Newer hardware [was Re: [Gllug] Small rant ]

[Anthony Newman]

Minty wrote:
> I plan to replace windows, but ideally don't want to loose the 
> "instant on" dvd player. Bit concerned about screwing up the boot 
> partition and not being able to fix it...Or replacing the boot loader
> and not being able to boot into the custom partition....

Any of the user-friendly Linux distros will give you simple DVD playing
functionality, although it is guaranteed to be slightly less easy to
achieve than with a point-and-drool interface. As for losing the custom
jiggery-pokery, I assume the machine comes with an install disc that can
restore it to as-new condition if you irreparably destroy what it came with.

Some initial experimentation to establish what you can get away with
before you start to customise whatever you decide to go with is probably
time well spent.

Boot partitions can be backed up easily, and you can always boot an
install or live CD to give you the ability to fiddle and restore from
Linuxland, which is also a useful skill to have on-tap for those
irritating occasions when your shiny new kernel panics on boot :)

I used to prefer using Windows, with Linux as something to play with and
use for actually getting particular stuff done, but I very rarely boot
Windows now, although it still resides on my hard disc for those odd
occasions. It's more of an exposure thing I think; the more you get used
to your intended environment, the easier it becomes to forget about the
things you might initially miss because they're trivially easy on "the
other side". I do sit in front of a Linux workstation for 8 hours a day
though, so I'm possibly biased :)


> 
> So the plan is to get a Knoppix or similar boot disk and poke around,
>  but...

I've never been much of a fan of these; they're great to give people a
quick taste of the potential of Linux, but the loss of any customisation
at each reboot always put me off (unless I missed something fundamental,
which is quite possible :) )


> What I'm really after here is any pointers to lists, blogs, groups 
> associated with funky sony laptop hardware and linux. Sony's support
>  seems a bit pants in this regard (the manual tells you how to add 
> more memory, but not how to replace the harddisk) and I've not found 
> a great deal online yet....
> 
> Oh, and any advice for good tools/techniques for poking around with 
> what might not be standard hardware.

There's a reasonable chance it'll be close enough to "standard" hardware
for most, if not all, of it to work. I don't imagine Sony would waste
their money developing custom hardware and drivers when there are
off-the-shelf chips and software to do what they require. I could be
wrong, but my (admittedly somewhat older) Sony Vaio (FX804) is fairly
standard under the hood - AMD Athlon, VIA KT133M chipset, Conexant
winmodem etc.

It also depends on whether you're an open-source zealot, or whether
partially-closed-source drivers are acceptable to you. Personally I sit
on the fence; it's nice to have full information and control over the
hardware you use, and to be able to make purchasing decisions with that
in mind, but it seems the provision of object code for devices by
manufacturers leads to good hardware performance with full feature
support from the word go, and takes the edge off the impetus to develop
for new hardware. I have an NVIDIA graphics card in my desktop, and a
Conexant PCI ADSL modem in my router box, both of which have "non-free"
drivers, and both of which have always performed impeccably. Horses for
courses.

Otherwise, unless you're planning on trying to reverse-engineer hardware
to write your own device drivers, the information about what hardware is
hanging off the processor can generally be found with lspci or dmesg,
and some Googling for manufacturer/device IDs if the information is not
directly forthcoming.


Ant
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