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Linux on UniWill 259IA (CyberPower Xplorer S4-3000)

post #1 of 16
12/15/04 at 9:06pm
Thread Starter 
Well this laptop seems to be gettin a whole lot of *wows*, and I'm really looking at it to be my next lappy to replace this 5 year saeger. It seems like a few people here have gotten one, but has any one tried throwing linux on it? My flavor of choice is gentoo, but if one distro works the others should too.
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post #2 of 16
12/15/04 at 11:10pm
I am interested in the same thing. I am trying hard to convince myself to order one tonight. I am sure not as smart as you because I gave up on gentoo. I will try MEPIS which is what I am running now. More to follow...
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post #3 of 16
12/16/04 at 10:28am
Thread Starter 
Smartness ain't got nothing to do with it - started with gentoo, stayed with gentoo

If you do get it, would you post the output of lspci or some program similar that prints out chipset and pci-bus info? I haven't found very detailed information on the motherboard chipset, onboard NIC, etc.
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post #4 of 16
12/17/04 at 3:46am
Definitely post your views on running Gentoo on this laptop. I'm only familiar with RH6, 7, & 9 (versions we have/now use at work) but getting into FreeBSD.

I was thinking of dual booting with XP Pro/Server2003 and Linux when I eventually get my lappy.


^_^_^
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post #5 of 16
12/17/04 at 1:35pm
Does the Radeon 9700 have 3D support on Linux?
I run Mandrake 10.1. I gave up on Gentoo, way too hard to install and I have been using
Linux since 1990.

Alex
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post #6 of 16
12/17/04 at 1:38pm
mmm... Gentoo on laptop is the only way to go for me (at least)
None of the other distros I tried (FC3, Slackware, Mandrake) could get everything working like I wanted it. Cutting edge software is damned hard to get for these distro, but for gentoo, a simple "ACCEPT_KEYWORDS='~x86' " line gets you anywhere you need to go. Slackware was a second favorite for me; it's swaret function matched the gentoo emerge function, however the repositories were somewhat lacking and dependencies were occaisonally a problem. FC3 and mandrake were both sheer dependency hell. Gentoo so far is the only one that has as much customizability as I need for linux.
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post #7 of 16
12/17/04 at 3:42pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by adewolf
Does the Radeon 9700 have 3D support on Linux?
I run Mandrake 10.1. I gave up on Gentoo, way too hard to install and I have been using
Linux since 1990.

Alex
I've got a real slow radeon lt pro on this saeger, and a faster radeon 9000 pro 128mb on my desktop. It can be a pain in the ass to get opengl working for ATI cards, but I've managed with both - so I expect the 9700 to be a pain, but do-able. Folks on the gentoo forum seem to agree. Here's the thread I've started at forums.gentoo.org
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post #8 of 16
12/17/04 at 6:23pm
I have my Radeon 9600 working under gentoo, but it only works with Xorg 6.7, and it's not even that useful. Very few of the 3d screen savers for linux even work completely (they throw errors, something along the lines of function not supported), and cedega won't run many games with ATI drivers.

The older radeons (9000 and less) have another set of open-source drivers available for them, so it's no big deal, but the 9600 and above needs to use the stupid ATI drivers which SUCK. Good luck getting them to work just like you want them!
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post #9 of 16
12/17/04 at 10:22pm
Thread Starter 
[quote=jamesshuang]I have my Radeon 9600 working under gentoo, but it only works with Xorg 6.7, and it's not even that useful. Very few of the 3d screen savers for linux even work completely (they throw errors, something along the lines of function not supported), and cedega won't run many games with ATI drivers.
[quote]

Now there's something I haven't heard, and'll keep in mind. I'm not to worried about getting opengl running straight off the bat as I'm not buying this as a desktop replacement and won't really be needing 3d acceleration. . . .doesn't mean I'm not going to try though
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post #10 of 16
1/16/05 at 11:35am
I have tried several distributions on my 259IA3 (SimplyMEPIS, ProMEPIS, Yoper, Kannotix, Ubuntu, etc.) and no joy. I can't seem to get the Intel Pro 2200BG wifi card working. There seem to be a couple of methods, a driver, ndiswrapper, etc. but I can't get any of them to work. There is something wrong with the bios that causes several areas right from the start. Uniwill had a newer bios, so I loaded that, but no improvement. Does anyone have Linux running with all of the HW working? I might even try Gentoo again if anyone has EVERYTHING working. Otherwise, Gentoo is too big a pain in the butt.
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post #11 of 16
1/17/05 at 3:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ling
I have tried several distributions on my 259IA3 (SimplyMEPIS, ProMEPIS, Yoper, Kannotix, Ubuntu, etc.)
Could you be a bit more descriptive about what you've tried? I know nothing (yet) about wireless networking and linux but the 2200BG card seems pretty popular. There's a bunch of threads on the gentoo forums (example: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=217688) which seem to get it working. If it's a bios problem, that's something else though.

Have you tried one of the more "hands-off" distros like Knoppix or Fedora yet? They might work some configuration magic to get it working on install.
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post #12 of 16
1/19/05 at 12:38pm

ubuntu

Hi Ling,

Could you plz tell us a little bit more about your Ubuntu adventures with this laptop. I mean, did you managed to get the following things to work with Ubuntu:

- The display WITH 1680x1050 resolution
- ACPI / APM related things like Suspend to disk, Suspend to Ram, Speedstep/cpu-throttling, Battery indication
- DVD burning (if you've this on your particular model of course)
- sound
- cardreader (guess this one is a no-go)
- custom hotkeys (mail, web, etc.)
- synaptics touchpad
- External display support

I really hope you didn't have to patch recompile all kind of software to get the thing running...

Thnx in advance
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post #13 of 16
2/22/05 at 4:30pm

Joy with SimplyMEPIS

Well, in the latest SM, which is 3.3test03, it seems that the latest ipw2200 has been integrated and my Intel Pro 2200BG miniPCI is working like a champ. I used a combination of iwpriv and iwconfig to specify 802.11g, the correct channel and essid and it is working great. I am still tweaking, but unless they break something, I am pleased. The synaptics touchpad worked right off the bat (still no tapzones) and I have the flgrx (accelerated 3D for the Radeon 9700) loaded and working. The installation loads the radeon driver which also works fine.

For new or inexperience Linux users, you really should try SimplyMEPIS before you decide on a distribution. Good luck.

As to the question on Unbuntu, when it didn't recognize my hardware, I wiped it. There is no need to go through the pain of a different distribution if it won't recognize my hardware.
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post #14 of 16
2/22/05 at 11:38pm
3.3test03 is possibly the most UNSTABLE linux distro i ever tried on my laptop, i hate to say it but it crashed more often than WinME! As of right now Ubuntu was the best with out of the box setup for me. Been using linux since 2002.
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post #15 of 16
2/24/05 at 12:09am
Interesting only issue that I have seen is with the APM/ACPI. Mine has logged itself out a couple of times and battery reports are not accurate. However, please note the title of the thread. I tried Ubuntu and it did not recognize the Intel Pro 2200BG card. You are using a SIGNIFICANTLY different laptop. I agree with you that it needs some tuning, but all of the hardware works.
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post #16 of 16
2/24/05 at 12:57am
nice. in my case none of the hardware works.

in my case:
wifi freezes and drops all the time
screen: screwed up sxga (not wxga)
keyboard: loses signal when plug/unplug a usb device
usb mouse: causes the boot process to freeze
speakers: alsa configured falsley

and the list goes on. not very stable for me.

and as far as ubuntu goes, it might not have the 2200bg card from the box, but i am pretty sure i saw the needed packages to get it working in the universe repository
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