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8204, Linux and ATI Graphics Card?

post #1 of 4
2/10/06 at 12:08pm
Thread Starter 
Hi, I'm going to wipe the HD clean and install linux on my 8204.

Fedora Core 5 specifically (well the Beta version).

I expect there to be a little pain involved.

Anybody have information about the ATI card?
ATI Mobility® Radeon™ X1600 512 MB HyperMemory™ with 256 MB of dedicated GDDR3 VRAM presents stunningly clear graphics for the ultimate visual experience

Also, I realize the Travelmate probably comes with a Restore disk.

Does that mean I can create several partitions for doing dual boot?

I realize that Core Duo wireless drivers won't be released for another month, but I'm more concerned about the graphics card.

Anybody have thoughts?

Robert Nagle
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post #2 of 4
2/10/06 at 12:13pm
Before you start I want to make sure that you make the restoration discs at the very start of your laptop ownership. They aren't provided for you but instead are on a partition of the harddrive. As for running linux, you'll be able to but ati driver's have never been that great for linux from what I've heard .

I wisht hat I could add more but I can't, good luck though
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post #3 of 4
2/10/06 at 1:57pm
Get a liveCD and verify that Linux will even run at all on the 8204 before you wipe the drive!

My 8104 will not even boot Linux due to a buggy ACPI implementation. There are workarounds involving using the intel ACPI compiler tools to build a new sam database and hacking the linux install to point to the file.

Otherwise its boot everytime with NOACPI NOAPIC and run with terrible batterly life. On the plus side, Intel supplies native linux wifi drivers and the ATI linux drivers are getting better (although nowhere near as good as Nvidia's linux drivers).
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post #4 of 4
2/10/06 at 3:07pm
Thread Starter 

Follow up

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon
Other information about Radeon and linux nonsupport.

talked to ATI's presales. They said that their linux driver almost never supports mobile devices, which sounds a bit crazy.

Here are my choices:

Go for dell's extremely overpriced nvidias or
rely on Intel's integrated graphics.

I'm no video game player, but I will be doing some audio/video editing. Though actually this won't be my main machine for doing video editing. It's a gee-wouldn't-that-be-nice-if-I-can-get-it-to-work-on linux.

Interestingly, in the video production world, having the latest and greatest video card is not the most important thing, but having zippy hard drives and processors and RAM is.

(I'm actually thinking of going with a less top-of-the-line model just to eliminate the pain in the necks).

gosh, it would be great to try ubuntu Live cd to see what hardware is working correctly. unfortunately my city Houston doesn't have any at local stores.

Another question. Anybody see if the builtin webcam works in linux?
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