__/ [ Kier ] on Monday 01 May 2006 10:39 \__
> On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 17:37:10 -0700, Larry Qualig wrote:
>
>>
>> Kier wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>>
>>> I'd probably buy a Dell, next time. They're good value.
>>
>> I have a few Dell laptops and a Toshiba as well. Overall SuSE works
>> fine on the Dell except for the following. 1) Built-in wireless. It
>> wasn't supported out of the box by SuSE but I was able to find and
>> download an RPM to get it to work. There's a project at SourceForge
>> that I tried to compile but I gave up on it and found the re-built RPM.
>> Took the easy way out.
>
> Nothing wrong in that :-) My brother had to do something similar with his
> laptop, I believe, to get the wifi working. Separate cards may be annoying
> in some ways, but if you get one that's a dud with Linux, at elast you can
> try another
See the following article, which was published last night:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS1977847793.html
[ Linux gains enhanced WiFi stack ]
This will ultimately make, once distributed and propagated to the latest from
each vendor, manual installation of Wi-Fi a thing of the past. From what I
have been told time and time again, distributions are not the cause for
incompatibilities with hardware. It is usually the kernel and its 'glue'
with the remainder (various packages).
>> So wireless is now working fine and the only remaining annoyance (#2)
>> is the "glide-point" pad that's used as the mouse. It basically works
>> but it's just not very smooth. The mouse seems to jerk around the
>> screen more than it should. There's one driver (I think it's the ALPS)
>> that works well for smoothness and the ability to easily move the
>> cursor except that it generates lots of "phantom clicks" as the cursor
>> passes over buttons and links. The other driver (I'm on a different
>> machine at the moment so I don't know the name) doesn't generate the
>> phantom clicks but the cursor movement is jerky.
>>
>> The weird thing is that all the hard-stuff work in SuSE. The DVD
>> burner, the display, the power management, basically everything. But a
>> seemingly simple thing like the "mouse device" (glide pad) is slightly
>> dorked.
>
> That does seem rather odd, doesn't it. Possibly touchpads are a bit less
> standard than other types of kit on a laptop.
>
> I've got a built-in card reader on mine which has never shown signs of
> working in SUSE; I don't know if it's even possible to get it to work. But
> that at least doesn't afeect the day-to-day working of the machine, it's
> just an extra it would be nice to have.
I have never come across built-in card readers (Flash/SD?), but why not make
use of the PCMCIA slot or USB-based card readers? These are the more
standard ways of getting things to work, as oppose to relying on a
model-specific slot that is probably integrated onto the motherboard or is
part of the architecture (much like the drift and emergence of on-board
modems, sound cards etc.). Perhaps it's too novel to be supported. Perhaps
it requires a manual setup, which could otherwise have been done at the
factory before computers were shipped.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Free the mind, the source will follow"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
10:50am up 3 days 17:47, 12 users, load average: 0.50, 0.68, 0.60
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
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