[PLUG] Testing Linux on Portables

David Kaplan davek52 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 8 02:25:48 UTC 2009


Give Mandriva 2010 a try, it's equal to Ubuntu and does a great job with
KDE!



On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 1:56 PM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net>wrote:

> On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 13:12:41 -0800 (PST)
> Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:
>
> >    If I bring a linux live disk to the store, and they let me reboot a
> > portable to test for compatibility, how can I tell if sound, video,
> > wireless, Ethernet, etc. are supported? Do I open a terminal and scan
> dmesg
> > or is there a better way?
>
> I'd use an Ubuntu live CD. Ubuntu is probably the most plug and play of
> the distros these days, so it is the most likely to autodetect and
> configure hardware.
>
> Rather than poke through dmesg I am a big fan of real world hands-on
> testing. If it works, cool. If not, on to the next machine.
>
> Sound:  The Ubuntu live CD has that drumroll when it starts. If
> you hear it, then sound is working.
>
> Video:  Before going to the store look up the specs for the
> machine to see what the native video resolution is. When you have
> booted Ubuntu go into Preferences > Display to see if the resolution
> matches. If not, move on to the next machine. Fixing video problems is
> more pain than it is worth if you haven't yet bought the machine. As a
> second consideration, lappies these days come with nVidia, ATI or Intel
> video. ATI currently has a bad reputation with Linux. nVidia has very
> good Linux support, but from everything I read they suck a lot of power
> - not cool if you need to be on battery a lot. Intel gets good reviews
> for power usage, but sometimes you can't get fancy stuff to work -
> e.g., compiz.
>
> Wireless:       If there is no ethernet cable connected, then Ubuntu
> should show an icon with bars in the upper right of the Gnome panel.
> (Sometimes the icon is a couple of monitor screens instead of the
> bars.) Click on it to see if any wireless networks were detected.
> Chances are excellent that there are a couple wireless networks
> available in the store. You don't actually have to connect to them. If
> Ubuntu sees wireless networks, then you know it found and configured
> the wireless card. There could still be issues with WPA and other
> stuff, but at least you know the wireless works at a basic level.
>
> Ethernet:       It is unusual to find an ethernet device that Linux
> does not support these days. Still, I would do lspci to see if the boot
> process found the ethernet device, and then ifconfig to see if it shows
> up. The output from those commands is short and can be read quickly in
> the store when you have a nervous sales droid peering over your
> shoulder.
>
> You might also bring a USB stick with you and write the output of dmesg
> to it. That way you can take the dmesg output home to read it in detail.
>
> Of course, before getting out my plastic I would also Google my tail
> off on the specific model to see if there are any Linux gotchas.
>
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