Compatability with Linux

[magpieiain]

Hi, I'm looking for a new notebook, but it has to be compatible with Linux. Does the Crossfire II have any compatibility issues that anyone is aware of? I use OpenSUSE 10.0 and Ubuntu on my desktops and would want to install one of these.

With the OpenSUSE there may be an issue with any ATI drivers, but I can get round that I am sure....provided that there are some drivers in the first place!

Thanks,

Iain

[Taxation]

how come you are using linux.
btw find out the manufacturer and contact them, they will be more help, seeing that they made it

[magpieiain]

I use Linux becuase it is more secure and more stable than Windoze...and generally works better - in my opinion.

Who makes the laptop - I took it from the website that it was made by Novatech. If you could point me to where the manufacturer is mentioned I'll contact them.

Thanks for the reply,

Iain

[gwendes]

Depends which laptop you are referring to. Most of our new notebooks are actually manufactured by a company called Uniwill (uniwill.com (http://www.uniwill.com)), and are assembled into the various models we stock in Portchester.

We have stocked notebooks manufactured by Gericom, Micropac, Mitac and Movita.

[robthewolf]

Iain
I am not sure that it will be much help but i have successfully installed linux on two different Novatech machines. 1 laptop and 1 desktop. When buying from Novatech in the past I have tried to avoid ATI graphics cards as the drivers are not as readily available as the nVidia ones. I have only tested the two computers with knoppix and gentoo so i cant help you with suse. I honestly doubt that you will have too many problems as long as you can avoid the ATI card.
I have also done installs of Gentoo on 4 old decrepid machines (yeah they ran smoothly, and considerably faster than they did with windows) and so far 3 other non novatech (sorry, but no longer live in the uk so cant buy novatech) blazing fast brand spanking new machines. The new machines have installed nicely, the old machines were more trouble some but i got them all up and running, despite their very varied hardware. If you are having trouble with suse then consider Gentoo. Gentoo now even have a live cd to make install easier.


Technician
As i understand it before you send out any new build you test it. Why not stick in a linux boot disk and find out if there are any issues with it. Bear in mind that you only need to do this for each type of model that you create not every individual machine. My experience is currently with Gentoo, Knoppix and Kubuntu. They all have livecd isos that can be downloaded from the internet. Download, Burn, boot. If it boots ok you can then test the hardware which should be set up automatically. The programs you need are all there. you can load a terminal and ping some internet addresses. you can load firefox to see if you can use the web ok. you can load xmms (winamp) to see if you can hear sound. These programs are all part of the boot disk. I remind you that for any model that you build this only has to be done once and then you can say for sure that it has linux compatibility. Surely that is worth the small amount of trouble.

Rob

[djgandy]

I can't see why it wouldn't. I bought a nomad and it runs linux fine.

[pix8175]

Hi Iain,

I don't know if you're still looking at the Crossfire II - but I've had Ubuntu and Fedora Core 5 (64bit) running fine on mine. Even the wlan works properly.

[PeterO]

Does the Crossfire II have any compatibility issues that anyone is aware of? I use OpenSUSE 10.0 and Ubuntu on my desktops and would want to install one of these.
With the OpenSUSE there may be an issue with any ATI drivers, but I can get round that I am sure....provided that there are some drivers in the first place!
I'm running SuSE 10.0 on a Crossfire II 3200 with no problems. The X drivers from ATI work fine, sound,network and wifi all worked out of the box.
Peter

[IanMiller]

I have recently bought a Maverick 2800. I initially tried installing Fedora Core 4, and could not get past the first screen (loading the installation image caused a reboot). However as I have had problems with Core 4 on other machines including a brand new Dell tower, I decided to try Core 5.

Fedora Core 5 installed effortlessly. It autodetected everything except the monitor; I set that to "Generic LCD 1280x800" and it works fine.

[immolo]

Did you try setting the framebuffer to something different on Fedora Core 4 as that's what I normally have to do as laptop monitors don't always get autodetected correctly.

[Jasper]

If you wanted to be really helpful you could run
lshw which dumps a list of all the devices on a machine - people who want to use a non-MS OS can then check the list against the web and work out how well supported the hardware will be.

Here's the
lshw -html output from an old desktop that i'm using as a test machine atm:

http://pointless.net/~jasper/lshw.html

[Nox]

you can get pretty much anything to work on linux with the right amount of time and effort. Though I would have to disagree on the stability comment these days - 10 years ago yes, linux was infront by far, but XP is pretty decent there now.

Nox

[novanick]

i use XP Pro.Windows has changed in 10 years.

I remember my crappy 95 that would crash and turn to blue screen all the time! I almost got a mac!!!

Now my Computer is stable and runs fine! Oh Time sell computers with Linux.

[Nox]

I thought Time went bust?

Nox

[chrisbradley]

I have a "Discovery" series 17" widescreen 64Bit AMD 4000 Laptop and it runs Ubuntu Dapper (64bit version) with ease.

I have tried several Linux distros and http//www.pclinuxos.org is my favourite however there are problems with the laptop sound card and built in wireless card (wireless easily fixed with a £20 belikn USB dongle although Linksys USB also work) which is annoying but this distro works perfectly on my desktop (P4 2.4ghz, nivida card, soundblaster 512 card.)

I agree with everyone who has had enough of windows (XP expecially) because windows is so bad its not funny anymore and given the first oppotunity (running dreamweaver through emulation on Linux) I will be moving away from windows all together.

I received the Novatech booklet recently and the "Performer" range of all-in-one desktop systems (page 15) are pictured running the GNOME desktop that is used in Ubuntu and other Linux systems so it might be that Novatech have tried Linux distros on their hardware in the past.

From what I can tell from the picture, Ubuntu is the disto being used on screen.