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tactless
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 8:59 am    Post subject: Would you put Gentoo on a laptop? Reply with quote

I'm waiting for my IBM Thinkpad R50e Celeron-M 1.4ghz Centrino laptop. I've been wondering what distribution to put on it...
Now, I love Gentoo on my desktop. I've been using it for years. However, on a laptop, I'm kind of worried... compiling (almost) any program you want to download is quite a beating for a laptop to take. It will also take quite a while on the Celeron-M. Binary packages are available, but AFAIK they aren't kept as up-to-date as the ebuilds. However, I don't know if other distros will support the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 chipset. Debian seems to have a package, but god knows if it'll work, and if there's as great a community as these boards which will help me install it on Debian.
Recommendations? Suggestions?
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BWoso
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I know many people with Gentoo on laptops, they have no problems with it. Just remember that Gentoo Rocks.
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mercurator
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I say go for gentoo. I have it on my laptop, and I would never consider using annother distribution. Compiling is not an issue, especially if you use distcc.

Best Regards
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psyqil
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tried a few, but nothing beats Gentoo! :D

Now my lappy isn't the fastest, so I build the system on my desktop and copied it over, now I can use it to build binary packages in a chroot on the desktop.

Another possibility is to mount the laptop-partition over nfs, chroot to that dir and let the faster machine do the work.
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z3ro
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes I would.
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plate
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My 850 MHz PIII Vaio has been running Gentoo and FreeBSD since December 2002, and both emerge and portupgrade have been compiling the life out of its CPU: neither were any electrons harmed in the process, nor did the hardware suffer from this.

Specifically, I haven't heard of any problems with Thinkpads and Gentoo Linux for months now. I know your WLAN interface is perfectly supported, just search around the DT&T forum for convenient ways of setting up your wireless configuration. I suggest you go pester the IRC channel #gentoo-laptops on Freenode if things aren't performing as well as expected, but I seriously doubt you'll ever need to ask any questions there. 8)
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pjp
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could build the binaries on another machine, then transfer them to the laptop.


Moved from Other Things Gentoo.
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Riveri
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gentoo is working perfectly on my laptop
(1,6GHz Centrino)
so go ahead and install it... it's worth of those couple extra hours what it takes compared to other distros.

and nowdays iwp2200 works fine so it wont make a problem anymore.
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blackhaT
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use gentoo on my laptop, works great ;).
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electrofreak
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would put gentoo on my laptop, but my laptop is an old Gateway Solo 200Mhz... I know, it sucks, I mainly got it just so it could be portable, and it was only $25 (bought from a friend). Also, it only has a 2GB drive, so I don't think linux would fit on it if I want a decent desktop environment. If I could put it on my laptop, I would definately put gentoo on it though. I actually boot knoppix on it sometimes. Windows 2000 runs fine, and I have a minimal setup with only the neccesary MS Office on it, and Gaim, and Firefox and a few other things like an ssh client. I wish I could put Gentoo on it though.
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Archangel1
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

blackhaT wrote:
I use gentoo on my laptop, works great ;).


Same here... Software Suspend is about the only thing that has given me any trouble; other than a slightly dodgy hdd....
And that being said, it has worked okay, I just tend to break it by doing something dumb.

Compilations do take a bit longer yes; but it's not too awful on my 933. You really notice a serious difference for things like X/KDE/bootstrap/emerge system; but I don't wait around for them anyway. Bootstrap and emerge system are left overnight; same with KDE. Hence it doesn't really matter if it takes 3 hours or 6 - and they aren't things you'll have to do frequently.
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badMojo
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have an Alienware Area-51m 3.0 ghz 1 gig of ram... Gentoo is perfect.
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val
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

my first gentoo install (okay out of two) was on a laptop. It's also a centrino w/ 1.5GHz PM. Emerges don't take that long at all. Remember 1.5GHz PM is like a 2.5GHz P4. Not really that slow... well not by my standards. Anyway it takes maybe 5 minutes to compile a whole kernel from scratch. Make sure you install gcc 3.4 so you can use the pentium-m flags. Ndiswrapper works just fine with my ipw2200 wireless card. The only think I'm missing is software suspend. I'm working on that now actually.
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codergeek42
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 2:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

<edited>
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Last edited by codergeek42 on Tue Nov 30, 2004 9:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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val
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 2:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you are going to erase everything windows, why not reject the EULA and pursue a refund? I know people havent' had great luck with that, but it's worth a shot.
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codergeek42
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 2:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

val wrote:
If you are going to erase everything windows, why not reject the EULA and pursue a refund? I know people havent' had great luck with that, but it's worth a shot.
Good idea. Though, I do want to verify the hwardware's integrity so that Dell people don't tell me that using another OS somehow validtaes the warranty or whatever. *shrug*
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asb002
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm using Gentoo on my Dell Inspiron 3000 (P1-266, 144MB RAM, 6GB HD). Works great, better than any other distro I tried, and much more stable and secure than Windows. Compiling does take a long time, so maybe one of these days I'll set up distcc with my desktop and server.
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XQC
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No.

The fact that Gentoo (or Linux in general) doesn't seem to support WPA for WLAN is in my opinion the killer argument against Gentoo on my Laptop.
But I know there is a project going on, working on this issue. Though I don't know how far they have gotten.

But when the time has come, my laptop is then ready to say "Welcome to your new home, tux" :D
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JingBL
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 5:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gentoo works well on my Samsung P20. As for Thinkpad I think it would be fine, 'cause one of my friends uses Debian on his IBM Thinkpad and he speaks highly of its performance. So with better flexibility, Gentoo would work better on it.
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nilson
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 8:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gentoo would be the first thing to go on my new laptop.
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swingarm
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 8:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have 2 flavors of Gentoo on mine(Compaq R3000Z w/Athlon64 CPU and 1gb ram) the regular 32 bit version and the AMD64 version. I do a moderate amount of bleeding edge stuff so it takes a bit of tweaking to get running right. All in all it works great!
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baeksu
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have gentoo on my 1.3 GHz centrino, been really happy with it. Compiles don`t really take that long. OO was a six hour compile, but I guess that`s more or less normal for a box as old as mine (bought it 18 months ago already).

Hardware works fine, suspending, scaling, the whole shebang. It`s nice to be able to stretch out my meager batterylife a little more, and resuming from suspended state gives me a working X in ten seconds, which is kinda useful for just quickly checking emails and stuff.
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mrsteven
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

BWoso wrote:
Just remember that Gentoo Rocks.

Yes, it does. :D Gentoo runs on my ASUS M6700N, and it works fine. Because you can get the newest kernel and other software (with support for new laptop hardware), I think nothing beats Gentoo here.
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sireyessire
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

codergeek42 wrote:
Purchasing an Inspiron 8600 some time in the next week or two. I plan on installing pure Gentoo on it just as soon as I boot ino Win XP Home (it comes with it :cry: ) and verify that all the hardware works good. =)

it was exactely what i did and it rocks dude!
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tsunam
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

can always join #gentoo-laptop. we are there and there's quite few who are extremely knowledgeable in the channel. I've learned a lot there myself, since i've joined...how much of it i'll keep is unknown :)

Dell 600m here (works mostly..not everything works but it does its job)
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