Laptop related issues

[Rick Stevens]

Chuck Campbell wrote:
> I'm considering a laptop, and I've been doing research on what works and
> what doesn't.  As far as I can tell, there is no easy way to do this, other
> than;
> 
>  1)Buy what someone else has, and follow their steps for making it all work.
>  2)Buy what ever you want, and work on making it all work (this means living
>    with parts that do NOT work).
> 
> Given all of that, and not asking what to buy, I still have a couple of 
> questions :
> 
>  1)I need to connect to switches, raid boxes, etc. using a serial port.
>    Will usb ports work for this (few new laptops w/ serial ports) using
>    a converter cable?  If so, what terminal emulation s/w under Linux
>    will talk over the usb port to these kinds of devices?  Put another
>    way, can a usb port be configured and talked to as com[1-4]?

USB to serial port operatons are pretty transparent.  You use the
usb-serial module and the ports are numbered /dev/ttyUSB0 through
/dev/ttyUSB15 (by default). They work fine.  I use it to talk to all
kinds of stuff by running a USB-serial adaptor and minicom.

>  2)Are there any issues w/ RH9 and/or FC-1 and XFree86 on WUXGA displays?
>    Is this really a function of XFree86 and/or graphics drivers? 

Depends on the graphics card on the laptop.  I generally try to stay
with ATI video cards, not nVidia.  ATI has a better reputation as to
putting their API into open source.  There's an open source nVidia
driver, but it often doesn't work real well with their newer chipsets.
My current Fujitsu C220 laptop has an ATI chipset running at 1400x1050.
Works fine, lasts a long time under FC1, kernel 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl.

>  3)Anyone have any experience running RH9 / FC-1 as a base OS, and using
>    VMWare to host a WinXP pro OS as well?  Does VMWare run happily on the 
>    RH9 / FC-1 host OS?

I dual-boot WinXP Pro and FC1 on my Fujitsu C220 Lifebook via grub.
VMWare works well with RH9.  There have been some issues with FC1, but
they're getting worked out.

As to the laptops, I used to have a Sony Vaio that ran RH9 flawlessly.
My Fujitsu runs RH9 and FC1 with no problem, except that the Broadcom
802.11g wireless isn't natively suppored under either RH9 or FC1.  Not
to worry...I use ndiswrapper and the WinXP drivers and it works peachy.

I've used various Red Hat versions on a lot of laptops.  You might want
to have a peek at http://www.linux-on-laptops.com for more details on
what's available and any caveats you should be aware of.  The most
important are the video hardware, any built-in ethernet stuff and the
audio.  That's where you'll find the most incompatiblity issues.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     Never put off 'til tommorrow what you can forget altogether!   -
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