Re: [SLUG] linux / windows

From: Mike Branda (mike@wackyworld.tv)
Date: Wed Nov 16 2005 - 16:57:23 EST


On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 16:12 -0500, James Haydon wrote:
> > John,
> >
> > I would bet he's referring to the bleeding edge hardware thing as a
> > whole. For instance, SuSE 9.3 64 bit was a dog and required me to set
> > up a custom kernel to fix a double rate clock tick, and pass specia
> > boot parameters to the GRUB to allow the broadcom chipset to work 64 bit
> > on my Dad's Compaq r4000. It has an Athlon 64 in it with the Radeon
>
> I been running a R4100 for a couple of monthes and the only problems I have to
> deal with are the time and the sound. I have to run alsaconf evertime I boot
> it.

Are you running 32 or 64 bit mode?

> > based mobo and the 200m chipset. Mucho problems with that ATI hunk of
> > _insert_something_derrogatory_. Before SuSE 10 was available, I also
> > tried Ubuntu hoary and breezy. Hoary had the same problems as SuSE 9.3
> > and the cluster 3 of breezy had volume label issues to the point that it
> > wouldn't even find the hard disk after the initial install.
>
> I install opensuse 10 beta 2 because Gentoo 2005.1 suck so bad. I could not
> get X running, Craig. I installed Gentoo on a G3 laptop with no problem.
> (let the flame wars begin)

> > The saving grace was SuSE 10. The kernel choice included in 10 has a
> > massive pile of 64 bit improvements. It installed perfectly. No
> > problems. No funky kernel options. Although _no-one_ can get DRI and
> > that stupid ATI 200m working right without having to disable the
> > dedicated 128mb "sideport" video RAM in lieu of shared video RAM in 64
> > bit mode. That's ATI's fault though. Bug in the Linux driver.
>
> I have not heard of this.

The vesa drivers work fine for the display at the 1280 x 800 widescreen
resolution but if you want the DRI and 3d accel stuff it doesn't work
right yet for this particular chipset. Installing the ati proprietary
drivers and running fglrxinfo shows generic vesa no accel gl no dri and
fglrxgears/fgl_glxgears get a framerate of like 112 fps. If you monkey
with the bios (disable the dedicated video RAM) and get the third oldest
version of the driver, DRI works. But who wants to ditch 128mb of video
RAM so they can reduce the 256mb of system ram?? The only reason you
have to do this is that ati didn't write their proprietary linux driver
right. There have been bug reports submitted and hopefully there will
be a fix soon.

> >
> > You have to admit that inherently Linux takes a bit to figure out new
> > hardware. At the same time, the faster kernel development (over 2.4
> > k's) has led to quicker hardware compatibility.
> >
>
> The only other pain bit was getting the broadcom wireless to work. I used the
> Gentoo to get the Windoze drives ndiswrapper made it less painful
> >
>

Yeah, I used ndiswrapper with the 64 bit device driver.

My personal Dell truemobile card uses the broadcom chipset also and I
use ndis for it too.

Mike Branda Jr.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked
Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages
posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 20:11:26 EDT