Buying a laptop with no OS (to install Linux on).
in [UK Linux]
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From: Andy Furniss on 27 Mar 2010 11:57 Tony Houghton wrote: > I'd rather be using ATI than NVidia, both because of the free driver > situation and ATI cards are generally better than the NVidia equivalents > these days, but NVidia has VDPAU. So I'm kind of stuck with NVidia until > ATI make it possible to use their cards' video decoding in Linux, > preferably in conjunction with the open source X driver, or someone > writes a good OpenCL H264 decoder. Is OpenCL likely to come to the free > ATI driver? If you think it's bad enough having to run NVidia's > proprietary driver you should try ATI's... It is now roughly possible to get UVD to work with fglrx, if you can bear the pain of using it. You'll need to be careful about catalyst versions and used patched libva, mplayer and the xvba libs from here - http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/ Officially only UVD2 cards are supported (7xx), but if you are lucky it does work on r6xx cards as well. It was OK for BBCHD last time I tried on my rv670 - If I were going to try again (I use the OSS drivers normally) I would look at the tail end of the UVD thread in the ATI/AMD forum on phoronix.com to see what version of fglrx was needed. The dev does post in there. As for OSS - the devs have said that there is enough info for GPU H264 decode already out there and I believe I saw H264 decode for gallium on the list as a potential project for this years GSOC.
From: Tony Houghton on 27 Mar 2010 17:27 In <hol9rm$mtv$1(a)localhost.localdomain>, Andy Furniss <spam(a)andyfurniss.entadsl.com> wrote: > As for OSS - the devs have said that there is enough info for GPU H264 > decode already out there and I believe I saw H264 decode for gallium on > the list as a potential project for this years GSOC. That's great news. Another advantage of ATI (and Intel) free drivers for video (as in TV & film) fans is the availability of the "FRC patch" which allows the frame rate to be subtly varied as a means to keep sync with audio and/or a live stream without having to drop/repeat frames or disable vsync. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk
From: Davey on 27 Mar 2010 18:34 On 27 Mar 2010 13:27:45 GMT, Simon Brooke wrote: > On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:33:29 +0000, Poster Matt wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I'm intending to buy a new laptop and install Linux on it. Searching >> around I've found it very hard to find a laptop for sale with no >> operating system on it. In fact a company called Novatech (which I've >> used before) is the only one I can find. >> >> Are there any other companies that you guys know of that sell OS free >> laptops? It seems to me that there's a good chance that I will be forced >> to pay for Windows even though I don't want it, a kind of Microsoft tax >> achievable only as a result of their tremendous market dominance. >> >> Secondly - are there any laptop specific things I should keep in mind >> when buying a laptop to install Linux on? Driver or hardware issues and >> such like? I've never installed Linux on a laptop before. >> >> Finally are there any specific Linux distributions that I should think >> about using or ones that I should avoid? >> >> Many thanks and regards, etc.. > > Seriously, why not buy a Dell (or other) with Linux pre-installed? It may > not be the distro you want (Dell are still shipping Ubuntu Hardy Heron) > but it does at least signal the market that people want Linux - and you > also know that all the hardware on your laptop is supported. Well, Hardy Heron being the last LTS, just, I can't blame them. You can easily put a later version on yourself if you wish. Maybe they will change to the next LTS when it's fully debugged and available (and debugged again?). Kudos to them for offering it at all. Perhaps coincidentally, my old Dell Pentium III desktop PC won't run anything later than Hardy Heron. -- Davey.
From: Nix on 29 Mar 2010 16:01 On 27 Mar 2010, Tony Houghton verbalised: > I'd rather be using ATI than NVidia, both because of the free driver > situation and ATI cards are generally better than the NVidia equivalents > these days, but NVidia has VDPAU. So I'm kind of stuck with NVidia until > ATI make it possible to use their cards' video decoding in Linux, > preferably in conjunction with the open source X driver, or someone > writes a good OpenCL H264 decoder. Is OpenCL likely to come to the free It's coming, but oddly the devs want to get 3D and things working first! > ATI driver? If you think it's bad enough having to run NVidia's > proprietary driver you should try ATI's... ATI's proprietary driver doesn't support their more recent cards, and is worse than the free driver on pretty much all of them by now. It's slow, and my god it's leaky.
From: Andy Davison on 30 Mar 2010 07:15
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:20:15 -0500, anahata wrote: > They all seem to have Ubuntu installed. Suse 11 is an option though. BTW there is a company called PC Specialist which I haven't used but a friend has and was happy with where you choose the spec of the computer. All seem to come with Windows as standard but this can be changed to no OS with a drop-down box <http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/> -- Andy Davison andy [ at ] oiyou [ dot ] ukfsn [ dot ] org |