I've just acquired a use IBM Thinkpad R40 model 2722-GDM.
I'm contemplating what to run on it, and longer-term the likely
candidates are:
Centos 5
SLE{D,S} 10
OpenSUSE 10.2
Kubuntu - the latest.
Kubuntu - Long Life (aka 6.04, Dapper, ...)
I've booted Knoppix 4 in it and most seems well, including the Atheros
Wireless card Windows can't find.
The major flies in the ointment are the wireless and the inbuilt modem
(Agere something). Google tells me the modem can be made to work, and
I'm pretty sure from my Acer that the Atheros wifi also work with some
minor fiddling: I've build the driver from source.
The problem is, I've done enough fiddling* over the years. I've built
enough kernels, attaced enough configuration files with vim, and I want
an OS that just works.
I'm sure RHEL 5 will not have a driver for my wireless, and I suspect
not for my modem.
Now the point: do the auxilliary CentOS repos have the missing bits so
that I can commit to CentOS4 (or even RHEL5 beta) in the short term,
knowing that it's a simple upgrade later?
How will CentOS reflect the different RHEL 5 versions? Will it simply
merge them into one product, or would one expect to choose different
boot media? I ask this because I see SLED doesn't have some of the stuff
I want - it's in SLES though, but then SLES doesn't have the madwifi
stuff.
* There's fiddling and there's fiddling. I'm getting tired of doing
the
same fiddling all the time; it's time for new adventures.
Thanks for your time.
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu
Please do not reply off-list
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 John Summerfield wrote:> I've just acquired a use IBM Thinkpad R40 model 2722-GDM. > > The major flies in the ointment are the wireless and the inbuilt modem > (Agere something). Google tells me the modem can be made to work, and > I'm pretty sure from my Acer that the Atheros wifi also work with some > minor fiddling: I've build the driver from source. >To address only the Atheros questions, yes it works, no CentOS doesn't spin up the drivers themselves. I have an R40 (2682-48U) and I don't build my own drivers, but you can get them in RPM form at the atrpms repo. Check out the Repos from the wiki if you want to know how to add atrpms. Everytime there is a kernel upgrade, I just wait a few days until the new madwifi items are re-spun from the atrpms folks, and life has been good with my wireless for over 2 years now. <http://wiki.centos.org/Repositories> I've never fired up my modem, so I'm sure if it works or not. But I can tell you my Atheros chip functions. rpm -qa | grep madwifi madwifi-hal-kmdl-2.6.9-42.0.8.EL-0.9.2.1-29.el4.at madwifi-kmdl-2.6.9-42.0.8.EL-0.9.2.1-29.el4.at madwifi-0.9.2.1-29.el4.at These would be the three packages you need from atrpms for it to load up your wireless. You can compare my model R40 with yours, and if you need any hardware comparisons, just let me know. lspci -v for my Atheros shows: 02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5211 802.11ab NIC (rev 01) Subsystem: Unknown device 17ab:8310 Flags: fast Back2Back, medium devsel, IRQ 11 Memory at d0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 Aside from that, I've been extremely pleased with running CentOS on my R40. I get all the multimedia items from Dag. Xine works great for DVDs, and XMMS or mplayer for MP3s. It's extremely stable for me. The only issues I've ever hard are the fact that I can't get my machine to wake up correctly when I try to put it to sleep, but I've never experimented much on getting it work either so it might be something simple. I know I'm not answering your questions about RHEL5, but I thought I would share my experience on my R40, and specifically mention you can get the RPMs for your wireless through the third-party repo. Max -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with CentOS - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFF0hmLHoeeepPau2ERAhbFAJsE5GE6kepvUWuspFxGFxQFhVuxAQCgvPmd ZDTr0m8blZnE2th137en+wo=zZ94 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 22:28 +0900, John Summerfield wrote:> I've just acquired a use IBM Thinkpad R40 model 2722-GDM. > > I'm contemplating what to run on it, and longer-term the likely > candidates are: > Centos 5 > SLE{D,S} 10 > OpenSUSE 10.2 > Kubuntu - the latest. > Kubuntu - Long Life (aka 6.04, Dapper, ...) > > I've booted Knoppix 4 in it and most seems well, including the Atheros > Wireless card Windows can't find. > > The major flies in the ointment are the wireless and the inbuilt modem > (Agere something). Google tells me the modem can be made to work, and > I'm pretty sure from my Acer that the Atheros wifi also work with some > minor fiddling: I've build the driver from source. > > The problem is, I've done enough fiddling* over the years. I've built > enough kernels, attaced enough configuration files with vim, and I want > an OS that just works. > > I'm sure RHEL 5 will not have a driver for my wireless, and I suspect > not for my modem. > > Now the point: do the auxilliary CentOS repos have the missing bits so > that I can commit to CentOS4 (or even RHEL5 beta) in the short term, > knowing that it's a simple upgrade later? > > How will CentOS reflect the different RHEL 5 versions? Will it simply > merge them into one product, or would one expect to choose different > boot media? I ask this because I see SLED doesn't have some of the stuff > I want - it's in SLES though, but then SLES doesn't have the madwifi stuff.We currently think that we will have an OS repo that contains all the packages from Client/Workstation/Server ... and the Cluster and VM stuff as it exists as separate repos.> > > * There's fiddling and there's fiddling. I'm getting tired of doing the > same fiddling all the time; it's time for new adventures. > > > Thanks for your time.-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20070213/6cb9ccc5/attachment.sig>
Johnny Hughes wrote:> > We currently think that we will have an OS repo that contains all the > packages from Client/Workstation/Server ... and the Cluster and VM stuff > as it exists as separate repos. >Johnny Before I wrote, I cast my eye over the contents of Client & Server, and listed the packages of most interest (kernel-releated) in order of size. Some appeared in three places: I expected Client and Server, of course, but also in Virtualization. -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Please do not reply off-list