[CentOS-docs] New Wiki Page

Sat May 9 19:25:56 UTC 2009
Scott Robbins <scottro at nyc.rr.com>

On Sat, May 09, 2009 at 02:50:39PM -0400, David Dreggors wrote:
> 
> 
> I will try if I have to do another re-install. Right now I am stable 
> (minus sound issues) and pretty much happy with my setup.

Heh, I know that feeling--in this case, for me, it's more of a test
machine, so I don't mind trying things made by mad scientists.
> 
> Also, when a someone is looking for the right laptop to use with CentOS, 
> they look at places like the wiki's laptop howto for user experiences. I 
> know I did.

Yes, that makes sense.  However, I repeat my statement that they are
really bad about changing hardware--for example, on Fedora Forums,
another poster and I assumed that because we had ASUS 1000HE's, bought
at approximately the same time, we'd have the same wireless.
Eventually, after all my advice failed, I did what I should have done in
the first place and asked him to run lspci--it turned out his wireless
was Realtek whereas mine was Atheros. 

> 
> If this laptop is there and known to work and the price is so low... why 
> would one NOT run out and buy this exact model?

No reason, but especially if it's on display on best buy, tell 'em to
look at Windows Device Manager and make sure it's the same card.  :)

It's a very popular card, however, for lowend laptops.  

> 
> > like Wireless card <model> doesn't work, rather than something like
> > <laptop model> wireless doesn't work.  Especially on CentOS fora, where
> > there are many overworked sysadmins, busy people will tend to simply not
> > even look at a post like that (with the model).
> 
> Yes, I find myself asking the same question many different ways to get 
> answers on laptop hardware. In this case maybe I went the wrong way.

It's sometimes quite hard--it *used* to be that you could find the specs
on line--now, you can google a particular model for 45 minutes and still
not figure out for sure which wireless card it uses. 

They, including BestBuy, which used to print the model of card) will now
just say 802.11b/g or b/g/n or the like. 



-- 
Scott Robbins
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