On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 13:12:41 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard <[email protected]> dijo:
> If I bring a linux live disk to the store, and they let me reboot a > portable to test for compatibility, how can I tell if sound, video, > wireless, Ethernet, etc. are supported? Do I open a terminal and scan dmesg > or is there a better way? I'd use an Ubuntu live CD. Ubuntu is probably the most plug and play of the distros these days, so it is the most likely to autodetect and configure hardware. Rather than poke through dmesg I am a big fan of real world hands-on testing. If it works, cool. If not, on to the next machine. Sound: The Ubuntu live CD has that drumroll when it starts. If you hear it, then sound is working. Video: Before going to the store look up the specs for the machine to see what the native video resolution is. When you have booted Ubuntu go into Preferences > Display to see if the resolution matches. If not, move on to the next machine. Fixing video problems is more pain than it is worth if you haven't yet bought the machine. As a second consideration, lappies these days come with nVidia, ATI or Intel video. ATI currently has a bad reputation with Linux. nVidia has very good Linux support, but from everything I read they suck a lot of power - not cool if you need to be on battery a lot. Intel gets good reviews for power usage, but sometimes you can't get fancy stuff to work - e.g., compiz. Wireless: If there is no ethernet cable connected, then Ubuntu should show an icon with bars in the upper right of the Gnome panel. (Sometimes the icon is a couple of monitor screens instead of the bars.) Click on it to see if any wireless networks were detected. Chances are excellent that there are a couple wireless networks available in the store. You don't actually have to connect to them. If Ubuntu sees wireless networks, then you know it found and configured the wireless card. There could still be issues with WPA and other stuff, but at least you know the wireless works at a basic level. Ethernet: It is unusual to find an ethernet device that Linux does not support these days. Still, I would do lspci to see if the boot process found the ethernet device, and then ifconfig to see if it shows up. The output from those commands is short and can be read quickly in the store when you have a nervous sales droid peering over your shoulder. You might also bring a USB stick with you and write the output of dmesg to it. That way you can take the dmesg output home to read it in detail. Of course, before getting out my plastic I would also Google my tail off on the specific model to see if there are any Linux gotchas. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
