Ferrari 4000 + Ubuntu?

[scottish144]

I've been looking hard at notebooks recently and have decided on getting an Acer Ferrari 4000. However, I love Ubuntu (have it on my desktop). Will it work with the Ferrari? The Ubuntu site said it didn't have a complete list of supported hardware yet.

 

[drag]

Things to watch out for are video and wireless.

For some cards Linux has very good support.. for others it has realy realy poor to non-existant support. Almost completely due to manufacturer's varying support of Linux drivers and hardware documentation.

For video you ideally want a Intel or Nvidia video card. ATI has poor 3D support comparatively and generally has poor 3D performance when compared to running in Windows... although ATI is very popular with AMD notebooks and plenty Linux users are stuck with them. With Nvidia your using decent drivers and get near to better performance in Linux then Windows. With Intel you have Free/OSS drivers that come included by default by most very modern distros. (however for 945 motherboards support may not be all the way there yet. It may take till the next release for full support)

But ultimately ATI cards are livable. Just that others are more ideal.

However the deal breaker is what sort of Wifi card you can get configured with it. If it's a broadcom or conextent wireless device then any Linux support will always be a struggle and capabilities/stability will always be limited. What you want is a ralink rt2500 setup or a intel setup. There are a few other types that have good support also, but always avoid Texas instrument, Broadcom, or Conextent wifi stuff (and often other networking items) if you can.

The major difficulty for Wifi cards and Linux is the naming conventions... which don't exist. Broadcom, Intel, ralink and the like are chipset manufacturers and often OEMs will repackage the items with little to show for what actual product the customer is buying. Often you will have full-on great support for Wifi2000 (made up name) in linux, but Wifi2000 (ver. 2) will be something completely different and you will have to resort to NDIS drivers (linux wrapper around Windows XP wifi drivers) to get them to work (which sucks).

Internally most laptops share quite a few traits. 95% are manufactured in 'bare bones' fasion by big manufacturers in Korea and such and then have OEM-specific plastic wrapped around them and then sent to companies like IBM (well not anymore), Acer, Sony, Dell, etc etc that then stick in CPUs, harddrives, wifi cards, install windows, and then add stickers. So often you can get one computer from Dell that would be the same as you can get from Gateway or Alienware, for example.

I tried looking up Acer Ferrari stuff but I realy can't find that good of a information on it.

You can find people's experiances installing Linux on a wide veriaty of laptops here:
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

I am not looking for a laptop right now, but personally what I would be looking at would be one of two things...
A OEM-style laptop with Intel 'Sonoma'-generation Centrino laptop. Intel cpu, Intel wifi, Intel video. I'd have to shop around to find all the various versions and see how they compared though. I'd get a more lower-end business model that would be smallish and easy to transport and come with optional larger or extra internal battery (like that goes in the add-on dvd tray or something like that).

With the intel setup like that everything should be ok supported out of the box and with some fiddling all the power management features should be supported. This would be for maximum portability and long battery-life with a reasonable price tag. Those pentium-m cpus are quite impressive in that regard.

For a AMD notebook I think the Asus barebones setup would be cool. Then I can pick all the peices that I want in terms of memory, harddrive, wifi and other items like that. It would be more expensive and I would have to be VERY carefull about hardware compatability (no commonly used standards for things like dvd players and such in laptops like there are in desktops), but performance should be superior.

The Ferrari looks like it should work out OK, but I don't think it's ideal. But I've never owned one and I can't find good specs so I can't say for reasonable certainty... unfortunately. For a laugh maybe call them up and ask about Linux compatability.

If you have time to then google around I am sure that you can find more information from actual users.


For 5-in-1 card readers and such Linux support is always going to be poor. I don't have much experiance with these things (I just use my camera's USB plugin to move images to my PC and laptop) but I've heard that they are very propriatory have strict licensing restrictions with maybe even patent encumbered interfaces.

 

[scottish144]

Thanks a lot. Great info, nice Link. Here are the specs:

Turion64 ML-37 CPU
1G RAM DDR333 SDRAM
Broadcom 802.11b/g Bluetooth Wireless IrDA (according to ur info, ARG!!!)
100GB Seagate Momentus 5400RPM 8MB Cache (ST9100823A)
Slot-Load DVD-RW Super-Multi Double Laye
Integrated V.90 Modem (Doesn't really matter)
10BASE-T/1000BASE-TX Ethernet
Realtek AC' 97
5-in-1 Card Reader FireWire 1394 4x USB 2.0 PC Card (Also according to ur info, ARG!!!)

 

[Monoman]

nice lappy!

 

[nweaver]

IBM sends many laptops through the Linux Tested certification, and Suse certification. You might check the specs on laptop and check the test results of them.