Laptop compatibility - Little help? - Clevo M570RU-U, Alienware m15x, Dell m1730

Looking to buy a new laptop and wondering if I could get some feedback. On a previous post someone mentioned

Clevo M570RU-U
Alienware m15x
Dell m1730

for use with Windows and FreeBSD. Eager to hear about FreeBSD or Gentoo, but any bsd/linux would be good to know if things are working. I would love a laptop that has an actual working acpi. I will just compare them for the benefit of other people looking to buy top of the line laptops.

Clevo M570RU-U
http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=61
chipset: Intel PM965 + ICH8M
17" screen
1 hard drive
7/1 card reader (does it work?)
camera (does it work?)
sound (does it work?)
gigabit nic (does it work?)
bluetooth (does it work?)
tv tuner (optional, probably does not work under *nix)
hotkeys (probably doesn't work out of box)
s-video out
dvi out
firewire a
4 usb ports
express card
serial port

Alienware m15x
http://www.alienware.com/products/a...Code=PC-LT-AREA51M15X-AI1&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT
chipset=?
15" screen
2 hard drives, raidable (raid work in *nix?)
possible sli (does not work in *nix, and probably won't for a long time)
7/1 card reader (does it work?)
hdmi out
sound card (does it work?)
light up keyboard (guessing does not function under *nix)
gigabit nic (does it work?)
bluetooth (does it work?)
hotkeys (probably doesn't work out of box)
firewire b
3 usb ports
express card

Dell m1730
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1730?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
17" screen
chipset=?
2 hard drives, raidable (raid work in *nix?)
possible sli (does not work in *nix, and probably won't for a long time)
dvi out (I'm guessing this does)
physics (doubt this works)
gigabit nic (does it work?)
bluetooth (does it work?)
8/1 card reader (does it work?)
firewire a (does it work?)
4 usb ports (does it work?)
express card (does it work?)
IR (does it work?)
dual sound out/in (two speaker/mic output/input)
camera (does it work?)
backlight (guessing this does not work under *nix)

I think that's everything, correct if wrong. Anyone want to help get me off this ms-1719 lemon and make a guide at the same time?

 

BSD won't work on most of the things listed there, especially FreeBSD. For an easier experience I would recommend PC-BSD.

Are you looking to use *nix for the first time? If you are, Gentoo and BSD in general are not suitable choices for beginners or even intermediates. Heck, BSD is not even for laptops.

 

It won't do SLI, tv tuner, camera, hotkeys, lightup, and possibly the card reader. Not sure about express card on BSD yet. Others have a good chance of working depending on what hardware they are. Trying to sort it out.. Linux might do the camera, and hotkeys. Just want to know what is possible. I could do most things on this laptop if the EC of the bios wasn't such crap. I don't think FreeBSD is as limited as you think, tried 7 recently? =) Being able to use basic hardware would be fine to me but the others would be a bonus. I just mentioned all the attributes of the laptop. I know some of them are not available in anything other than Windows; trying to isolate that for myself and other readers...

No, i'm not a beginner, more intermediate. I've got gentoo working on this ms-1719. noacpi on laptops gets old quickly. FreeBSD has "overheating" problems during compiling some ports and forces a shutdown. ACPI weirdness. If I remember correctly having noacpi on didn't even make a difference.

Really in a nutshell what is needed is specific hardware and that the bios is not tailor made for Windows - especially the forced Vista usage.

 

If I recall, PCBSD would have worked a few months ago for everything in my sig except camera and BT mouse.

 

BSD isnt even for desktops, its more for servers lol
If you want one of the build it yourself distros like Gentoo, try Arch its a little easier

 

This isn't a question on if it's "easy" or anything skill related. Cold hard facts from people who own the hardware mainly if the bios isn't so tailored to windows that *nix will not reject it outright. Everything else is icing. Let's pretend I said ubuntu so all the remarks about picking an OS more suited for the job. That better?

 

We assume that the OP is a beginner, considering the context of his post; therefore, we advise him to stick with more beginner-friendly distributions of Linux or BSD. How "easy" it is very important for a first-time user; we're doing the OP a favor, so I don't know what you're talking about.

 

True, it's easier to learn BASH commands if you have a running system to begin with

 

If I understand correctly, the OP m4gicite is an intermediate Gentoo user but he wants to know whether the 3 laptops mentioned are Linux proof, right?
M4gicite, are you asking which chipsets are inside and whether the BIOS in those notebooks is geared towards Vista only?
And do you want to make a list of Linux compatible hardware or a BSD/Linuxguide for those 3 different laptops.
Maybe it's me, could be, but I'm a bit confused as to what you want exactly.

 

Yes Baserk, you are the winner. Guess I provided too much information. Wanted to know if anyone who had them could vouch for their usability, especially with said platforms.

The rest of the information was just a tally board to help people in the future if they had the same question since I've found no information about said laptops - was going to edit it when/if answers came.

Suggesting different OSs doesn't really help, that's not the problem. Unless there's some uber underground Laptop Linux distro that will blow everything out of the water.

And yes, i'm sarcastic. I mean no ill by it. ^^ Didn't really appreciate being called a nub for asking about hardware compatibility and saying to try a different distro which would do nothing for the problem.

I really don't want something like this to happen. Lin distros aren't happy and unix distros have a fit.
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9823

oooh, been awhile since I checked that report and there's a possible fix at the end. I'll need to try that out.

 

Well, hopefully the Ubuntupost works for you.
My guess is though that if you can and feel comfortable with recompiling your own kernel for your Arch distro, you're pretty much at the top of the NBR Linux food chain.

And as far as I know, Arch is the only/one of the few bleeding edge distros people tend to stick with after hopping around in distro land. I don't know of any uber underground substitution.

There are some Dell owners here, can't remember ever having seen a Clevo or Alienware owner posting in this section.
My guess is, the different distro fora are your best bet for now.
Cheers.

 

These kinds of posts appear here every now and then, and it's worth noting that this forum can be very hit or miss when answering these kinds of questions, through no fault of its own. Usually it's more useful to go to forums specific to users of your target hardware, if they exist, and then check out forums specific to users of your preferred distro, and then go from there. Alternatly there are sites that collect user installation "howtos" regarding Linux installations on various laptops. The two most notable ones are;

TuxMobil
Linux on Laptops

So for the laptops mentioned

Clevo M570RU-U
There's this Debian & Clevo m570ru report from Tuxmobil

Alienware m51x
There's 10 posts of Linux installations on this laptop from Tuxmobil, like this one from a Gentoo user's installation

Dell m1730
Since this Dell is so new, there aren't user postings collected yet, but there's people posting over at the Ubuntu forums, who have installed Linux on the m1730, on this thread. You can also try checking out the Dell forums dedicated to Linux on Dell computers.

Good Luck..

 

Much appricated Jas. Will have to look though them in more detail later. Just for a correction of what you have the Alienware m15x is not the same as the area51-m.

The page going over the Clevo was pretty much exactly what I wanted. More verbose messages would be nice, but close enough. Probably post in the ubuntu forum to see if the guy will dump out more of that precious info.

ty again

 

You're right, my bad. Seeing as this m15x is also a new technology (Penryn) laptop it's likely in the same boat as the Dell. Best shot is to visit some Alienware run forums, (if they exist), and try asking users there. BTW, all deference to our parent NBR, I do realize that there are hardware specific forums here, and there's even a couple of threads on the subject of m15x and Linux here and here, it's just that visiting manufacturer's websites can sometimes yield benefits, in terms of larger numbers of users of your target hardware. Anyway nothing wrong with checking them all out.

However, it's likely that users who are interested in the newer technology laptops, and want to run Linux, are just diving in and trying it. When I did it, I had perhaps 90% of things working with a little bit of fiddling upon installation, and the rest of the hardware was eventually supported over time. Sometimes it was a matter of me simply finding the right driver project website, like 6 months after I had my laptop and I discovered the UVC Linux drivers for my webcam.

Good Luck..