Changes at my day job (we have a big merger being finalized), has me in the market for a new laptop.
They may require me to only run the approved XP build on the system they provide.
I do not know if they will fund another unit for me or not, so I am looking to go cheap. Here is what I am looking for:
Runs Centos (duh!) Supports Suspend to memory as well as to disk. Bootable from USB devices, e.g. USB CDdrive, SD card, etc.
12" LCD, ie. a small unit that can be used on a plane! Good battery life, 2nd battery an option (min 4hr battery time, perfer 8hr). Swappable drives (preferably not requing a screw driver as my old Portege or a non-findable drive carrier as my HP nc4010). Built in Ethernet, and 2 USB 2.0 ports miniPCI wireless (external antenna options would be nice!) Eraser-head mouse pointer (IBM thinkpad-style), optional addtional touchpad (I hate touchpads for D&D. Bluetooth would be nice, but own many Bluetooth USB tokens.
Don't need weight, power-draw of a CD/DVD drive, got a USB one when needed. Did I say light? I will be having to drag at least 2 laptops on planes all the time now.
I dislike Dells, am OK with IBM (but it's not IBM any more!), Toshiba Porteges are old friends, and HP Compaq nc4000s....
So who has what working?????
Ray Van Dolson wrote:
Changes at my day job (we have a big merger being finalized), has me in the market for a new laptop.
I use and enjoy an older HP nc8000. Solid laptop IMHO, but doesn't quite meet your requirements. :)
I'm curious if you found anything though?
Thursday, I am swinging by Corporate (my last visit there was 4 years ago) and they are going to give me a second machine for corporate use. Don't know what it will be, but I am not suppose to swap its drives out and I continue to use this HP Compaq nc4010 as my Linux workhorse.
But I am keeping my eyes out to see what might be available.
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Don't know what it will be, but I am not suppose to swap its drives out and I continue to use this HP Compaq nc4010 as my Linux workhorse.
Robert: I'm also looking for an ultralight notebook to bring to datacenters with me. The nc4010 sounds pretty good (just looked it up now, had not heard of it before). What is it that you don't like about it?
johnn
Johnny Tan wrote:
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Don't know what it will be, but I am not suppose to swap its drives out and I continue to use this HP Compaq nc4010 as my Linux workhorse.
Robert: I'm also looking for an ultralight notebook to bring to datacenters with me. The nc4010 sounds pretty good (just looked it up now, had not heard of it before). What is it that you don't like about it?
I pretty much love my nc4010. I got it May, '05. It has the 'most recent' bios on it...
I have used it in plane seats that were very cramp.
Things I do not like:
The drive has to go into a drive carrier. I could only find ONE company in the US selling it and it cost $50. This way I could swap easily between 2 drives. Taking off the screws from a carrier and switching drives, putting screws back in, is not something you want to do on an airplane..
Battery life could be better. With the external battery, I get 4 - 6 hours depending on what I am doing.
Cooling is a problem (but this is common with notebooks). I had Linux shut down this noon do to overheating:
Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 kernel: ACPI: Critical trip point Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 kernel: Critical temperature reached (113 C), shutting down. Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 kernel: Critical temperature reached (45 C), shutting down. Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 shutdown[5636]: shutting down for system halt Jun 26 12:19:23 nc4010 shutdown[5637]: shutting down for system halt
Ouch. Oh, I use a piece of toe molding as a notebook 'stand'. It provides just the right angle for the keyboard, allows for some airflow under the unit for cooling, and was CHEAP (had it in my junk wood barrel from a home improvement project). Don't need it when I have the external battery atttached.
No CD/DVD. OK, I lug along a USB CD/DVD for when I need one.
Only one miniPCI. What do you want there: 802.11 or Bluetooth (thus I have a USB dongle for bluetooth).
No external antenna option. Wonder how this will work with an 802.11n miniPCI; going to have to ask this at the 802 meeting come July....
The 2 USB connectors are so close that you can't plug a typical dongle in directly. Oh and Linux reports finding 3 USB hubs, a 3 port, a 2 port, and a 5 port. Huh?
I have not gotten the internal SD card reader working in Linux. Yesterday, I saw some comments about a card reader on an IBM thinkpad wrt getting it working again after coming out of suspend, so maybe there is hope.
Have not gotten the internal Modem working. I had tried the WinModem stuff, I did get some tips, I need to revisit this.
Suspend to memory does not work 'out of the box' Don't click on the System>Suspend option...
I am still struggling with Suspend2. I built a nice large swap partition to Hibernate to the drive to make drive swapping easier....
So it is an older box. When I started with Linux there was not anything out there about putting Linux on this unit. I need to start a page with what works here....
If I can find something newer and better and cheap, I will grab it. Otherwise, this dog hunts.
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
I pretty much love my nc4010. I got it May, '05. It has the 'most recent' bios on it...
Thanks Robert, a very good and detailed review. Some of the stuff isn't applicable to me, but others definitely are concerning (particularly the overheating and the USB connectors too close).
If you do find something newer you like, I'd like to know. I'm also on the hunt.
I've been seriously considering the Thinkpad X60s series as my top choice. The specs look great, but I'm trying to find more detailed reviews from an actual user (like you did for the nc4010).
johnny
On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 at 12:01pm, Johnny Tan wrote
I've been seriously considering the Thinkpad X60s series as my top choice. The specs look great, but I'm trying to find more detailed reviews from an actual user (like you did for the nc4010).
I've got a Z61t, which is somewhat similar (I believe), and love it. I'm running FC6 on it, and just about everything works. Video (intel) worked out of the box (including the stupid 3D desktop effects). The ipw3945 wireless required some tweaking (not much), but works up to and including WPA2. Suspend/resume worked out of the box, but sucked a lot more power than it should -- changing the scripts to unload the USB modules before suspending fixed that. And the SD card reader worked briefly with some kernel versions, but has stopped working again (and I haven't bothered looking into it). Oh, and the integrated webcam has never worked. The fingerprint reader can be made to work, but, again, I haven't bothered.
From a hardware standpoint, the Thinkpads feel very solid. I have a user
with an X60 (running XP), and she loves it. The thing is definitely tiny and light.
Just spoke with one of my colleagues about IBM.
x31 is a steal and everything 'works' He is running Gentoo on his x31.
Don't touch the x41.
Of course x60, "It's a F*****G IBM". Well he's an old army NCO...
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 at 12:01pm, Johnny Tan wrote
I've been seriously considering the Thinkpad X60s series as my top choice. The specs look great, but I'm trying to find more detailed reviews from an actual user (like you did for the nc4010).
I've got a Z61t, which is somewhat similar (I believe), and love it. I'm running FC6 on it, and just about everything works. Video (intel) worked out of the box (including the stupid 3D desktop effects). The ipw3945 wireless required some tweaking (not much), but works up to and including WPA2. Suspend/resume worked out of the box, but sucked a lot more power than it should -- changing the scripts to unload the USB modules before suspending fixed that. And the SD card reader worked briefly with some kernel versions, but has stopped working again (and I haven't bothered looking into it). Oh, and the integrated webcam has never worked. The fingerprint reader can be made to work, but, again, I haven't bothered.
From a hardware standpoint, the Thinkpads feel very solid. I have a user
with an X60 (running XP), and she loves it. The thing is definitely tiny and light.
I have a problem with Centos 5 not detecting my realtek 8111b lan chip on a Gigabyte GA-945GM-S2 motherboard. I have found a reference to a new driver from realtek and/or redhat - which has instructions on building the driver. When I go to "make clean modules" I get errors - and it appears to be looking in /usr/src/kernels/... for source files which I don't seem to have in my centos 5 installation.
Presumably I need to install some kernel source package. If so - where do I find it?
Thanks.
Richard.
On 6/27/07, Richard Chapman rchapman@aardvark.com.au wrote:
I have a problem with Centos 5 not detecting my realtek 8111b lan chip on a Gigabyte GA-945GM-S2 motherboard. I have found a reference to a new driver from realtek and/or redhat - which has instructions on building the driver. When I go to "make clean modules" I get errors - and it appears to be looking in /usr/src/kernels/... for source files which I don't seem to have in my centos 5 installation.
Presumably I need to install some kernel source package. If so - where do I find it?
yum install kernel-devel
Akemi
On Thursday 28 June 2007, Richard Chapman wrote:
I have a problem with Centos 5 not detecting my realtek 8111b lan chip on a Gigabyte GA-945GM-S2 motherboard. I have found a reference to a new driver from realtek and/or redhat - which has instructions on building the driver. When I go to "make clean modules" I get errors - and it appears to be looking in /usr/src/kernels/... for source files which I don't seem to have in my centos 5 installation.
Presumably I need to install some kernel source package. If so - where do I find it?
kernel-devel is the package you want (unless the module build thingy is really broken..).
/Peter
Thanks.
Richard.
Thanks Peter and Akemi. I stand suitably chastised for replying to random post. I wont do it again. Maybe this is why I haven't found the list as responsive as it seemed to others... Thanks for the information. I didn't know about the smarts in the email client.
Thanks also for the info on kernel-devel - but the snag is my centos system isn't on the Internet because the lan driver is broken...:-). We seem to have a bootstrap problem...:-). I therefore assume I can't just "yum" for it. Can you tell me where I can find it for the xen enabled kernel 2.6.18-8.el5.src? Presumably I can then download it and transfer it on a usb drive - then use a local "yum" command? Do you know where to find it and how to do the local yum command?
Thanks
Richard.
Peter Kjellstrom wrote:
On Thursday 28 June 2007, Richard Chapman wrote:
I have a problem with Centos 5 not detecting my realtek 8111b lan chip on a Gigabyte GA-945GM-S2 motherboard. I have found a reference to a new driver from realtek and/or redhat - which has instructions on building the driver. When I go to "make clean modules" I get errors - and it appears to be looking in /usr/src/kernels/... for source files which I don't seem to have in my centos 5 installation.
Presumably I need to install some kernel source package. If so - where do I find it?
kernel-devel is the package you want (unless the module build thingy is really broken..).
/Peter
Thanks.
Richard.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 6/28/07, Richard Chapman rchapman@aardvark.com.au wrote:
Thanks also for the info on kernel-devel - but the snag is my centos system isn't on the Internet because the lan driver is broken...:-). We seem to have a bootstrap problem...:-). I therefore assume I can't just "yum" for it. Can you tell me where I can find it for the xen enabled kernel 2.6.18-8.el5.src? Presumably I can then download it and transfer it on a usb drive - then use a local "yum" command? Do you know where to find it and how to do the local yum command?
Look in here:
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5
Find the kernel-devel rpm that corresponds to your kernel and run:
rpm -Uvh kernel-devel-xxxx.rpm
Akemi
On Thursday 28 June 2007, Richard Chapman wrote:
Thanks Peter and Akemi. I stand suitably chastised for replying to random post. I wont do it again. Maybe this is why I haven't found the list as responsive as it seemed to others... Thanks for the information. I didn't know about the smarts in the email client.
Thanks also for the info on kernel-devel - but the snag is my centos system isn't on the Internet because the lan driver is broken...:-). We seem to have a bootstrap problem...:-). I therefore assume I can't just "yum" for it. Can you tell me where I can find it for the xen enabled kernel 2.6.18-8.el5.src?
No you don't want the source, you want the package: kernel-devel
to be exact: http://mirror.nsc.liu.se/centos/5.0/updates/x86_64/RPMS/kernel-xen-devel-2.6...
(or from another mirror, or an older version if you cant security update, or i386 instead of x86_64 if that's the case ...)
Presumably I can then download it and transfer it on a usb drive - then use a local "yum" command?
The download to usb-stick part sounds ok, but I'm not sure a "yum localinstall .." will work since this still assumes network (just that you have this here local rpm to install). My suggestion, just do "rpm -ivh file.rpm".
Good luck, Peter
On 6/28/07, Richard Chapman rchapman@aardvark.com.au wrote:
Thanks Peter and Akemi.
All working. Amazing really. I now have my Centos 5 on the Internet. I wonder whether it is worth re-installing Cebtos 5 and trying to get my new driver (.ko file presumably) to load off a USB drive at install time. Do you think this would be straight forward. Is there anything to gain?
Richard.
No need to re-install the OS. Copy your new .ko file to:
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/updates/
Then run:
depmod -a
Akemi
On Friday 29 June 2007, Richard Chapman wrote:
Thanks Peter and Akemi.
All working. Amazing really. I now have my Centos 5 on the Internet. I wonder whether it is worth re-installing Cebtos 5 and trying to get my new driver (.ko file presumably) to load off a USB drive at install time. Do you think this would be straight forward. Is there anything to gain?
That wouldn't be entierly trivial, and you wouldn't gain anything. Now just remember the steps you took so you can repeat them when the next security update kernel comes around.
/Peter
Richard.
On 6/29/07, Richard Chapman rchapman@aardvark.com.au wrote:
Hmmm... Thanks Peter Actually - this is quite a big problem. It seems like new kernels come along reasonably often - and my intention was to leave this machine in a corner somewhere without any screen and manage it through nx and webmin. I have seen the problem already because as soon as it was on the Internet it got a new kernel - and after rebooting it couldn't find the eth0 again. I did just the insmod part of the procedure - and the network came up again
- but as soon as I reboot it disappears again. I realise now that i really
need to repeat the whole procedure with the appropriate version of kernel-devel. I have since done this, and it now boots OK.
I guess there is nothing I can do but wait and hope for redhat to fix the driver - is there?
Richard.
If the driver needs to be recompiled for each kernel version, one possible solution is to create a dkms ( dynamic kernel module support ) module for the driver. This is not trivial, but once it is done, the driver will be automatically compiled whenever kernel gets updated and the system rebooted. See the second section of this wiki:
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/BuildingKernelModules
The page is still work in progress but might help you build your own dkms driver.
Akemi
On Friday 29 June 2007, Richard Chapman wrote:
Hmmm... Thanks Peter Actually - this is quite a big problem. It seems like new kernels come along reasonably often - and my intention was to leave this machine in a corner somewhere without any screen and manage it through nx and webmin. I have seen the problem already because as soon as it was on the Internet it got a new kernel - and after rebooting it couldn't find the eth0 again. I did just the insmod part of the procedure - and the network came up again - but as soon as I reboot it disappears again. I realise now that i really need to repeat the whole procedure with the appropriate version of kernel-devel. I have since done this, and it now boots OK.
Once you've installed kernel-devel once it will get updated along with your kernel. However, rebuilding the module is something you won't get around unless you script something to do it automatically if the module is missing.
Also, please don't send html e-mails to lists. It annoys more than a few... ;-)
/Peter
I guess there is nothing I can do but wait and hope for redhat to fix the driver - is there?
Richard.
Thanks again Akemi and Peter. You have both been incredibly helpful and I do appreciate it. Sorry about the html. I guess I have much to learn both Centos and etiquette,...:-)
As far as I can see one brute force approach would be to rebuild the driver every boot. It is really very quick - and as Peter points out - i automatically get the new kernel-devel package whenever I get a new kernel - so it should always build the correct driver for the kernel. Can you see any problem with this approach. If not - which start-up script would seem like the best place to put the build instructions.
Richard.
Peter Kjellstrom wrote:
On Friday 29 June 2007, Richard Chapman wrote:
Hmmm... Thanks Peter Actually - this is quite a big problem. It seems like new kernels come along reasonably often - and my intention was to leave this machine in a corner somewhere without any screen and manage it through nx and webmin. I have seen the problem already because as soon as it was on the Internet it got a new kernel - and after rebooting it couldn't find the eth0 again. I did just the insmod part of the procedure - and the network came up again - but as soon as I reboot it disappears again. I realise now that i really need to repeat the whole procedure with the appropriate version of kernel-devel. I have since done this, and it now boots OK.
Once you've installed kernel-devel once it will get updated along with your kernel. However, rebuilding the module is something you won't get around unless you script something to do it automatically if the module is missing.
Also, please don't send html e-mails to lists. It annoys more than a few... ;-)
/Peter
I guess there is nothing I can do but wait and hope for redhat to fix the driver - is there?
Richard.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Akemi Yagi -
Johnny Tan -
Joshua Baker-LePain -
Peter Kjellstrom -
Ray Van Dolson -
Richard Chapman -
Robert Moskowitz