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