# centrino laptop

## flokno

hello!

i plan to buy a centrino laptop before summer.

will linux work on it?

i won't need special powermanagement functions because i will only work on places where i can plug-in.

thanks, flo

----------

## AlterEgo

Not yet.

Intel has announced linux support.

Sorry I don't have time to find the announcement back for you  :Smile: 

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## flokno

hmm, i have seen this announcement but i don't think that i can relay on this information.

i just want to know if i could use this kind of computers even if there is limited powermanagement support.

i just need network, maybe wireless lan.

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## azote

I think you will be able to use the wireless... 

if is a normal  build in ...

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## xmit

Centrino appoints a certain combination of processor and chipset.

Please read what Solomon Peachy from AbsoluteValue System posted recently in his mailinglist at http://www.linux-wlan.com:

"Intel hasn't decided what they will do with their Centrino wireless chip. No specs are forthcoming for *any* of the new technologies in the Centrino platform, but they do have a binary-only ACPI module to control the new speedstep stuff in the processor.  I hope they'll do the RightThing with the wireless adapter."

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## jbrown

kernel 2.5 supports the power saving features

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## flokno

actually i have a bit of time left and i hope that there will be tests with linux somewhere out in the internet.

i don't want to wait until intel supports linux, i want that linux supports intel (centrino in that case).

thanks for your informations.

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## seth77

Hi

is there something new on this? Has anyone buyed such a notebook and tested to install linux on it?

greetz alex

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## taskara

Isn't this chip supposed to be designed for Microsoft's new Paladium system ?

and hence there is no linux support yet, and who knows if it will come.

microsoft and intel are buddy buddy.

if only there was even ONE decent amd notebook. SIGH..

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## flokno

for german speaking people:

http://www.pro-linux.de/cgi-bin/NB2/nb2.cgi?show.5355.2010.21000210013.

short english translation: (original article in ct 07/03)

laptop acer travelmate 800 (the one i want to have)

bluetooth and wlan don't work, and the cooler starts earlier than when using windows.

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## Cluaran

I'm currently in the early stages of installing 1.4_rc4 on my Vaio Z1, Sony's new Centrino machine. I'll let you know how things progress.

I'm emerging KDE 3.1.1a at the moment, probably be another couple of hours before that is done.  :Smile: 

M

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## flokno

it would be cool if you can post how long it took to emerge kde.

i can compare it to the speed of my athlons somehow then.

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## Cluaran

It took 3 hrs to emerge XFree86 4.3

It has 11 ebuilds left to emerge out of a total of 91 to complete the installation of KDE 3.1.1a after almost 11 hours.

(I'm using a default USE setting with the addition of freetype, gd, mysql and XML).

One benchmark result I can give you. I run RC5-72 on all my systems. The 1.5GHz Pentium M is comparable to a 2.6GHz P4 according to distributed.net's database. (My Dual Athlon MP 2000+ box is over 2.5 times as fast at RC5-72 but cracking keys isn't exactly a definitive speed comparison.)

M

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## Cluaran

emerge kde finished in less than 14hrs. (I've got another machine here which has been on the kde components of an emerge -u world for over 24 hrs!)

kdm worked first time, I'm posting this using Konqueror!   :Very Happy: 

Today's challenges are sound and power management, (I've read here that no Vaios support APM so looks like I'm heading down the ACPI route).

M

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## flokno

thanks for progressinfo.

it seems that 14hrs is quite fast first because many of this 91 packets are deps, kde only has like 10 or 15(?). i remember only kde 3.1.1 and no deps took like 18hrs or so on my athlon1000 with 256mb ddram.

how about the cpu cooler? is it always on due to lack of speedstepsupport?

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## asubedi

Cluaran said:

 *Quote:*   

> I've read here that no Vaios support APM so looks like I'm heading down the ACPI route). 
> 
> 

 

The docs from sony says that bios has ACPI power management thingies...So, ACPCI is the way  to go for VAIOs...

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## Cluaran

I now have Alsa sound, (only worked properly after enabling ACPI, wasted a bit of time there). The DVD is also working nicely, Xine and all it's plugins!  Yet to tackle CD burning.

With all the ACPI options compiled into the kernel, (I wasted an hour or so trying to get the various modules to load, probably doing something stupid, I'll look at the problem again another day), I now have the following files/directories in /proc/acpi: - ac_adaptor, alarm, battery, button, dsdt, embedded_controller, event, fadt, fan, info, power_resource, processor, sleep and thermal_zone.

The fan directory is empty, if I throttle the CPU, the fan still runs but it blows cooler air.

I just need the tools to manage or monitor /proc/acpi now. The Klaptop utility is a starting point I guess. Is their anything else?

I'm also loading the Sony PIO driver module which, along with the spicctrl and sonypid ebuilds, should hopefully allow me to do something with the programmable function keys. I can dim the screen from the command line with spicctrl, I haven't had the time to try anything else.

M

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## Cluaran

I have, of course, forgotten to enable acpid!   :Embarassed: 

Anyone used vaiod?

M

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## asubedi

what is vaiod? i'm emerging acpid right now...

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## flokno

infos i read in some newsgroup:

The Pentium M CPU is no problem. And Alan Cox's kernel has the support for

SpeedStep and for the support chipset (IDE and so on). So the wireless is

really the big question.

For the first Linux installation report see the X10 model at

http://tuxmobil.org/samsung.html

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## Cluaran

 *asubedi wrote:*   

> what is vaiod? i'm emerging acpid right now...

 

Interesting one that! There appears to be more than one.

There is one mentioned here in the forums: -

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=4526&highlight=vaiod

but the link gives a blank page.

Or this one, which is Japanese: -

http://homepage2.nifty.com/TARAI/program/products/vaiod/

Unfortunately the documentation which comes with it is also in Japanese!

Or this one (bottom of the page): -

http://www.winterwolf.co.uk/linuxsw.php

Can't see me being capable of doing any significant testing tonight, I had to come in to work at 06:30 this morning!   :Confused: 

M

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## Carpe Noctem

What is so good about the centrino line?

I hear they have power management functionality and something to do with wireless internet.... but still

I looked at a centrino laptop, brand new it was only 1.4 ghz, my friend just bought a dell inspiron 2.7 ghz.. the battery life is 6 hours and 8 hours depending on the battery he uses...

The speed you give up for a centrino....

Is it really worth it ?

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## flokno

the advantage for me is that the cpu cooler is not used as long as cpu isn't under load (which should be most of the time).

i assume it will be on with this dell laptop.

cpu power is not that important to me.

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## Bobke

I bought myself an Acer Centrino 800LCI laptop a week ago with a 1.3Ghz Pentium M processor, 40G, 512Mb RAM, Radeon 9000 Mobility Vid card.

My history:  :Smile: 

I first tried to start installing Gentoo with the unstable live cd, it booted without any problem, but the network wouldn't work.  I have a Broadcom Corporation 4400 NIC.  No network, no gentoo.  Booting the 1.4 RC3 stable booted as smooth, and this time with network, so I could start installing now  :Smile: 

The first thing I noticed about the performance of this pc was when bootstrapping.  In the INSTALL it says that in the writers case, his Celeron 1200 did about 2 hours over this. So I monitored it  :Smile: 

It took 1 hour and 24 minutes to complete... but I'll come back to this later  :Wink: 

I installed everything the normal gentoo way up untill I had kde installed. Honestly I don't remember how long it took, as I went to sleep after typing "emerge kde". 

Then came the biggest problem. Get X to show itself to me. Messed a full day around with this untill I read somewhere to install XFree86 4.3 and use the radeon module.  Some unmasking/emerging was done, X/KDE was up and running.  By the way I used march=pentium4 without a problem.

From here on I amused myself configurating the system (especially hdparm). At a certain time my eyes crossed a single line in /proc/cpuinfo that said "cache size : 0 KB" and inevitably, I started looking for a different kernel.  I tried 2.5.67 again, and the cache was enabled this time, but as with the unstable live cd there was no network.  In the kernel the module got renamed from bcm4400 to b44 and is marked experimental for some reason I don't know. Power functions do work here.  I tried mm-sources and gs-sources, no luck with the networking modules of these either.  :Sad: 

Back to the performance, if you read this carefully you might have noticed that I mentioned the bootstrap proces was done on a celeron 1200 in "about 2 hours" time. My 1.3Ghz Pentium M did this in about 1 hour, 24 minutes... WITHOUT any L2 cache !

(about the L1 I don' t know).

A few interesting points:

Isn't the celeron a pentium4 but with less cache?

The Pentium M (Centrino) has 1Mb L2 Cache (pentium4 only 512Kb) wich takes up 50 of 77 million transistors.

I think I'll have to be patient, but I know my pc is gonna get a whole lot faster in the future  :Wink: [/b]

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## Cluaran

 *Carpe Noctem wrote:*   

> 
> 
> The speed you give up for a centrino....
> 
> Is it really worth it ?

 

It's not just the GHz, it's what you (or the CPU) does with them!   :Smile: 

I've seen various quotes, the most common of which is that the 1.6 GHz Pentium M performs better than a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 M. So my 1.5 GHz Pentium M should be better than a 2.4 GHz 4M. My brief experience with the machine suggests that that is not an unreasonable comparison. I haven't given up any speed, and I have a lighter, better specced, more attractive machine. Just my opinion of course!   :Cool: 

M

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## flokno

bobke: thanks for info, maybe i'm gonna get this acer travelmate.

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## wilburpan

 *Cluaran wrote:*   

> [It's not just the GHz, it's what you (or the CPU) does with them!  
> 
> I've seen various quotes, the most common of which is that the 1.6 GHz Pentium M performs better than a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 M. So my 1.5 GHz Pentium M should be better than a 2.4 GHz 4M.

 

Isn't this the type of argument that Mac fans (myself included) have been making for some time?   :Very Happy: 

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## Cluaran

 *wilburpan wrote:*   

> Isn't this the type of argument that Mac fans (myself included) have been making for some time?  

 

I was thinking more along the lines of AMD and their branding i.e. the XP2X00+ and MP2X00+ lines. (I've got an SMP box with two MP2000+ which would have cost a lot more if I'd used Intel CPUs to get the same performance.)

Personally, I'd love to own a Dual G4 box. (I'd probably dual boot OSX and Gentoo of course.) I've never seen the point in the various hardware/OS disputes. I've worked with and supported Mac, Intel, Sparc, Alpha, MacOS, Windows, Netware, Solaris, AIX, HP/UX etc. I have preferences as to what I spend my own money on of course!   :Smile: 

M

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## vert

Bobke (or anybody else), did you manage to get the L2 cache working yet? In the near future I hope to buy an Acer too so I'm very interested  :Very Happy: 

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## flokno

i guess l2 cache should work anyway though it is not recognized.

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## poisson

 *flokno wrote:*   

> i guess l2 cache should work anyway though it is not recognized.

 

I think you're right. I own a TM803 (I have no benchmark for you, sorry).

and I noticed the "DMA mode off" while booting with 1.4 rc4 due to chipset mis-detection. 

This certainly explains why Bobke installation on centrino is only 30% faster than than the celeron one ...

A.

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## flokno

 *Quote:*   

> I think you're right. I own a TM803 (I have no benchmark for you, sorry).
> 
> and I noticed the "DMA mode off" while booting with 1.4 rc4 due to chipset mis-detection.
> 
> This certainly explains why Bobke installation on centrino is only 30% faster than than the celeron one ...

 

do you mean though there is l2cache it's only 30% faster or though is hasn't?

i don't think that it will be faster than this.

dma mode is only used when accessing the hdd afaik.

-- flo

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## poisson

 *flokno wrote:*   

> do you mean though there is l2cache it's only 30% faster or though is hasn't?
> 
> i don't think that it will be faster than this.
> 
> dma mode is only used when accessing the hdd afaik.
> ...

 

DMA is really important, expecially during massive hd i/o, like a gentoo installation or a kernel build.

I hope pentium-m 1.6 be more than 100% faster than a celeron 1.2:

higher bus speed, increased cache size, better op. prediction handling

(in conjunction with a radeon9000 and 512MBram) make winxp fly.

I'm installing latest kernel development version mainly to detect

the i855 chipset and fly higher and higher ... stay tuned  :Smile: 

A.

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## taskara

so is it worth going a pentium -M 1.8< or sticking to pentium 4 - 2.4> laptop?

Intel did say that linux support would be officially available SOMETIME down the track.. who knows when tho..

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## azote

 *taskara wrote:*   

> so is it worth going a pentium -M 1.8< or sticking to pentium 4 - 2.4> laptop?
> 
> Intel did say that linux support would be officially available SOMETIME down the track.. who knows when tho..

 

well let me tel you my experience...

I had a green alienware 2.8Ghz 1Gig ram  and all the other cool stuff... and .. that laptop... would get so hot!!! that my hads where swetting will playing ut2003  and bo

so after a week of having it .. I return it .. and got a toshiba 5205 (2Ghz M) from pricegrabber.com 

and now im very happy !! in it has more stuff than that alienware pice of SXXXT 

by the way the battery last more time in linux that on windows..!! YEAH!!

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## taskara

wow.. cool..

so is the pentium-M as fast as your alienware laptop 2.8Ghz?

how is the overall feel?

what did you compile gentoo with? -march=pentium3 ?

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## poisson

 *azote wrote:*   

>  .. and got a toshiba 5205 (2Ghz M) 

 

... that's a pentium4 mobile, not a pentium-m ...

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## taskara

ahhhhh IC  :Smile: 

thought this thread was all about pentium-M, soz!  :Confused: 

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## azote

 *taskara wrote:*   

> wow.. cool..
> 
> so is the pentium-M as fast as your alienware laptop 2.8Ghz?
> 
> how is the overall feel?
> ...

 

sorry I meant pemtium-m

I dont know if is faster... (I dont think it is, looks the same to me) .. but you will see the diference in overhead!!! and in baterry life... trust me you want battery life .. at first i didnt care but now i do.

also the alien ware cost me $1000 more and didnt had a dvdr drive and the toshiba did  :Smile: 

I compile my hole system with -march=pentium4 and it working great!  :Smile: 

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## taskara

cool.. so (just to confirm) is it a "pentium 4-M" or "pentium M" ?

and do you have a link to it, I might check it out!

ta  :Smile: 

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## seth77

hi

it can only be a pentium4-m, because the highest pseed for an pentium-m is 1,6Ghz  :Very Happy: 

greetz alex

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## taskara

ahh but ofcourse!  :Smile: 

actually isn't there a 1.8?  :Wink: 

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## azote

yeah is a pemtium 4-m  (the lettler m stands for mobile)

I would recommend to check the "toshiba laptops" ... in my house all my family has one laptop .. (HP,Dell and my toshiba) and turns out that with the toshiba You get more for the money...

in my case: wireless build-in,dvdr,60G hd,512 ram,nvidia gforce4 460m (64mb),cpad (is like an LCD in the mousepad),integrated subwofer, remotecontrol,and many more cool stuff.

the only down thing is that there is no floppy drive build in.

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## taskara

BAH! who needs a floppy anyway!  :Wink: 

so anyway, I'm thinking of getting a Pentium-M laptop (without all the wireless crap, so not a Centrino, just pentium-m)

anyone know the status of the linux support for it at this stage ?

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## poisson

 *taskara wrote:*   

> anyone know the status of the linux support for it at this stage ?

 

Kernel 2.4.20 does not detect L2 cache of pentium-m.

Development version 2.5.68 does it, and has a preliminary

speedstep support.

I cannot confirm this, since all my tests with 2.5.68 failed to boot  :Sad: 

Intel is still refusing to release a driver or specs for centrino wireless element.

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## taskara

hmm yeah I figured intel would hold off on that.

so 2.6 kernel series should have decent support for it.

I've read it's basically a new generation pentium 3 with pentium 4 instruction sets, so it should compile with -march=pentium4 one would think.

how's the battery life on that thing ?

and what's the overall feeling? is it fast? or feels slow compared to a p4 laptop?

thanks for your input!

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## azote

im telling you, I have a pemtium-4 2Ghz (desktop computer) and my laptop goes as fast as that one!!

so I havent notice any slow down!! It acts just like my desktop pc (2Ghz also but pentium 4)

Well the battery last 3 hours in my case (toshiba).. but the fist one that I had (alienware) only lasted 45 min!!!

I was running 2.5.68 until yesterday .. I change it to 2.4.21 with acpi patch because vmware was lockingup every 35 min .. 

but every thing else in 2.5.68 was running sweet... the speedstep support was running nice...

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## Owiber

I think they're talking about pentium-m's, not pentium-4m's

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## vert

So just to get back to my original question   :Wink:   Is the L2 cache on a centrino pentium m working but not recognized? Or is it disabled? Anybody figured that out yet? Also, what march should/can be used to built? I guess I'm still going for the centrino version, not the p4 version.   :Wink: 

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## artooman

 *taskara wrote:*   

> Isn't this chip supposed to be designed for Microsoft's new Paladium system ?
> 
> and hence there is no linux support yet, and who knows if it will come.
> 
> microsoft and intel are buddy buddy.
> ...

 

Microsoft and Intel are NOT buddy buddy.  There is no such thing as "Wintel", and Intel has to deal with the Microsoft freight train just like anyone else.  And The Centrino is NOT designed for Palladium.

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## azote

 *artooman wrote:*   

>  *taskara wrote:*   Isn't this chip supposed to be designed for Microsoft's new Paladium system ?
> 
> and hence there is no linux support yet, and who knows if it will come.
> 
> microsoft and intel are buddy buddy.
> ...

 

sorry man .. but I second taskara..

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## taskara

 :Smile: 

I guess really only intel and microsoft know  :Wink: 

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## poisson

 *azote wrote:*   

> sorry man .. but I second taskara..

 

People told  Linux will never run on a TCPA-equipped system.

But I installed successfully Gentoo on a Centrino,  that make me think:

1) Centrino may not have such chip.

2) People lied.

3) The chip works in a different way.

IBM declared the presence of a "secure chip" on its centrinos.

Other vendors say nothing.

Intel directive speak something about mobile & security chip starting

from second quarter 2003, but never on Banias/Centrino.

Meanwhile I'm very happy with my new Acer TM 803LCi.

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## azote

 *poisson wrote:*   

>  *azote wrote:*   sorry man .. but I second taskara.. 
> 
> People told  Linux will never run on a TCPA-equipped system.
> 
> But I installed successfully Gentoo on a Centrino,  that make me think:
> ...

 

that Acer looks cool!! the only thing that I dont like is that the video is ati ... and not nvidia...

I had a alienware and I had some trouble with ati drivers to split my screen with the monitor....

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## poisson

 *azote wrote:*   

> that Acer looks cool!! the only thing that I dont like is that the video is ati ... and not nvidia...
> 
> I had a alienware and I had some trouble with ati drivers to split my screen with the monitor....

 

My choice was Dell or Acer, I choose the last one because dell was

nvidia equipped... expensive and too difficult to fine-tune such card.

I must admit problems with radeon 9000, there's no way to make

it run accelerated, but I think the problem is the agp chipset not

recognised by the kernel 2.4.40  :Sad: 

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## flokno

 *Quote:*   

> I must admit problems with radeon 9000, there's no way to make it run accelerated, but I think the problem is the agp chipset not recognised by the kernel 2.4.40

 

i don't think so: when i tested the ati radeon 9000 in a friend's notebook it was 10 times faster than my matrox millenium g550 with glxgears.

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## artooman

 *poisson wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Meanwhile I'm very happy with my new Acer TM 803LCi.

 

Did you manage to install Gentoo on that Centrino notebook?  Have you had any major problems (like no ethernet)?

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## poisson

 *flokno wrote:*   

> i don't think so: when i tested the ati radeon 9000 in a friend's notebook it was 10 times faster than my matrox millenium g550 with glxgears.

 

Do you remember the notebook model and the kernel version?

Module agpgart (required by "radeon") refuses to load ... so glxgears give me only 300fps.

 *artooman wrote:*   

> Did you manage to install Gentoo on that Centrino notebook?  Have you had any major problems (like no ethernet)?

 

Ethernet works fine, wireless don't.

I planned to install 2.5.68 kernel today, hoping to increase performance.

[EDIT]

Tested 2.5.68; disaster :(

Radeon:

```
(WW) RADEON(0): [agp] AGP not available

(II) RADEON(0): Direct rendering disabled]
```

AGP:

module agpgart/intel-agp still does not recognise 855PM

```

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
```

Ethernet:

In 2.5.68 module name changed from bcm4400 to b44. Device is successfully detected, but netwok does not work; probably I need to update net-tools or something similar.

CPU:

Now 1MB L2 cache has been identified, but:

```
cpufreq: Intel(R) SpeedStep(TM) for this processor not (yet) available.
```

Sound:

Tried to switch to alsa with no luck.

ACPI:

Works better than under 2.4.20.

Firewire:

Error while building the kernel, so I disabled the feature

----------

## tHeoo

Just a couple of notes on the centrino problems mentioned:

One might try the binary only driver Intel makes available, which is said to work also with the 855 chipset:

```

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Detail_Desc.asp?agr=Y&ProductID=955&DwnldID=5117

```

In addition, it is said in other documents that Alan Cox made preliminary support for the Centrino enhanced speedstep technoology available in his kernel.

Go on, make Centrino work on Linux; I'll wait a couple of months and buy myself such a cheap and beautiful Acer 800LCi! By the way: has it a 5400 rpm hard disk?

Cheers,

Maarten

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## poisson

 *tHeoo wrote:*   

> Just a couple of notes on the centrino problems mentioned:
> 
> One might try the binary only driver Intel makes available, which is said to work also with the 855 chipset:
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Thanks for the link but, like the 2.5.68 kernel there is still NOT support for 855PM.

I saw a patch released few days ago about this chipset, I'll test soon.

Alan Cox patch for speedstep is "very preliminary", it only detects the feature, but nothing else.

Acer says nothing about hard disk (only that is has Anti-Shock Protection), so I presume it is a 4200rpm.

----------

## flokno

 *Quote:*   

>  *Quote:*   flokno wrote:
> 
> i don't think so: when i tested the ati radeon 9000 in a friend's notebook it was 10 times faster than my matrox millenium g550 with glxgears. 
> 
> Do you remember the notebook model and the kernel version?
> ...

 

notebook: targa visionary amd 2200+, 40gb, ati radeon 9000 64mb, 15" 1024x768, 512mb

linux: knoppix 3.2, don't know what kernel (think 2.4.20) and i can't test it again at the moment because i gave him my cd.

glxgears resulted in 2000+ fps.

my matrox in my desktop: 200 fps.

----------

## poisson

 *flokno wrote:*   

> notebook: targa visionary amd 2200+, 40gb, ati radeon 9000 64mb, 15" 1024x768, 512mb
> 
> linux: knoppix 3.2, don't know what kernel (think 2.4.20) and i can't test it again at the moment because i gave him my cd.
> 
> glxgears resulted in 2000+ fps.
> ...

 

Ahh an AMD... this confirms my theory: while kernel does not detect

Intel AGP chipset, I can forget DRI acceleration ...

----------

## supenguin

Not meaning to start a flamewar, but has anyone compared Centrino laptops to Transmeta laptops?  Thinking mostly of battery life, performance, and price here.  And Linux support of course  :Wink: 

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## poisson

 *supenguin wrote:*   

> Not meaning to start a flamewar, but has anyone compared Centrino laptops to Transmeta laptops?  Thinking mostly of battery life, performance, and price here.  And Linux support of course ;-)

 

Here is my analysis, even if I don't think it's the right place to post it.

One night on internet searching for comparisons between crusoe and centrino; results: none found. Why? They simply are not comparable.

To force an indirect comparison:

- P3-M 1.2GHz vs Crusoe 867MHz performance rate is 3:1

- P-M 1.6GHz vs P3-M 1.2GHz performance rate 2:1 (at least :-)

- Transmeta released a 933MHz. 

Result is that Pentium-M 1.6GHz performances are about 5 times  than the fastest Crusoe.

Prices are similar, between 2000 and 2500 Euro.

Crusoe consumes less energy, but battery life mostly depend on laptop equipment (display, wireless, burner and so on).

Advantages for Crusoe are linux support and low temperatures.

I'm sorry for Linus, but transmeta laptops did not encounter my needs.

----------

## poisson

Finally kernel 2.4.21-rc1-ac4 contains support for intel 855PM agp bridge.

Now DRI with radeon9000m works; glxgears returns 1436fps ... not so fast but better than previous 260fps  :Smile: 

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## crazy-bee

I have the Acer TM803, too, and it is really nice. I dont have network yet, because I cant find the broadcom to be supported in the Alan Cox kernel. I think I'll go with gaming-sources - which has support for the broadcom - and then change to Alan Cox to have the 855 supported. We'll see. Hopefully the WLAN will get drivers soon!

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## hulk2nd

hi there mister Cluaran,

i plan to buy myself a z1sp (same or nearly the same one that you own). what are your experiences with this smooth notebook? how's the compatibility with gentoo? are you happy and satisfy with your one?

greetz, hulk

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## Cluaran

 *hulk2nd wrote:*   

> hi there mister Cluaran,

 

Hi there,

I'm more than happy with my Z1SP, it is a lovely machine, and meets most of my requirements. Only thing I wish it had is an interchangable hard drive. I may buy a USB2/Firewire external unit I can use with my other machines.

Gentoo runs on it pretty well, tho' I don't have every hardware component working yet.

I've been trying out alternative kernels this weekend, something new for me, to get support for the Intel 855 chipset. This will give me agpgart support and hopefully DRM will work.

I merged and compiled the ac-sources and development-sources without much success so far. I can't get either to boot completely yet, they boot lock up.

I have managed to get a working mm-sources kernel but I'm still trying to get all the options I need to compile into a bootable kernel. When I add some things I get a lock up.

Anyway, off to try another compile!  :Smile: 

M.

----------

## ElCondor

Since someone broke in my car last night and stole (beside other things like my digicam, zaurus, radio ...) my Sony Vaio, I have to buy a new Notebook.  :Mad: 

Since I have to buy something new, I'm rather interested in the Acer Travelmate 800/803. What I need functional is:

 LAN 10/100 MBit onboard

 Graphics (AGP/DRM/DRI)

 PCMCIA support

 ACPI at least with battery status

 Display must be dimm-able

 as silent as possible - meaning not having the fan running during ordinary typing/surfing/...

wlan and bluetooth are not important (at the moment, I can wait for drivers). modem would be fine, but not necessary. 

so, will I be happy with the Acer / Centrino?  :Rolling Eyes: 

* ElCondor (still pissed off) pasa *

----------

## artooman

ElCondor,

I would also consider the Dell d600.  You can get a good deal through dell small business (just pretend you are a business) by selecting no office suite and by downgrading to winXP Home.  I saved at least $400 by doing this.  Also, check bensbargains.net for common 10% off Dell Small Business coupons.

Anyway, I just got mine, and it is extremely quiet and Linux friendly (other that this centrino wireless business).  I am running kernel versin 2.5.70.

----------

## hulk2nd

hi there again, mister cluaran!

i am now the proud owner of a sony vaio z1sp and it would be great if you could answer me the following two questions:

- which cpu flags do you use?

- which kernel do you have installed and did you patch the kernel in any way?

ps: as far as i can see it until now, it is the loveliest machine i've ever seen.   :Very Happy: 

edit

did you ever tried something from this website? http://tuxmobile.org/centrino.html

edit

thanks and greetz,

hulk

----------

## pjv

 *artooman wrote:*   

> ElCondor,
> 
> I would also consider the Dell d600.  You can get a good deal through dell small business (just pretend you are a business) by selecting no office suite and by downgrading to winXP Home.  I saved at least $400 by doing this.  Also, check bensbargains.net for common 10% off Dell Small Business coupons.
> 
> Anyway, I just got mine, and it is extremely quiet and Linux friendly (other that this centrino wireless business).  I am running kernel versin 2.5.70.

 

artooman, you say it is Linux friendly... In other posts I've heard of problems with ACPI power management modes, BIOS, not working Fn keys, and ofcourse the regular Centrino (speedstep and wireless) problems. Have you tried these things yet?

To the other Acer 800 users (poisson, crazy-bee): Just to get out of the confusion, could you guys line-up the things that (still) don't work and/or the parts you haven't tried using yet.?

Does the Dell or the Acer meet your expectations (in comparison to WinXP and the producer specs)?

In Europe the Dell seems far more expensive for almost the same specs. A logical consequence of not being able to buy refurbished laptops, of not having (shipping) access to all those specialised computerbuyer sites on the net, of having the need for European standards in power supply and telecom, etc... I guess. Any reactions to that?

Greetz, have phun with all ur new thingies  :Razz: 

----------

## arthur1968

Hi there,

Just joined 5 minutes ago...

My first post is about my current situation with a SAMSUNG X10 XTC1600 CENTRINO laptop

After spending EURO 2,600 on a brand new SAMSUNG X10 XTC1600, I have found out (the hard way) that installing a Linux distro is "off limits".

These are the results of different attempts:

SUSE 8.1 PRO After the first 2-3 screens, laptop restarts

without any reason

It keeps doing this indefinitely, and installation

obviously never moves on

MANDRAKE 9.1 After installation is finished (no problems at all)

the summary screen shows the X System as

NOT configured

ANY configuration chosen at this point makes

the screen go wild (and the system to hang, I

guess)

LYCORIS 46 Installation of packages takes about 5 times

longer than on my slower desktop machine.

After the whole thing seems to be finished, the

system hangs and nothing happens.

LINEX 3.0 RC1 Installation screen freezes after some 25 mins.

KNOPPIX 3.2 HD Everything works right up to firstboot. When

startup messages are shown, system freezes

with syslog.

The really funny thing is, Knoppix 3.2 without

a HD install. worked perfectly

The graphics card?:

nVidia GeForce 420 Go 32M

BTW, ALL distros recognize the card correctly.

The monitor?:

Not even the best hardware listing tools manage to identify my monitor: it simply comes up as unknown, or as an odd 'NVD100'

I've already "googled" the web for this, and have carefully read the links mentioned above, but NO LUCK

Can anyone help?.

Cheers,

Arthur

 :Crying or Very sad: 

----------

## Jacobs

 *poisson wrote:*   

>  *azote wrote:*   sorry man .. but I second taskara.. 
> 
> People told  Linux will never run on a TCPA-equipped system.
> 
> But I installed successfully Gentoo on a Centrino,  that make me think:
> ...

 

I have a Thinkpad X31 with that TCPA Secure chip (or however they call it - btw there is a difference between Palladium (Microsoft thing) and TCPA) and the thing is that you can enable/disable the chip in the BIOS. To make it work in Windows you have to download some IBM software for it which I haven't tried yet.

So there should be no way how this can influence you linux distro (if disabled).

----------

## Lycander

I'm surprised no one mentioned the fact that Pentium Ms have 1 MB on-die L2 cache which means, according to benchmarks, it beats even 2+ GHz desktop P4s!!! It's so wonderful that there are efforts to make desktop systems using Pentium M chips.

----------

## mkummer

I've got a Acer Travelmate 290LCi (Centrino) - P4 M 1,3, 256 MB Ram, Intel GFX Card, Realtek NIC.

I didn't have any problem installing Gentoo 1.4.

After loading all ACPI modules monitoring battery, .... works.

The only thing that doesnt work is wireless-lan because the chip isnt supported yet by linux.

I bought a centrino notebook because of it's weight, because it doesnt become as hot as others do and because the battery has a lifetime of ~6 hours.

----------

## butters

I just bought a Dell Inspiron 500m, 1.3 GHz P4M with i855GM (integrated graphics).  I installed from the start with the 2.6.0-test[x]-mm[y] kernels and had no kernel related problems.  However, I am having the two following problems:

1) XFree86 doesn't recognize any modes higher than 640x480.  I use XFree86 -configure to start my XF86Config file, then fill in the modes:

```
Section "Monitor"

        Identifier   "Monitor0"

        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"

        ModelName    "Monitor Model"

        VertRefresh     60

        HorizSync       31.5 - 48.5

EndSection

Section "Device"

        ### Available Driver options are:-

        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",

        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"

        ### [arg]: arg optional

        #Option     "NoAccel"                   # [<bool>]

        #Option     "SWcursor"                  # [<bool>]

        #Option     "ColorKey"                  # <i>

        #Option     "CacheLines"                # <i>

        #Option     "Dac6Bit"                   # [<bool>]

        Option     "DRI" "True"                 # [<bool>]

        #Option     "NoDDC"                     # [<bool>]

        #Option     "ShowCache"                 # [<bool>]

        #Option     "XvMCSurfaces"              # <i>

        Identifier  "Card0"

        Driver      "i810"

        VendorName  "Intel Corp."

        BoardName   "852GM/852GME/855GM/855GME Chipset Graphics Controller"

        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"

EndSection

Section "Screen"

        Identifier "Screen0"

        Device     "Card0"

        Monitor    "Monitor0"

        DefaultDepth    16

        SubSection "Display"

                Depth     1

        EndSubSection

        SubSection "Display"

                Depth     4

        EndSubSection

        SubSection "Display"

                Depth     8

        EndSubSection

        SubSection "Display"

                Depth     15

        EndSubSection

        SubSection "Display"

                Depth     16

                Modes   "1024x768"

        EndSubSection

        SubSection "Display"

                Depth     24

        EndSubSection

EndSection

```

And here is the output from /var/log/XFree86.0.log:

```
....

(II) I810: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810, i810-dc100,

        i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 852GM/855GM, 865G

(II) Primary Device is: PCI 00:02:0

(--) Chipset 852GM/855GM found

....

(**) I810(0): Depth 16, (--) framebuffer bpp 16

(==) I810(0): RGB weight 565

(==) I810(0): Default visual is TrueColor

(**) I810(0): Option "DRI" "True"

....

(II) I810(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) 855GM

(--) I810(0): Chipset: "852GM/855GM"

(--) I810(0): Linear framebuffer at 0xF0000000

(--) I810(0): IO registers at addr 0xFAF80000

(II) I810(0): detected 892 kB stolen memory.

(II) I810(0): I830CheckAvailableMemory: 206844 kB available

(II) I810(0): Will attempt to tell the BIOS that there is 12288 kB VideoRAM

(WW) I810(0): Extended BIOS function 0x5f11 not supported.

(II) I810(0): BIOS view of memory size can't be changed (this is not an error).

(--) I810(0): Pre-allocated VideoRAM: 892 kByte

(==) I810(0): VideoRAM: 32768 kByte

(==) I810(0): video overlay key set to 0x83e

(**) I810(0): page flipping disabled

(--) I810(0): Maximum frambuffer space: 32616 kByte

(==) I810(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)

(II) I810(0): 2 display pipes available.

(II) I810(0): Display Info: CRT: attached: FALSE, present: TRUE, size: (800,600)

(II) I810(0): Display Info: TV: attached: FALSE, present: TRUE, size: (800,600)

(II) I810(0): Display Info: DFP (digital flat panel): attached: FALSE, present: TRUE, s

ize: (0,0)

(II) I810(0): Display Info: LFP (local flat panel): attached: TRUE, present: TRUE, size

: (1024,768)

(II) I810(0): Display Info: TV2 (second TV): attached: FALSE, present: FALSE, size: (0,

0)

(II) I810(0): Display Info: DFP2 (second digital flat panel): attached: FALSE, present:

 FALSE, size: (0,0)

(II) I810(0): Size of device LFP (local flat panel) is 1024 x 768

(II) I810(0): No active displays on Pipe A.

(II) I810(0): Currently active displays on Pipe B:

(II) I810(0):   LFP (local flat panel)

(II) I810(0): Lowest common panel size for pipe B is 1024 x 768

....

*Mode: 41 (640x480)

        ModeAttributes: 0x9b

        WinAAttributes: 0x7

        WinBAttributes: 0x0

        WinGranularity: 64

        WinSize: 64

        WinASegment: 0xa000

        WinBSegment: 0x0

        WinFuncPtr: 0xc0006f96

        BytesPerScanline: 1280

        XResolution: 640

        YResolution: 480

        XCharSize: 8

        YCharSize: 16

        NumberOfPlanes: 1

        BitsPerPixel: 16

....

Mode: 45 (1024x768)

        ModeAttributes: 0x9a

        WinAAttributes: 0x7

        WinBAttributes: 0x0

        WinGranularity: 64

        WinSize: 64

        WinASegment: 0xa000

        WinBSegment: 0x0

        WinFuncPtr: 0xc0006f96

        BytesPerScanline: 2048

        XResolution: 1024

        YResolution: 768

        XCharSize: 8

        YCharSize: 16

        NumberOfPlanes: 1

        BitsPerPixel: 16

....

(II) I810(0): Monitor0: Using hsync range of 31.50-48.50 kHz

(II) I810(0): Monitor0: Using vrefresh value of 60.00 Hz

(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1024x768" (no mode of this name)

(II) I810(0): Increasing the scanline pitch to allow tiling mode (640 -> 1024).

(--) I810(0): Virtual size is 640x480 (pitch 1024)

(**) I810(0):  Built-in mode "640x480"

(==) I810(0): DPI set to (75, 75)

....

```

Snipped for sanity's sake.  The selected mode is 640x480x16, instead of the defined mode for 1024x768x16 that I included in the log above and requested in XF86Config.  The chipset and the monitor settings are recognized perfectly, but still, there is no known mode for 1024x768, even if I specify 'Modes   "45"' under Depth 16 in the screen section.  Why can't I get this to work?

2)  Module loader problems.  Modprobe is broken, /etc/modprobe.conf is missing, and modules-update cannot generate /etc/modprobe.conf.  For this reason, starting the pcmcia service (pcmcia-cs) causes my machine to hang and can't be recovered.  So I can't use my PCMCIA wireless card OR the unsupported intel minipci wireless card, and I'm stuck with the onboard 10/100 ethernet.  I have tried re-emerging module-init-tools and pcmcia-cs.  Remember I am using the 2.6.0 kernel series, which uses module-init-tools instead of modutils.

I am surprised that forums searches for "/etc/modprobe.conf" and "i855GM" both return no results.  Who knows what's going on?

----------

## eee

 *butters wrote:*   

> I am surprised that forums searches for "/etc/modprobe.conf" and "i855GM" both return no results.

 

You haven't used the search much have you  :Very Happy:   ?

Try http://www.chzsoft.com.ar/855patch.html

----------

## labrador

I didn't see a follow up to this thread - did the patch help?

I'm testing a few notebooks right now and it is strange.

One with the same i855GM chipset is probed automatically

by most linux distros, while another goes to a green screen

and is stuck there until ctrl-alt-del .  The lspci info is identical

between one that works and one that doesn't.

Not working (Dell):

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)

Working (Compaq, no patch):

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)

I've thrown Suse 9, Fedora Core 1, Xandros 2, KNOPPIX, and Gentoo

with 2.6.1 kernel at the Dell and no success.

At this point I'm not really trying to set up an OS, just determine which

models have the best hardware + driver support.

----------

## frameRATE

I have an alienware sentia with the 855 chipset and 1.7 pentium M. I'm going to begin a stage 1 gentoo install today and tomorrow on it, so I should have it all working by the end of the week. I'll let you know what becomes of it all.

----------

## frameRATE

I have an alienware sentia with the 855 chipset and 1.7 pentium M. I'm going to begin a stage 1 gentoo install today and tomorrow on it, so I should have it all working by the end of the week. I'll let you know what becomes of it all.

----------

## frameRATE

Well if anyone cares, it's up and running. I have wifi access and have begun working on power management and sound... DVD playback works, just sans sound.

Frame buffer support looks great, but my X is blurry.. anyone else experiencing this?

----------

## Seemer

My centrino machine works just fine. 

Evertything I tried works... A week ago ipw2100 drivers was released and they work just fine too. I can't see  why you shouldn't buy a centrino laptop.

--

Dell Inspirion 500m

----------

## ejedmonds

I've got linux running fine on my dell centrino laptop... installed everything with ease and every thing seems to work just fine.

----------

## isaidi

 *frameRATE wrote:*   

> Well if anyone cares, it's up and running. I have wifi access and have begun working on power management and sound... DVD playback works, just sans sound.
> 
> Frame buffer support looks great, but my X is blurry.. anyone else experiencing this?

 

I just finished installing Gentoo on my Acer 2001WLCi (Centrino), I had a wide screen (WXGA), which should run at 1280x800. 

kernel 2.6 FB modules for radeon automatically switched to 1280x800. However my X was blury at first becuase i was running at 1024x768 and the laptop hardware was automatically stretching that to widescreen...

----------

