On 2013-10-24 10:58, WarGrey Gyoudmon Ju wrote:
I want to buy a new laptop for Openindiana. What's the official suggestions? Are those in the list with blank 'notes' okay? http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/Laptops+and+Netbooks
From my general experience (though mostly "burnt fingers") and vague knowledge from list-reading, I think the currently suggested rigs should involve: 1) Ability to test in-shop or return due to incompatibility with your software. Many sales points don't allow that - are not required to, but some do. Risk of incompatibility is high, so you might want to take precautions or even overpay a bit for that (i.e. two weeks for the returns no-questions-asked). 2) KVM virtualization - IIRC it is officially done for Intel CPUs with VT-D, and an experimental branch is worked on for equivalent AMDs. So if interested in KVM, you'd prefer intel now :) VirtualBox should be fine on both (my AMD E2 works ok). 3) WiFi - some NICs are supported better than others (i.e. have native illumos drivers, have sleep/wakeup for hibernation, support WEP/WPA), so you might lean towards Intel ones which are mostly supported well, though there are half a dozen drivers in the tree for various models. 4) Somewhat likewise for Ethernet NICs, though the Free NIC Drivers project can help here: http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng/ 5) Don't expect USB3 out of the box right now, might not work even to power up a mouse or cell phone. Maybe some drivers will be made and published soon, but for now - make sure at least some USB2 ports are available on the laptop. 6) Audio may work, may be quiet, and there may be a mixup between for example a MoBo audio chip and a videocard's HDMI audio support. In my case both were driven by "audiohd" driver, and I needed to rename some device files in order to have the physical audio be the default output. 7) Video support - AFAIK certain NVidia chips have binary drivers for Solaris which work in illumos. Maybe also Intel. My AMD E2 Radeon (built-in to the CPU, er, "APU") works only as a VESA adapter and does not support hibernation in OI, for example. 8) CDROM is not strictly required, but in my case lack of one caused me to install the system using the HDD in legacy IDE mode. When I boot off an USB LiveMedia, my "SCSI" (SATA/USB) devices have different naming/ordering than when I boot off the SATA-mode HDD, so my SATA rpool can not be imported. 9) Some advanced laptops include an ability to drive 2 or 3 storage devices, such as 2 HDDs and an mSATA SSD. For performance work and safe storage, you might want that (i.e. OS and cache on SSD, and mirrored HDDs for bulk data). RAM depends on you usage, 8Gb suffices for me including 1-2 VMs for some tests; though perhaps more complex "labs" of VMs and zones might need more. Some laptops allow 32Gb... 10) And as usual with the laptops, make sure the KBD and screen are convenient for you. You don't want to save money on health :) Probably you'd want a 15"+ laptop with proper full-sized keyboard and preferably good resolution (at least 1920*1080). In particular, my Lenovo TP E335 lacks the "numeric keyboard" and its associated arrow keys completely, which is sometimes important, as well as any kbd LEDs and some advanced keys like Pause/Break - this is not always convenient for coding/debugging ;) HTH, //Jim Klimov _______________________________________________ oi-dev mailing list [email protected] http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/oi-dev
