On 12/22/05, D. Hugh Redelmeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > | From: Jonathan Berry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > | As of now, I cannot recommend any laptops. > > I presume that you meant that you cannot recommend any laptops with > AMD CPUs. Intel is pretty good about supporting Linux for the > various chips that go into Centrino (CPU, 802.11abg, graphics).
For the most part, your presumption is correct. The OP said he wanted a 64-bit laptop, and that would mean an AMD chip, I think. Even if there was an Intel laptop with an EM64T chip in it, I would not recommend it :). I have been curious about HP/Compaq's 14" laptops with the Centrino base. You'll pay a premium for the Intel chips, though. > | I don't know why there is > | a lack of AMD and nVidia laptops, there always has been it seems. > > There seems to be a flavour of the season. Perhaps because there are > so few real laptop makers (all brands of laptops seem to be made by a > small number of companies whose names are not known to the public). You are probably right here. I wonder why this is. Is it just such a cut-throat business? You have to make a good computer and sell it cheap these days. > nVidia chips were OK, not great, when the HP laptops used them. Raw > graphics performance was not cutting edge (on MS Windows -- Linux Yeah, the 440 Go was a couple generations old when the R3000z came out. I would have liked to have seen a 5700 Go in it instead. But at least it worked in Linux and got some acceleration. Enough to play most but the newest games. > doesn't matter to those folks). ATI is better for a number of > reasons, none of which matter to us Linux folks because the Linux > support is not there (yet?). If ATi delivered the same or better support for Linux as nVidia does, I think it would do great things for them. > ATI headquarters are near me (I live in Toronto). I have seen ATI ads for > Linux driver folk. But the results are not up to the nVidia level. > At one point, ATI was decently supported in Linux, but that was a few > years ago. The older cards have open-source drivers with 3D. Unfortunately, they are not up to modern 3D applications in many cases anymore. > In any case, I don't run binary drivers, so the nVidia support isn't > so great by my standards. The Intel chipsets have a lot less raw > power but are better supported by open drivers. I've seen these sorts of arguments go back and forth for a long time :). Open-source drivers would be nice, but it seems red-tape and excuses are going to prevent that from happening with any of the major GPU designers (I would exclude Intel from this group; they do CPUs :) ). Just thinking about it, if nVidia or ATi open-sourced their driver (and it worked) that company could probably capture about 90% of the Linux community for good. Unfortunately, Intel chipsets will never support AMD CPUs... > In the back of my mind, I've wondered if ATI and nVidia have poor > support for Linux because they want to keep Microsoft happy. After > all, they live and die by whatever features Microsoft supports in > Direct X. Or in "Media Center Edition" of WinXP. Or the chips > Microsoft chooses for Xboxen. I don't know. nVidia supports Linux about as well as they do Windows. The Linux driver lags behind in some of the new stuff (eg, SLI), but they have been very good the last few years. The only possible complaint about Linux support is the binary driver issue (and the occaisionaly bug that locks things up). > | Maybe Dell will get their act together and finally start selling AMD > | CPUs > > Oddly enough, Dell does sell AMD CPU chips. I don't understand why > because they sell no product that uses these chips. > http://news.com.com/Dell+is+selling+AMD+chips.+But+why/2100-1006_3-5940448.html What... *dazed stare* Okay. Well, what I meant was "start selling AMD CPUs in computers." I thought the two were the same, but obviously they aren't... Jonathan _______________________________________________ LinuxR3000 mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 Wiki at http://prinsig.se/weekee/
