A good laptop os

[Stryker]

Anyone know of a good distro to put on a laptop? I need hardware supports from as recent as 2 months ago, and a dvd player (mostly for my enjoyment, but also work presentations). I've tried the deadlinux one, it was pretty good except no sound or network. RedHat works just fine, no DVD. And I can never find any better themes for it. All distros more than 2 months old have no video, no sound, and only network. Getting off track so I'll just stop. Any ideas?

[voidmain]

It would certainly help to know the brand/model of laptop you want to install on.  I have run RedHat on most Dell laptops. Here is a good link for you:

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

[Stryker]

I'm running a Toshiba Satelite 1805-S204
Here's a link to the hardware specs:
Hardware Specs

Thanks

{EDIT: Fixing link so it fits better}

[ August 22, 2002: Message edited by: Ex Eleven / b0b ]

[voidmain]

Hmm, I haven't found anything that would indicate the DVD should be a problem.  Do you have a "/dev/dvd" device file (ls -alp /dev/dvd)?  Do you see more than one block device under the "/proc/ide" directory? i.e. is there an "hda" and another one, possibly "hdc"?  If your hard drive is "hda" and you have another one called "hdc" do this:

dmesg | grep hdc

and let me know if there is any ouput from the command.

[Stryker]

Xine just opens, then closes after about 2 seconds. Although I heard it was good for DVDs. My cdrom device is /dev/cdrom, I heard that in order for DVD use you need it to be /dev/dvd, which doesn't exist. I think Xine would work if I had linux drivers for the DVD drive. Which I'm not sure where to find.

[voidmain]

Ok, so it works as a CD?  Then according to the xine HOWTO /dev/dvd is just a symbolic link to /dev/hdc:

http://dvd.sourceforge.net/xine-howto/en_GB/html/howto.html

# ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd

You might want to go through that HOWTO.

[ August 22, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Master of Reality]

Eveil Entity Linux is supposed to get their sound working in the next distro. They are highly customizing their sound drivers and stuff or somethin'.

[Stryker]

Yeah, i've been talking to one of the guys that works on it. Told him all my hardware specs and he said he'd have it all taken care of in the next release. I'll use that when I get it, until then RedHat. I used it a few days ago, no luck getting it to work, except video. looks good and i'll show it to my friends to convince them to go linux. I doubt I can convince them with something like RedHat or Mandrake, as it doesn't have a look that would make them think it is any good. But i'll give them 1 step into linux. And have something working well for my laptop. But RedHat will always be my favorite.

[Stryker]

sorry for the late response, dmesg | grep hdc give me this:

    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xeff8-0xefff, BIOS settings: hdc MA, hdd io
hdc: DV-28E-B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, UDMA(33)
hdc: DMA disabled


not sure what it means but there it is.

[voidmain]

So it recognizes the drive, good. Now do this as root:

# ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd

and see if your dvd app picks up on it.

[Stryker]

did that, all went well. then I ran xine and got this:

This is xine (X11 gui) - a free video player v0.9.8
(c) 2000, 2001 by G. Bartsch and the xine project team.
Built with xine library 0.9.8 [Thu 14 Mar 2002 10:35:25]-[gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.2 2.96-107)]-[Linux 2.4.9-21smp i686].
Found xine library version: 0.9.8 (0.9.8).
Display is not using Xinerama.
main: probing <Xv> video output plugin
video_out_xv: Xv extension is present but I couldn't find a usable yuv12 port.
              Looks like your graphics hardware driver doesn't support Xv?!
load_plugins: video output plugin /usr/lib/xine/plugins/xineplug_vo_out_xv.so: init_video_out_plugin failed.
main: probing <SyncFB> video output plugin
video_out_syncfb: aborting. (unable to open device "/dev/syncfb")
load_plugins: video output plugin /usr/lib/xine/plugins/xineplug_vo_out_syncfb.so: init_video_out_plugin failed.
main: probing <XShm> video output plugin
video_out_xshm: video mode depth is 16 (16 bpp), TrueColor, not swapped,
        red: 0000f800, green: 000007e0, blue: 0000001f
yuv2rgb: using MMXEXT for colorspace transform
load_plugins: video output plugin XShm successfully loaded.
main: probing audio drivers...
main: trying to autoload 'oss' audio driver: audio_oss_out: Opening audio device...
audio_oss_out: using device >/dev/dsp<
audio_oss_out: using SNDCTL_DSP_GETODELAY
Segmentation fault

[Stryker]

it's the Segmentation fault that bothers me, should I see about downloading a newer version? I'm going to go through the automatic update stuff now, haven't done that in a while anyways.

[Master of Reality]

what version of redhat is on it?

[Stryker]

RedHat 7.3 on Toshiba Satelite 1805-S204

[Master of Reality]

maybe you should try it without sound, the segmentation fault occurred right when the sound loaded