[Leaplist] Fedora 9 on Gateway P-7811FX "Centrino 2" notebook

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 9/3/08, Richard F. Ostrow Jr. <rich at warfaresdl.com> wrote:
> That's a bit distressing... I have the same wireless
> module in my laptop (intel 4965).

Understand it's the newer Intel 5100AGN.  The changes are
significant.  I'm not even sure the iwl4965 driver will even
work.  It's able to load the 5000 firmware, but that's from
June and there hasn't been a newer one.  Something tells me
that Intel is working on a new driver.

> It took me quite a while to figure out how to enable it
> (kernel starts with the RF_KILL switch enabled, but I
> managed to tie a ACPI keyboard function to toggle that).

I did notice that it cannot handle the toggle.  I.e., if I
boot with it on, it works.  If, at any time, I turn it off,
it never works again.  If it's off when I boot, it won't
come on.  I saw a note about the RF kill, as well as a
parameter to the driver module.

> I'll have to try a WPA2 network and see if it still works.

As I mentioned, it would not under Windows Vista either.  ;)

BTW, I'm already starting to run into Vista software
incompatibilities.  Sigh.  I don't use it much, but I was
hopeful I could game with a few titles that came out _after_
Vista was released.  Again, sigh.

At least UT3, Doom3 and other titles work flawlessly under
Linux.
 
> I also have a similar video card (8600 GT w/ 512).

I have the GeForce Go 8600GS in my HP Pavilion dv9000z.

The GeForce Go 8900M GTS is about 6-8x the performance
of it, and about 4-5x the performance of your Go 8600GT.

> Ironically, the support is MUCH better under linux
> than in windows. The latest drivers officially
> available under windows are over a year old, and are
> utterly incapable of running today's games.

That's because Linux workstation performance is a bigger
detail to nVidia.  They have a greater percentage of the
OEM market -- margin-wise -- when it comes to Quadro
cards running Linux than the bare minimum margins of the
GeForce running Windows.  I.e., they make over a magnitude
more of a margin on high-end Quadro models than GeForce
which are typically low-end.  It quickly adds up.

The "bonus" is that the Quadro-focus on Linux drivers
also benefits the GeForce cards which are the same driver.

Likewise, Intel support of Linux really sucks, especially
on notebooks with output and other things.  That's because
Linux is an "after-thought" with the semiconductor
engineers at Intel, whereas it's their primary focus at
nVidia.  Intel might have 3D in the MIT driver, but it's
support (let alone performance) is dismal and quite
pathetic compared to the Windows driver.  nVidia at least
releases an equal, if not superior, Linux driver compared
to their Windows one.

Again, it comes down to focus -- Intel puts a lot of people
on Linux stuff, but it's typically afterthought or server.
nVidia makes a crapload on Linux workstations, so it's at
the forefront of their decisions (in addition to server
chipset logic for AMD platforms).

> Luckily, I found a site (laptopvideo2go.com) that
> hacked at the nvidia drivers to allow me to install much
> later versions, which play nearly everything I've thrown
> at it.

Yeah, there are more and more sites like that to deal with
Microsoft support being subpar at times.

> Under linux, I get contrast control (via ACPI), HDMI
> output, and video switching (multiple monitor support)
> via ACPI.

Likewise.  On my company-provided Levono Thinkpad T60, even
with a very mature i945GM chipset, I have issues with doing
simple things like dimming the screen.  ;)

People praise Intel, but in reality, Intel's notebook support
absolutely sucks on Linux, and their performance and features
suck compared to Windows.  The former is because of Intel's
"after-thought" on Linux.  The latter is because Intel will
_not_ share it's core kernel-memory driver IP on Linux, which
is what ATI and nVidia do (via their proprietary drivers).

> My screen is not quite as high resolution, though
> (1680x1050)...

My HP Pavilion dv9000z is 1680x1050 as well.

> I traded video quality for more powerful graphics
> capability (given the choices I had at the time).

When I bought my dv9000z 2 years ago, I wanted a Dell
XPS with the Go 7800 GTX and 1920x1200.  But I didn't
want to pay $2,300 for it.

So I got the dv9000z when it had $100 instant plus
$365 in mail-in-rebates, for under $800 total.  That
was with the Go 7600GS 256MiB and 1680x1050 (instead
of 1440x900) LCD.

Gateway's prior P-68xxFX series actually had only a
1440x900 with the 8800M GTS.  But now they've upgraded
to the full 1920x1200 with the newer, lower-power
9800M GTS.

They actually had refurbished P-68xxFX models at
TigerDirect.com for $600 a month ago, but they sold
out in about 3 hours -- I was too late.  So I paid
twice as much, but for a newer model with newer
features.

> Ditto on that, too... only in my case, I intentionally blew
> it away once I
> verified that I could install Windows using the key on the
> bottom of the
> laptop and my vista disc. All the drivers are available
> on-line, I never
> installed the bloat... and honestly, the system restore
> disc from my
> laptop vendor was horrendous (4 hour install, all bloat
> *MUST* be
> installed, sloppy installer (if you allow windows to reboot
> when it asks
> the first time, you WILL have to restart the process from
> scratch (took
> 1.5 hours to reach that point))).

I leave it for technical support, along with the original
OS install.  I also want to game a bit on Windows.

Frankly, I'm really disappointed with Vista in general
compared to XP.  Not that XP is much, but it's sad when
you have a game title that came out in 2007 that can't run
on Vista.

> Given that I no longer needed the horrendous system restore
> that came with
> the laptop, I blew away all three partitions and started
> from scratch.
> Unfortunately, I think I left some funky geometry in there,
> because cfdisk
> refuses to touch it complaining about the geometry, and
> fdisk just spouts
> a warning... but I got my 10G of space back.

fdisk can force heads/sectors geometry.  I purposely did it
to my company provided Lenovo Thinkpad T60, when I upgraded
the disk from 60GB (yeah, pathetic) to 320GB.  It has the
_buggy_ IBM BIOS that can't handle Extended Int13h services.

Both NT4SP4+ and Linux 2.2+/GRUB can handle the disk geometry
being different than the BIOS.  So I changed the heads from
the 240 (actually, it's not 240 in the BIOS, but that's another
story), to 255.  Works fine, and makes the disk compatible
with "non-buggy" BIOSes.
 
> In my case, I've got an ASUS V1S: 
> Intel Core2Duo T7700
> 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050)
> Intel 4965 (abgn)
> bluetooth
> 160GB hard drive
> 2G RAM
> GeForce 8600 GT (512M)



> I run gentoo, and every device on the laptop seems to work
> perfectly. I
> also seem to be about the only one who has had no trouble
> getting it to
> work with 2.6.25+ kernels... perhaps others missed the ACPI
> options?
> (These really kill the thing when not enabled and
> configured properly).

I ran Fedora Core 6+ on my HP Pavilion dv9000z.

As I mentioned, I just move the disks with that exact same
install (now Fedora 9, upgraded 3 times), to the Gateway
P-7811FX, directly.

It was a matter of moving over the Vista partitions, as
I detailed.


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