being that Windows automatically installs a shed load of drivers and hence they're there without Average Joes, like me knowing it. I prefer the Linux or Mint way, which saves time during the install and the obvious disk space as well. I sent a suggestion to Clem, who runs the Mint project, that it might be an idea to put a note in the User Guide; as most people only know the Windows Mindset and it'll save them some frustrations when they install as a Newbie.

My Sparkly new notebook is working very well and seems to be alot faster. I don't know if it's the jump from 1 to 4 Gb of Memory or the new internet provider; perhaps a combination. On top of that the new internet connection is over 100 Baht cheaper - Now that's what I call the Dog's Danglies!

Edited March 19, 2011 by Wentworth