Gateway solo 9500

[sparks]

I looked for some info on linux-laptops, but I could not find that anyone has done a write-up on this specific laptop. Have any of you installed gentoo on the Gateway solo 9500, and is so how did it go? Would there be anything specific I need to be aware of? All of the hardware seems pretty standard, but you never know. Thanks
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True trade is honest, but not merciful. Politics is dishonest, no matter how merciful... and war is neither honest nor merciful.... therefore, choose trade above politics, but politics above war.

[jjm56]

Although I can't help with your question, it's one that I am also interested in. My friend's got the same laptop and we've tried installing various distros of linux on it for the past year. We've really only made much of an effort with Mandrake or Redhat. All of the hardware seems to be linux compatible (not the modem if I remember correctly). Our biggest stumbling block is the power management. Could never get a suspend to work. Now that I'm using Gentoo on one of my computers I might make another go of it with his laptop.

Would appreciate any information others have on this too.

[dragonx]

I just installed Gentoo on a Gateway 9500! It works awsome. I have had problems with Redhat and Suse on my 9500. The problem I encountered was that my pcmcia firewire card didn't work to well. With Gentoo, I had the same problem, but it was easily solved by recompiling all my PCMCIA services in to the kerenel instaead of using pcmcia-cs as suggested in the install. My firewire works better than ever!!! With Suse it took me weeks to get it to work! I nver been able to get it to work in Redhat. No matter how I recompile the Kernel. I even have it set up as a dual Boot system running Gentoo and Windows XP. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Thanks,

[sparks]

what horizontal and vertical refresh rates did you use when configuring X? Also, What kernel sources are you using, I thought about starting out with the dev kernel because it is currently the only one on my gentoo desktop.

I was wondering about power management as well, does ACPI work with your setup? Have you thought about posting awrite-up on linux-laptops.net?
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True trade is honest, but not merciful. Politics is dishonest, no matter how merciful... and war is neither honest nor merciful.... therefore, choose trade above politics, but politics above war.

[dragonx]

As far as X, I am using the standard 60hz for horizontal and I am using 50-70 for vertical. I can't recall. I just know that on the config script for vertical I used the first option which was 50-70 I think I went with the lower refresh rates to be safe. I have had freinds that have burned out their laptop diplay before. It works fine for me. I believe I used the ati driver also.

As far as ACPI, I don't have it set up for a reason. I use my laptop for computer forensic work. I have had problems in the past with both Linux and Windows running power management. My work requires me to leave my laptop on doing imaging, searching etc. For some reason even with windows it would go into suspend mode, so I shut off all my power management in the BIOS as well as with Linux and Windows. I just then run a screen saver, while I run my searches, etc.

I am using the Gentoo sources which have been good to me in all my installs. The only thing I will mention is that all your PCMCIA stuff should be compiled into the Kernel. That is the only way I've gotten it to work with my Solo. I do use cardmgr from the pcmcia-cs pakage. You can run cardmgr along with the kernel card services.

I will look at linux-laptops.net, I've never been there. I would be willing to do a write up if time permits. Hope this helps. Any more info needed let me know.

Thanks

[uzibear]

well, this is two years old, but i'll be buying a solo 9500 and will take any info i can get on how it works, how to set it up etc.