Any experience with Linux on AMD64 laptops?

[ChuaChua]

Hello,

After getting an AMD64 laptop (eMachines), I am considering on multi-booting WindowsXP and Linux on it.
I will be doing some C++ or Java work on it, as well as some internet, music, school stuff.
Windows crapped out on me a couple of days ago (I even got a stop error when I tried booting into safe-mode) and I am considering on multi-booting since I have the time over the holidays.

My question is: do you guys have any experience/tips with the installation of 64 bit Linux and WindowsXP on a laptop? I've been looking at posts and I can't seem to find people who have problems/solutions when they've multi-booted their laptops. I usually look for people's problems and remember their solutions/workarounds. Problems such as non-functioning function buttons for the WiFi card. (WiFi function button didn't turn on the Broadcom device when I did a fresh install of WinXP.)I'm just looking to find out what kinds of problems people are having with multibooting.
I would like to know the state of the whole NTFS/FAT formats as well. (I'm not sure how good/bad writing in NTFS in Linux is, at the time of this post.)

I don't have to install 64 bits....but it would be interesting if I could at least run some apps on it. 32 bit Linux is fine too...
I've been reading the Gentoo documentation since their documentation is pretty comprehensive relative to the other distributions (they're easier to find, heh). Any distribution is fine with me as well...

Here are the specs:
AMD Athlon64 3200+
64MB ATI Radeon 9600 (I am aware of the drivers and problems people have with ATI)
Broadcom wireless card
VIA motherboard
Synaptics touchpad.
80GB 4200rpm hard drive
6-in-1 media card.
DVD+-RW writer.

Pardon the lengthy post....I wanted to be as detailed as possible.

Cheers.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: ChuaChua
Hello,

After getting an AMD64 laptop (eMachines), I am considering on multi-booting WindowsXP and Linux on it.
I will be doing some C++ or Java work on it, as well as some internet, music, school stuff.
Windows crapped out on me a couple of days ago (I even got a stop error when I tried booting into safe-mode) and I am considering on multi-booting since I have the time over the holidays.

My question is: do you guys have any experience/tips with the installation of 64 bit Linux and WindowsXP on a laptop? I've been looking at posts and I can't seem to find people who have problems/solutions when they've multi-booted their laptops. I usually look for people's problems and remember their solutions/workarounds. Problems such as non-functioning function buttons for the WiFi card. (WiFi function button didn't turn on the Broadcom device when I did a fresh install of WinXP.)I'm just looking to find out what kinds of problems people are having with multibooting.
I would like to know the state of the whole NTFS/FAT formats as well. (I'm not sure how good/bad writing in NTFS in Linux is, at the time of this post.)

I don't have to install 64 bits....but it would be interesting if I could at least run some apps on it. 32 bit Linux is fine too...
I've been reading the Gentoo documentation since their documentation is pretty comprehensive relative to the other distributions (they're easier to find, heh). Any distribution is fine with me as well...

Here are the specs:
AMD Athlon64 3200+
64MB ATI Radeon 9600 (I am aware of the drivers and problems people have with ATI)
Broadcom wireless card
VIA motherboard
Synaptics touchpad.
80GB 4200rpm hard drive
6-in-1 media card.
DVD+-RW writer.

Pardon the lengthy post....I wanted to be as detailed as possible.

Cheers.

Detail is good.

It's a hell of a lot better then a single line: "Will Linux work on my Laptop?" post.


I dont' think that ATI has AMD64 drivers, so 3d acceleration is out of the question. I think. Don't have much experiance with ATI stuff, but I think they are still x86-32 only. You can use unaccelerated drivers in 64bit mode, but that's not desirable.

Also Broadcom is fairly anti-linux for some odd reason, some models are supported thru drivers from broadcom, but I don't know what version of card is going to be used. Otherwise you generally use ndiswrapper and that's a trick to allow Windows wireless drivers be used in Linux.

If you can find a laptop that uses Nvidia card, that would be much more desirable.

32bit linux should be doable, probably 64bit, too. But I'd probably stick with 32bit at first, unless your planning on using over 4gigs of ram. It's not going to be supported well out of the box, but everything should at least be functionable and you can probably get most everything working fine with some extra effort.

Sorry. But I am sure that a few people are using them with linux since emachines tend to be so innexpensive.

 

[uOpt]

I only run 64 bit Linux on a desktop but a few remarks:

expect BWC (bitching, whining, complaining) with the wireless card. Especially if you expect net-finding and special buttons to work. You probably will be able to make it work, but most likely only as a base card.

ATI sucks. Their binary 3D drivers work on very few Linux kernels, no AMD64, no Fedora Core 2 or 3. You can, however, use 2D with OpenSource drivers just fine.

If this is your first Linux, don't install 64 bits if you want a full-featured system. For example, some plugins for Mozilla (e.g. flash) are only available as 32 bit binaries, which forces your whole Mozilla chain (browser and all plugins including Java) to be 32 bits. You need experience to put a 32-bit chain up on a 64 bit Linux.

You can, however, do triple-boot Windoze, 32-bit Linux and 64-bit Linux, and you can share the data between the Linux installations with no problems.

 

[uOpt]

Regarding NTFS, it seems to work but you have to activate it by hand on most distributions (compile the kernel module).

I would recommend to use FAT for the Windoze installation, it is faster anyway and much safer to access from Linux. The NTFS code is very complex and not as well-tested as the FAT code.

 

[ChuaChua]

thanks for the replies.

hehe...I kinda got stuck with ATI since the DTR models are being flooded with them radeons.