11 Nov
2008
11 Nov
'08
11:41 p.m.
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Dave Phillips <dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com> wrote:
Nahh, I've used nvidia a lot and haven't had any problems at all. that
said I've never depended on 3D so I cannot speak to that.
Mark Knecht wrote:
That's the one:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01533414&cc=us&…
It's got HDMI which is nice if you own a newer TV.
With 250GB you can easily keep a Windows partition and stream NetFlix
to your 60" plasma. ;-)
Is there by any chance another number on the HP box? My HP/Compaq
laptop had a funky number like that but it also had a more simple
number - in my case F600US. This turned out to be the machine name
where as the complicated on was the one that indicated the machine
coupled with the disk, memory, etc. (Or so I think...)
The only other number that seems relevant is the part number FS185UA. Google
turned up some mentions on Spanish sites, but they weren't really
informative. However, they did indicate that Linux runs on the machine, so
there's some good news. The first review I found wasn't overly kind:
http://review.zdnet.com/product/laptops/hp-g60-125nr/33360964
but I wouldn't personally care too much about that.
Yep, I read that one. It got me wondering, hence the email.
I guess based on the way you purchased that you
weren't able to boot
it with an install disk?
No, they weren't very amenable to the idea at Best Buy. I don't usually
purchase stuff there, but I was happy enough with the Westinghouse monitor I
bought there (soon to be replaced by another one of those Samsungs you
recommended).
My guess is that the specs will turn out to be
'ok'. Not great, but
ok. That's pretty similar to mine when I bought it a year and a half
ago. Probably your machine is an nvidia chipset and probably it's
going to work fine in Linux. Possibly the nvidia video card will be a
problem with the real-time kernel, but possibly not. I think lots of
people use nvidia and do fine. In my mind, for what little I know
about what you really do Dave, I'd guess the video chip issue is the
risky thing, and then ONLY if you use the nvidia driver. Probably not
much of an issue at all if you can get by with the Xorg nvidia driver.
Alas, 3D is essential to my current work with the AVSynthesis program. I'm
using nVidia cards in both my desktop machines, and they're running rt
kernels. Not the most recent kernels, but I've had little or no tangential
problem with the nVidia closed-source driver. From other reports it would
seem I'm a lucky guy.
Btw, I plan to check out Arch and Ubuntu 8.10 with this machine. Geoff
Beasley swears by Arch, and I liked what I saw when I did some reviews of
software running on Ubuntu 8.04. IIRC you're a Gentoo user, but please opine
on either of those systems if you know them.
I don't use either and personally had so much trouble with
Redhat/Fedora package management that I'd never go back to systems
that mix libraries. It never worked well for me. Some important
product like Ardour or Rosegarden would release a new version and I'd
find that the binary didn't match my system and building it was a
hassle. Building from source on Gentoo is trivial - it just takes time
which I have lots of so it doesn't bother me.
I looked recently at Arch based on Geoff's comments but couldn't get
up the energy to try it out. Maybe I should and go through it at the
same time you do...
Don't know what to tell you. Maybe you can
still go back to the store,
or another store, with the Linux install disks and try things out
without opening this box. I suspect that with the economy being so bad
that you're going to see LOTS of laptop deals over the next few
months. If you need something this week that won't help but I'm sure
there will be lots of low price machines out there.
I've been laptopless (that sounds a bit dodgy, eh?) for a while, and I do
want one asap.
Good luck. If you decide to keep it you can be
assured that you're
going to get LOTS of support from LAU members, but we can't fix real
problems with support by the kernel if it isn't there.
Thanks, Mark, the assistance and encouragement is greatly appreciated. I'm
going to sleep on a decision, but I'm leaning favorably towards opening it
up in the morning. I'll post again tomorrow with the news.
Best,
dp