[PD-ot] Re: [PD] laptops and pd

Frank Barknecht fbar at footils.org
Tue Sep 6 14:01:57 CEST 2005


Hallo,

I cc'd pd-ot, as this is going OT. Are you a pd-ot-subscriber, too?

m.n. hat gesagt: // m.n. wrote:

> > More important for the choice of laptop is what
> > operating system you
> > intend to run. So: which one?
> 
> no operating system shall be spared my scrutiny.

Except OS-X, I suppose? ;)

Well, then that includes Linux and you may want to explore
http://www.tuxmobil.org/ to see what models are supported. Pd is not
too picky about hardware, it will just run on anything, that the OS
supports. However some manufacturers are known to hide specifications
from Open Source developers (NVidia being one of the most notorious),
so unless they provide their own drivers, there can be no support by a
Free Software OS as Linux. So choose your hardware wisely.  

Personally I'd prefer an Intel Laptop, as they tend to include mostly
hardware made by Intel as well (peripheral chipset, WLAN, gfx etc.)
which is generally supported very well due to Intel being very open
with specifications. AMD laptops tend to use NVidia or ATI chips which
aren't supported as good, so you'll have to do more work yourself like
downloading vendor specific drivers, non-free stuff, beta stuff etc.
And mobile AMD CPUs tend to suck more power then a comparable Intel
Pentium M. 

I just bought a MSI S260, "Sonoma"-based, where everything is
supported out of the box. It is very fast, even the 3D stuff is very
good, although not on par with NVidia's gfx chips. However 3D is "fast
enough for me" and I prefer to buy products of companies which support
to Free Software ... though YMMV.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__




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