On Sunday 15 November 2009 19:39:40 Mick wrote: > I have been thinking of buying this laptop and was looking at the Gentoo > Wiki which shows relatively good hardware compatibility, except for the > radeon card which is now an older offering: > > http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Dell_Studio_XPS_16 > > The current spec on the UK Dell website shows 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 (see > below). > ================================================================ > PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache) > LCD: Black Leather back cover : 15.6" (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD WLED > Edge to Edge Display > MEMORY: 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048] > HARD DRIVE: 500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive > PRIMARY BATTERY: 9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion battery > OPTICAL DRIVE: Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read & > Write) > Optical Drive > GRAPHICS CARD: 1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics card > WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY: Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card (802.11 b/g) > BLUETOOTH: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module > ================================================================ > > According to these links the RadeonHD driver is experimental: > http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon > http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Aexperimental_3D > > Does anyone have experience with this driver, or better yet, this laptop? > Shall I buy or shall I shy away from it? >
Most Dell-laptops actually work quite nicely with Linux, however, be aware that DELL has issues with the harddrives they supply. I've seen 6 different recent DELL-laptops with crashed harddrives in the past 1.5 years. These laptops were handled carefully. Response from Dell was: "Sorry, we shipped a wrong batch...." I would suggest frequent backups of important files and/or the harddrive swapped for a more reliable model. -- Joost
