Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
Hi Yasha, On 10/17/2011 03:37 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: After much searching, I found for my wife a laptop that we could afford given that her Department had no funds to replace her stolen laptop, one that does work under EL including the 802.11 WNIC. It is a Lenovo G570 that uses an Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 (SandyBridge) graphics/video controller. The supplied display is 15.6” HD screen (1366x768), 16:9 widescreen. The 1366x768 resolution is not one of the choices, and I am not certain that the default VESA Xwindows driver has this resolution. Thus, the display is not optimum. Does anyone either have experience with this unit (I did hunt on Linux on Laptops) or with the correct Xwin driver for Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 and/or the 1366x768 screen? The intel driver for the SandyBridge built-in graphics controller is not compatible with the Sl5.7 kernel, so I don't think that SL5.X is suitable for that hardware. I would expect SL6.1 to be ok though. Matthias Yasha Karant
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
Matthias Schroeder wrote: Hi Yasha, On 10/17/2011 03:37 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: After much searching, I found for my wife a laptop that we could afford given that her Department had no funds to replace her stolen laptop, one that does work under EL including the 802.11 WNIC. It is a Lenovo G570 that uses an Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 (SandyBridge) graphics/video controller. The supplied display is 15.6” HD screen (1366x768), 16:9 widescreen. The 1366x768 resolution is not one of the choices, and I am not certain that the default VESA Xwindows driver has this resolution. Thus, the display is not optimum. Does anyone either have experience with this unit (I did hunt on Linux on Laptops) or with the correct Xwin driver for Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 and/or the 1366x768 screen? The intel driver for the SandyBridge built-in graphics controller is not compatible with the Sl5.7 kernel, so I don't think that SL5.X is suitable for that hardware. I would expect SL6.1 to be ok though. Matthias Yasha Karant Agreed, I did some testing on new hardware and found that even the VESA driver caused hardware lockup after a period of time. TUV officially supports the chipset as of 6.1, no earlier. -Mark -- Mr. Mark V. Stodola Digital Systems Engineer National Electrostatics Corp. P.O. Box 620310 Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA Phone: (608) 831-7600 Fax: (608) 831-9591
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
On 10/17/2011 06:38 AM, Mark Stodola wrote: Matthias Schroeder wrote: Hi Yasha, On 10/17/2011 03:37 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: After much searching, I found for my wife a laptop that we could afford given that her Department had no funds to replace her stolen laptop, one that does work under EL including the 802.11 WNIC. It is a Lenovo G570 that uses an Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 (SandyBridge) graphics/video controller. The supplied display is 15.6” HD screen (1366x768), 16:9 widescreen. The 1366x768 resolution is not one of the choices, and I am not certain that the default VESA Xwindows driver has this resolution. Thus, the display is not optimum. Does anyone either have experience with this unit (I did hunt on Linux on Laptops) or with the correct Xwin driver for Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 and/or the 1366x768 screen? The intel driver for the SandyBridge built-in graphics controller is not compatible with the Sl5.7 kernel, so I don't think that SL5.X is suitable for that hardware. I would expect SL6.1 to be ok though. Matthias Yasha Karant Agreed, I did some testing on new hardware and found that even the VESA driver caused hardware lockup after a period of time. TUV officially supports the chipset as of 6.1, no earlier. -Mark Thanks for the clarification. I assume that if I intend to build the latest production EL 6 linux kernel from a source rpm on a 5.7 system, one that presumably supports all of this hardware, the build will not fix the problem. In order to save time, I cloned my IA-32 5.7 drive onto the drive (that had MS Win 7 home installed) of the new laptop by removing the drive, putting it into an external and externally powered enclosure with a USB interface, and then a simple dd operation followed by gparted to add a logical partition to the larger target drive. The cloning worked, the system booted, etc. For testing purposes in-store, I used the latest SL 6.1 standalone DVD image, hoping that the major drivers in 6.1 would be present in 5.7 -- obviously, a failed hope. Now I have a decision to make: IA-32 SL 6.1 or X86-64 SL 6.1 . The processor will support X86-64, but the machine only has 4 Mbyte of RAM as delivered (upgradeable to 8 Mbyte -- but this is a cost) -- which is only 0.5 Mword in X86-64 64 bit mode. The hard drive is 500 Gbyte SATA at 5400 RPM -- not a high performance unit. There is no special need for 64 bit work on the machine that primarily is an end-user linux workstation: web browser (including use of university services only available through such an interface), IMAP email client, OpenOffice, various LaTeX interfaces, some display of video, use of Linux VirtualBox to use MS Win (for which the unit is licensed) to use a MS Win only application, but no development or programming -- and the ability for a skilled end user under Network Manager to connect to whatever 802.11 WAP that is available without my intervention. Thus, my feeling is to stay with the IA-32 environment. Any thoughts to the contrary? Yasha Karant
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
On 2011-10-17, at 9:20 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: On 10/17/2011 06:38 AM, Mark Stodola wrote: [...] Now I have a decision to make: IA-32 SL 6.1 or X86-64 SL 6.1 . The processor will support X86-64, but the machine only has 4 Mbyte of RAM as delivered (upgradeable to 8 Mbyte -- but this is a cost) -- which is only 0.5 Mword in X86-64 64 bit mode. The hard drive is 500 Gbyte SATA at 5400 RPM -- not a high performance unit. There is no special need for 64 bit work on the machine that primarily is an end-user linux workstation: web browser (including use of university services only available through such an interface), IMAP email client, OpenOffice, various LaTeX interfaces, some display of video, use of Linux VirtualBox to use MS Win (for which the unit is licensed) to use a MS Win only application, but no development or programming -- and the ability for a skilled end user under Network Manager to connect to whatever 802.11 WAP that is available without my intervention. Thus, my feeling is to stay with the IA-32 environment. Any thoughts to the contrary? Yasha Karant I would recommend using 64 bit for any virtual machine usage. Besides which, I think the only thing that wasn't 64 bit on linux for desktops was flash-plugin - which, I think is no longer the case (I cannot find any references though, anyone care to correct/confirm me?) -Chris
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
On Oct 17, 2011, at 18:20 , Yasha Karant wrote: [...] Now I have a decision to make: IA-32 SL 6.1 or X86-64 SL 6.1 . The processor will support X86-64, but the machine only has 4 Mbyte of RAM as delivered (upgradeable to 8 Mbyte -- but this is a cost) -- which is only 0.5 Mword in X86-64 64 bit mode. The hard drive is 500 Gbyte SATA at 5400 RPM -- not a high performance unit. I guess we're talking Gigabytes of RAM here, not Megabytes? There is no special need for 64 bit work on the machine that primarily is an end-user linux workstation: web browser (including use of university services only available through such an interface), IMAP email client, OpenOffice, various LaTeX interfaces, some display of video, use of Linux VirtualBox to use MS Win (for which the unit is licensed) to use a MS Win only application, but no development or programming -- and the ability for a skilled end user under Network Manager to connect to whatever 802.11 WAP that is available without my intervention. Thus, my feeling is to stay with the IA-32 environment. Any thoughts to the contrary? Yes: The 32-bit kernel will leave 25% of your 4 GB RAM unused, I believe. And all processes will be confined to 3 GB of address space (even if purely virtual). Increasingly, new features are only made available by TUV for the 64-bit flavour (KVM, xfs, samba3x on SL5, pNFS). Since the Java and Flash plugins are now available as 64-bit builds, much of the hassle with running 64-bit SL is now history. x86-64 has a future, ia32 IMHO hasn't (x32 seems interesting but will take a while to arrive and will use a 64-bit kernel). The extended register set and faster PC-relative addressing are not available to ia32 applications. A 500GB disk is plenty for installing the .i686 packages alongside the 64-bit ones. That being said, staying with ia32 may still be slightly more convenient, and part of the 1 GB of real memory you gain with x86-64 will be consumed by 64-bit pointers/longs and alignment. Choose your poison ;-) HTH, Stephan -- Stephan Wiesand DESY -DV- Platanenenallee 6 15738 Zeuthen, Germany
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
On 10/17/2011 09:50 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Oct 17, 2011, at 18:20 , Yasha Karant wrote: [...] Now I have a decision to make: IA-32 SL 6.1 or X86-64 SL 6.1 . The processor will support X86-64, but the machine only has 4 Mbyte of RAM as delivered (upgradeable to 8 Mbyte -- but this is a cost) -- which is only 0.5 Mword in X86-64 64 bit mode. The hard drive is 500 Gbyte SATA at 5400 RPM -- not a high performance unit. I guess we're talking Gigabytes of RAM here, not Megabytes? There is no special need for 64 bit work on the machine that primarily is an end-user linux workstation: web browser (including use of university services only available through such an interface), IMAP email client, OpenOffice, various LaTeX interfaces, some display of video, use of Linux VirtualBox to use MS Win (for which the unit is licensed) to use a MS Win only application, but no development or programming -- and the ability for a skilled end user under Network Manager to connect to whatever 802.11 WAP that is available without my intervention. Thus, my feeling is to stay with the IA-32 environment. Any thoughts to the contrary? Yes: The 32-bit kernel will leave 25% of your 4 GB RAM unused, I believe. And all processes will be confined to 3 GB of address space (even if purely virtual). Increasingly, new features are only made available by TUV for the 64-bit flavour (KVM, xfs, samba3x on SL5, pNFS). Since the Java and Flash plugins are now available as 64-bit builds, much of the hassle with running 64-bit SL is now history. x86-64 has a future, ia32 IMHO hasn't (x32 seems interesting but will take a while to arrive and will use a 64-bit kernel). The extended register set and faster PC-relative addressing are not available to ia32 applications. A 500GB disk is plenty for installing the .i686 packages alongside the 64-bit ones. That being said, staying with ia32 may still be slightly more convenient, and part of the 1 GB of real memory you gain with x86-64 will be consumed by 64-bit pointers/longs and alignment. Choose your poison ;-) HTH, Stephan You are correct; errors from too much late night work and too much multitasking. 4 Gbyte RAM as base, thus 1 Gword in IA-32 mode, and 0.5 Mword in X86-64 64 bit mode. I agree with the issue of pick your poison, but none of the features you mention currently are needed by the end user on a simple client workstation. I suspect that I shall continue to use and recommend VirtualBox until such time as the distro equivalent becomes more easily fully functional -- for a long time, I stuck with VMware until both the VMware license become onerous and VirtualBox had all of the essential functionality of VMware for the applications under which I use a virtual machine to run a guest OS (e.g., MS Win). I am concerned that 0.5 Mword will not be sufficient and that there will be excessive swapping to the hard drive. Although a migration from IA-32 SL 6 to X86-64 SL 6 does require a complete re-install, if one is careful with saving the various current (e.g., SL 6.current in both the IA-32 and X86-64 environments) IA-32 libraries in the right places so that these can be put back in place under the X86-64 (e.g., mv the entire tree to a partition that will not be touched by the install, such as /home, and then cp back the contents to the correct location (e.g., /lib), the 64 bit environment should support 32 bit executables. Yasha Karant
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
On Mon, 17 Oct 2011, Stephan Wiesand wrote: On Oct 17, 2011, at 18:20 , Yasha Karant wrote: Yes: The 32-bit kernel will leave 25% of your 4 GB RAM unused, I believe. And all processes will be confined to 3 GB of address space (even if purely virtual). Increasingly, new features are only made available by TUV for the 64-bit flavour (KVM, xfs, samba3x on SL5, pNFS). Since the Java and Flash plugins are now available as 64-bit builds, much of the hassle with running 64-bit SL is now history. x86-64 has a future, ia32 IMHO hasn't (x32 seems interesting but will take a while to arrive and will use a 64-bit kernel). The extended register set and faster PC-relative addressing are not available to ia32 applications. A 500GB disk is plenty for installing the .i686 packages alongside the 64-bit ones. 32-bit kernel can address more than 4GB of memory if the kernel uses PAE mode, physical address extension, up to 40-bit. Mike
Re: SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
On Mon, 17 Oct 2011, Bluejay Adametz wrote: Yes: The 32-bit kernel will leave 25% of your 4 GB RAM unused, I believe. I'm running 32-bit SL6.0 on a 5gb-RAM machine and (unless I'm missing something) it sees and uses all of it. Yes, kernel with PAE allows the OS to address more than 4GB of RAM. However, if the 32-bit application is not coded to address more than 4GB of RAM, the app will not take advantage of the additional memory. Mike
SL 5.7 Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 SandyBridge
After much searching, I found for my wife a laptop that we could afford given that her Department had no funds to replace her stolen laptop, one that does work under EL including the 802.11 WNIC. It is a Lenovo G570 that uses an Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 (SandyBridge) graphics/video controller. The supplied display is 15.6” HD screen (1366x768), 16:9 widescreen. The 1366x768 resolution is not one of the choices, and I am not certain that the default VESA Xwindows driver has this resolution. Thus, the display is not optimum. Does anyone either have experience with this unit (I did hunt on Linux on Laptops) or with the correct Xwin driver for Intel Integrated HD Graphics 3000 and/or the 1366x768 screen? Yasha Karant
