New Laptop
Greg 'groggy' Lehey
grog at FreeBSD.org
Sat Jul 26 18:39:25 PDT 2003
[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html]
Long/short syndrome.
On Saturday, 26 July 2003 at 15:13:41 -0800, Thanjee Neefam wrote:
>
> I am considering buying a new laptop (my current one is a Dell Inspiron
> PII-233 without a CD Drive (it broke :( ))
>
> I just simply want to know if there is a particluar range of laptops that
> work better with FreeBSD. ie: they use totally standard quality hardware,
> no panic on installs, also good value for money.
>
> I have had all good experiences with my Dell Inspiron regarding
> FreeBSD, but the time has come to improve my hardware.
I have also had a number of Dell laptops and have been relatively
satisfied, so when the time came to buy a new one, I bought an
Inspiron 5100. I have just got it (3 days ago), and I've spent all
the intervening time trying to set it up. Problems include:
- The onboard Ethernet chip (Broadcomm 4400) isn't supported. A
driver is under development, but the current version is very flaky.
- Out of the box, the system will freeze up if you put in any PCMCIA
card. You can fix this one with the following entry in your
/boot/loader.conf:
hw.pci.allow_unsupported_io_range=1
This problem also affects the Inspiron 5150.
- I can't get X to start. This problem does not affect the Inspiron
5150. It appears to be a problem mapping the video BIOS, and I'm
currently working on it.
- It's missing a lot of the legacy connectors, like serial and
parallel ports and a PS/2 keyboard connector. This means that if I
want to use an external mouse or keyboard, I have to buy a USB one,
and I can't do remote kernel debugging with it. It also has no
floppy, which is only a problem if you can't get the network to work :-)
On the plus side, the price is good, and it has firewire as well as
USB.
Greg
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