Re: Samsung X20-XVM 1600-V

Oliver Fromme wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm currently considering to buy the following notebook:
>Samsung X20-XVM 1600-V (Centrino, Pentium-M 730, 1 Gbyte
>DDR2 RAM, 80 Gbyte HDD, 1400 x 1050 intel 915 graphics,
>10/100 LAN, b/g WLAN, DVD+/-R/W/RAM, USB2, IEEE1394 and
>all the standard stuff; no legacy ports (serial, parallel),
>though.)  At 1199 Euros this seems to be very reasonably
>priced.
>
>Does anyone have any FreeBSD-related experience with that
>notebook (or similar ones)?  I've looked at the infos at
>http://gerda.univie.ac.at/freebsd-laptops/ and searched
>the mailing lists but didn't find any information about
>the Samsung X20 series.
>
>I'll have the opportunity to (shortly) test the notebook
>and boot a FreeBSD 5.4 DVD and a PCBSD CD-ROM.  However,
>that might not be sufficient.  For example, some investi-
>gations revealed that it might be necessary to use the
>tool from http://people.tecnik93.com/~acpi_perf/ to enable
>the native resolution of the display under X, but I have
>no idea whether it will work.  Also, I won't have enough
>time to fully test ACPI, suspend, audio, WLAN etc.
>
>  
>


I couldn't yet get 1400x1050 to work on my FSC Lifebook E8010 (i855GM).
I used i855ctl, but it only works (=has a positive effect) with SuSE 9.2.
Suspend doesn't work either (S3,S4 - it didn't work with SuSE 9.2, 
either, but I still have to test SuSE 9.3 and NetBSD). I addition, 
SuSE's ridiculous long boot-up time make the lack of ACPI-S3,S4 even 
more annoying.
Does OpenBSD have no ACPI-support at all by default?
I even tried Solaris10 on it ;-)


WLAN is usually not a problem.
Sound should do, too, via snd_ich.ko.


>I'm aware that the built-in 56k/V.92 modem won't work,
>neither the TV-out, but I don't need those.  Also, I don't
>need 3D graphics acceleration.  If the graphics works at
>1400 x 1050 in 2D VESA mode, that's enough for me.
>
>  
>



I'd really love to get FreeBSD working on my E8010, too - it would be 
such a nice combination.


>I'd appreciate any advice on this machine.  Any comments
>are welcome, either "works great, buy it!" or "there are
>problems, don't buy it".  :-)
>  
>



Currently, IBMs seem to be "best supported" by the FreeBSD 
dev-community, if my observations are correct.
As an alternative, you could also look into HPs NX70xx or 6xxx-series 
(and buy additional warranty).

As for the Samsung - well, they're consumer-level notebooks and you'll 
get consumer-level support only (if at all).
You could do worse, though, and buy a Sony or Apple without AppleCare ;-)




Rainer
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