Linux support of AMD Turion?

I've got a HP NX6125 with AMD's ML-32 Turion and I'm wondering which distro of linux to install. Specifically I'm worried about the support of AMD's PowerNow! thing and other powersaving features would be lost? Any Linux people here to give advice on this one?

thx

 

Greetings fellow Linux user!! I noticed packages.debian.org is down.. So I know how frustrating it can be to find the software packages you're looking for... Hopefully this can help a bit.

sidicas@Miho:~$ apt-cache search PowerNow
cpudyn - CPU dynamic frequency control for processors with scaling
powernowd - control cpu speed and voltage using 2.6 kernel interface
powersaved - power management daemon
sidicas@Miho:~$

sidicas@Miho:~$ apt-cache show cpudyn
Package: cpudyn
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 120
Maintainer: Celso González <[email protected]>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.0-2
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4)
Conflicts: cpufreqd, powernowd
Filename: pool/main/c/cpudyn/cpudyn_1.0-2_i386.deb
Size: 23860
MD5sum: f00acb7da060f486024496fff79d800a
Description: CPU dynamic frequency control for processors with scaling
cpudyn controls the speed in Intel SpeedStep, Pentium 4 Mobile,
AMD Powernow, PowerPC, Crusoe LongRun machines with the cpufreq compiled
in the kernel, or with machines that support ACPI throtling. It saves
battery, lowers temperature, and can put the computer disks in standby
mode if a given period has passed without any I/O operation. It works
well even with journaled file systems such as Ext3, XFS, or ReiserFS.
Even supports the new interface for kernels 2.6.x
Tag: admin::boot, admin::hardware, hardware::laptop, hardware: ower:acpi, hardware: ower:apm, interface::daemon, role::sw:utility, use::configuring

sidicas@Miho:~$

sidicas@Miho:~$ apt-cache show powernowd
Package: powernowd
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 100
Maintainer: Bdale Garbee <[email protected]>
Architecture: i386
Version: 0.96-2
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-21)
Conflicts: cpudyn, cpufreqd
Filename: pool/main/p/powernowd/powernowd_0.96-2_i386.deb
Size: 18924
MD5sum: a6c4d1306d408ff38776da8f7ebdca91
Description: control cpu speed and voltage using 2.6 kernel interface
This simple client controls CPU speed and voltage using the sysfs interface
to the CPUFreq driver in v2.6 Linux kernels. It does not depend on APM or
ACPI, and it doesn't try to do anything other than control the CPU.
.
The name is somewhat misleading, as any CPUfreq capable processor will work,
not just those from AMD. However, it works better on CPUs that support more
than two speed steps, like those with AMD's PowerNow! or Intel's Pentium M
series.
.
This daemon is less complicated than cpufreqd or cpudyn, at the cost of
absolutely depending on a 2.6 kernel with the userspace governor and sysfs
support enabled.
Tag: admin: ower-management, interface::daemon, role::sw:server, use::configuring

sidicas@Miho:~$
sidicas@Miho:~$ apt-cache show powersaved
Package: powersaved
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 1508
Maintainer: Michael Biebl <[email protected]>
Architecture: i386
Source: powersave
Version: 0.9.25-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.5-1), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.0.2), libpowersave7, libstdc++6 (>= 4.0.2-3), lsb-base, powermgmt-base
Recommends: kpowersave, acpid
Conflicts: powernowd, cpudyn, cpufreqd, apmd
Filename: pool/main/p/powersave/powersaved_0.9.25-1_i386.deb
Size: 272748
MD5sum: 2bbff4b9c0f0846d575242b331bb5f11
Description: power management daemon
Provides battery, temperature, ac, cpufreq (SpeedStep, Powernow!)
control and monitoring. Proper suspend to disk/ram and standby by
shell hooks that are easy to extend. APM and ACPI machines are supported
equally. For laptops as well as for workstations.
.
Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/powersave/

sidicas@Miho:~$



You didn't say which graphics card you have..
I have an X700 so I needed to get the fglrx kernel modules and driver package.

sidicas@Miho:~$ apt-cache show fglrx-driver
Package: fglrx-driver
Priority: extra
Section: non-free/x11
Installed-Size: 20172
Maintainer: Flavio Stanchina <[email protected]>
Architecture: i386
Version: 8.20.8-1.1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.5-1), libstdc++5 (>= 1:3.3.4-1), libx11-6, libxext6, xserver-xorg (>= 6.8.0), xserver-xorg (<< 6.8.99)
Recommends: fglrx-kernel
Suggests: fglrx-control
Conflicts: nvidia-glx
Filename: pool/non-free/f/fglrx-driver/fglrx-driver_8.20.8-1.1_i386.deb
Size: 6735790
MD5sum: 8081724bcfa85c789a2f42f96fe2fc8f
Description: Video driver for the ATI graphics accelerators
Video driver for the ATI Radeon and FireGL graphics accelerators.
.
This package provides 2D display drivers and hardware accelerated OpenGL
for X.Org 6.8.0. For 3D acceleration to work, you will need to
compile the fglrx kernel module for your kernel: see the fglrx-kernel-src
package. Note that the driver will work without the kernel module, but 3D
acceleration will be disabled.
.
This version of the ATI driver officially supports:
* RADEON 8500, 9000, 9100, 9200, 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800
* RADEON X300/X550 series, X600, X700, X800, X850 (AGP and PCI Express)
* MOBILITY RADEON 9000, 9200, 9550, 9600, 9800, X600, X700
* MOBILITY RADEON 9000/9100 IGP Series
* FireGL 8700, 8800, E1, E2, X1, X2, X3, Z1, T2
* FireGL V3100, V3200, V5000, V5100, V7100
* MOBILITY FireGL 9100, T2, V5000
.
Caution: This software driver provides only 2D support for the
ATI RADEON 9100 IGP and ATI RADEON 9100 PRO IGP.

sidicas@Miho:~$

If you want me to search for anything else, just ask....
Note: I searched for Turion and found nothing. Hopefully your PowerNow is covered by the above packages..

Debian is a great distro, and I've always use it... But if you insist on running reasonably new software, then obviously don't use Debian.

Edit: The AMD64 Distro of Debian appears to be getting much more popular than I thought.. Last I heard it was still buggy, but a lot of people with Turions are now using it without a problem.. Might want to give it a shot.
http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/

Graph of the number of AMD64 Debian users who completed the architecture survey:
http://popcon.debian.org/stat/sub-amd64.png

Wow, near verticle growth.. amazing.. I'm quite shocked myself

 

Fedora Core 5 Test 3 is due out this Monday, if you'd like something to play with. I wouldn't do any serious work with it until the release version next month. It will give you up-to-date everything though. I use Fedora because I started with Red Hat and haven't found a reason to change. On my AMD64 FC4 desktop, PowerNOW! works automagically. Lots of Debian fans though.

I haven't tried installing Linux on my dv8125 yet. FC4 worked pretty well on my zv5000z.

 

Ok, hold your horses. I wouldn't dare to call myself a fellow linux user yet. My last *nix experience is from 1999 working for an ISP on FreeBSD at the time.

So I'm looking for something more complex than Ubuntu, but not too demanding (like recent builds of anything really). Debian seems safe since the way its maintained and it isn't riding at the cutting edge all the time.

A while a go someone gave me a RedHat 9 box-set with several CDs and a DVD plus manuals, but that's now years old?

Yes it seems AMD PowerNow! is supported by several packages - even AMD's site had a supposed PowerNow! 'driver' for 'linux', although it didn't have documentation with it. I guess I'll just have to be courageous and 'just do it'...

Seems the AMD64 is still being 'developed' and since I don't really need true 64bit computing and the regular Debian has basic support for AMD PowerNow and notebook power management I think I'll try that first.

The graphics card is ATI RADEON Express 200M

And the exact model of the machine is HP NX6125 EK156ET

Thanks for the help so far. I'm sure to be all over the newbie linux support forums ones I get the thing installed...

 

Oops... Didn't realize you were new.. Hmm.. Debian might not be such a good idea for you then..

If you want to learn Linux, and about the stuff that goes on under the hood, then Debian is by FAR the best distro out there.. At the other side.. If you don't want to learn Linux, and want to bury yourself in friendly GUIs that don't do much, but are usually enough for most non-power users, Get Suse. Suse also has a 64 bit version of Linux available as well. Suse has a very nice friendly installer that does an excellent job at determining what hardware you have and picking the software you need to get up and running as soon as possible.. It also works quite well. You can also pay money and buy yourself technical support and such from Suse ($59.99 or so).. So you can call them up and talk to someone if you like. Suse is one of the top distros for people who are completely new to Linux and are switching from Windows.

I've known people who have tried Debian and then run went screaming back to Windows because of all the stuff that needed to be learned.. Its not really complex... Just time consuming to learn it all.
You're definitally going to want to learn how to use VI and/or VIM.. Which are command-line text editors with no fancy GUIs. I think there are alternatives like nano and such that are a bit friendlier.. But using VI and/or VIM and/or emacs to edit your .bashrc or /etc/X11/xorg.conf is the classic Debian way.

Too old, don't use it. It has security flaws that aren't being patched because nobody is currently maintaining it.

On the Debian side, if you want technical support or you want to file a bug report, you usually need to read a little manual about the "Debian" way of filing bug reports and such.. It is a very formalized and efficient process, but might be very frustrating to anybody in a hurry.
Also, all software that is packaged in the Debian distro has very strict guidelines that they need to follow.. Again, its a very formalized process, a very large manual, (Hundreds of pages long actually). Of all the guidelines is available here: http://www.debian.org/doc/

A good resource on the good things, bad things, criticisms, etc. of Debian is on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian

Gentoo too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux

A good comparison of Distros is on Wikipedia also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions

These are articles incomplete, because they don't have the criticisms filled out.. There are some cons on these distros, but you'll have to google to find them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Core_5

 

Hello,

Try DesktopBSD 1.6RC1 http://desktopbsd.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=940 which is based on FreeBSD 6.2 and it has AMD's PowerNow! support too

This what I use for my Acer Aspire 5102 WLMi powered by AMD Turion64 x2