Re: Choosing Hardware

On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 12:53 +0100, Stuart Prescott wrote:
> > Video:
>
> Some of the recent intel chipsets are not supported well in etch but are ok
> with lenny.
>
> compare:
> http://packages.debian.org/stable/x11/xserver-xorg-video-i810
> http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xserver-xorg-video-intel

Ok - I can cope with that. Either run lenny or perhaps a backported xserver?

> Recent ati cards are a real trap. There aren't even free 2D drivers available
> for them due to some problems with an NDA, apparently. It's worthwhile
> looking at them very carefully if you want to avoid fglrx. There are some
> experimental drivers around that are slowly coming up to speed for these
> cards, but they are certainly not in Debian atm.

Right. Certainly sounds like I want to steer clear of ATI (or at least the new ones; the rage128 in my desktop seems fine)

> > Wireless:
>
> As you said, intel is pretty easy to use. 2100 and 2200 seem fine but I don't
> know there are too many of them around any more. 3945 is supported well with
> etch but you need to run the non-free regulatory daemon which you may not
> want to do. There is a new driver for 3945 and 4695 (the iwl driver) which
> will not need the regulatory daemon as all that has been pushed into the
> firmware. It's microcode (firmware) is in sid and the driver is destined for
> mainline kernel in the next release or so. Those who use it say it's
> wonderful, but I gather it's not as easy to get working as this page implies:
>
> http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi&n=howto-iwlwifi

Ok - worth a go to get that going, with the other as a fallback/temporary solution.

> finding out about whether suspend-to-disk or -ram works beforehand can be a
> good idea. Some drivers don't like suspend (fglrx used not to but seems to
> these days, ipw3945 comes up a bit groggy but reinserting the module fixes
> that).

Checking that has to be on a per-machine basis then?

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LOL - in googling for this, I have discovered that someone else at my workplace seems to have one of these laptops, so I can interrogate him too :-)

Thanks a lot.

Richard

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