I recently went looking for a netbook and was attracted by the Samsung
NC20. Hunting with the googlebird I saw a dmesg on todd.fries.net so I
felt reasonably positive and went and bought one. It was on special
with 2GB RAM and not much extra for a 320GB drive with the original
supplied in a USB case.
It came with Win XP home. Enough said about that! It got reduced to 50G
because I must run a few win things for clients.
Because there is lots of noise about Linux on Netbooks I decided to do
a quicky install so that I could see what X settings happened and copy
those for an OpenBSD install, if necessary.
A quick summary: Ubuntu netbook remix did not even get to display its
first screen. Looked like it lost vertical sync or something. SuSE
wanted to blow windows away no matter what I told it. Mandriva got to
the point of letting me select to install and then the screen never
changed but the USB dvd drive ran up and stopped again every little
while.
Mint, PCLinuxOS, and several others were useless.
So I decided to just see what happened with OpenBSD. Got an Aug 25 snap
and it went on a slickly as ever. I even got brave and let it do an xdm
setup.
Bingo! It JUST worked! I popped fluxbox, Firefox and a few other apps
and all was well.
Only gripe on day one - the etch-a-sketch pad is way too sensitive to
the lightest finger touchdown. I turned off the ability to use it for
mouse clicks in windows but it still sucks in OBSD of course.
Then I found out I could not do banking because I was missing a java
plug in. Well I had plenty of RAM and HDD so I compiled the thing right
there on a 1.6GHz cpu.
It worked like a charm. I now have a netbook with pf guarding my
network ports.
I knew that the inbuilt ath was not fully supported yet so bought a
Dlink USB that shows as rum0. It can see my ral0 on my firewall but
cannot connect. H my old thinkpad talks to it just fine with a
supported Lenovo ath. More work to sus that out. Hints anybody?
Overall a happy experience with only the wi-fi as a showstopper for
travelling.
(BTW what's the go for accessing hotspots with quick reconfigs? These
damn USB things don't take major changes without a cold boot it seems.
Even from a windows reboot to my default OS the rum0 doesn't like it.)
Here is the mandatory dmesg with the rum in and also the USB stick.
OpenBSD 4.6-current (GENERIC) #133: Tue Aug 25 21:52:51 MDT 2009
dera...@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: VIA Nano processor u2...@1300+mhz (CentaurHauls 686-class) 1.60
GHz
cpu0:
FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CFLUSH
,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,TM,SBF,SSE3,MWAIT,VMX,EST,TM2,CX16,xTPR
real mem = 1877364736 (1790MB)
avail mem = 1810202624 (1726MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 04/22/09, BIOS32 rev. 0 @
0xfdb04, SMBIOS rev. 2.5 @ 0xdf010 (51 entries)
bios0: vendor Phoenix Technologies Ltd. version 09MQ date 04/22/2009
bios0: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NC20/NB20
acpi0 at bios0: rev 2
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC MCFG HPET BOOT SSDT SLIC
acpi0: wakeup devices PWRB(S5) PER1(S3) MBTN(S4)
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee0: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: RNG AES AES-CTR SHA1 SHA256
cpu0: apic clock running at 199MHz
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 1 pa 0xfec0, version 3, 24 pins
ioapic1 at mainbus0: apid 2 pa 0xfecc, version 3, 24 pins
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus -1 (PEGC)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 1 (PE0C)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 2 (PE1C)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 255 (SP2P)
acpiec0 at acpi0
acpicpu0 at acpi0: C2, C1, PSS
acpipwrres0 at acpi0: FN00
acpitz0 at acpi0: critical temperature 95 degC
acpitz1 at acpi0: critical temperature 95 degC
acpiac0 at acpi0: AC unit online
acpibat0 at acpi0: BAT1 type LION oem SAMSUNG Electronics
acpibtn0 at acpi0: LID0
acpibtn1 at acpi0: PWRB
acpibtn2 at acpi0: SLPB
acpivideo0 at acpi0: VGA_
acpivout0 at acpivideo0: CRT_
acpivout1 at acpivideo0: LCD_
acpivout2 at acpivideo0: DVI_
acpivout3 at acpivideo0: TV__
bios0: ROM list: 0xc/0xe800 0xce800/0x1000 0xdf000/0x1000!
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 1597 MHz: speeds: 1600, 1400, 1300, 1200,
1100, 1000, 900, 800 MHz
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 VIA VX800 Host rev 0x12
pchb1 at pci0 dev 0 function 1 VIA VX800 Host rev 0x00
pchb2 at pci0 dev 0 function 2 VIA VX800 Host rev 0x00
pchb3 at pci0 dev 0 function 3 VIA VX800 DRAM rev 0x00
pchb4 at pci0 dev 0 function 4 VIA VX800 Host rev 0x00
VIA VX800 IOAPIC rev 0x00 at pci0 dev 0 function 5 not configured
pchb5 at pci0 dev 0 function 6 VIA VX800 Host rev 0x00
pchb6 at pci0 dev 0 function 7 VIA VX800 Host rev 0x00
vga1 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 VIA Chrome9 HC3 IGP rev 0x11
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
ppb0 at pci0 dev 3 function 0 VIA VX800 PCIE rev
