Announcement

**sithlord48** · Apr 02, 2011, 07:33 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

i have installed on several aspires , i own a D-255 (well its an em250 but its the same machine under the emachineline)out of the box everthing works with open drivers , except for the wifi card as its requires a properiatary driver, if you bothered by that you can replace it w/ a half-mini pci-e card (its located under the writs rest) i put an atheros card in mine give me +n and was only like 10 dollars on ebay.

from the bulk of netbooks i have seen they are are basicly the same hardware. something like

atom proc
intel 945 gfx
ram
intel audio.
broadcom wifi card/ and bt card (if yours has ones)

if you search for em250 on this forum i have made posts about setting up on my netbook

**oshunluvr** · Apr 02, 2011, 11:54 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

I have an HP Mini 110-1126NR and everything works well. I'm currently using Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 32bit daily build from 03/28 because I wanted to try out the new Unity desktop they're using.

1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor (512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
1 GB DDR2 RAM (1 Dimm), Max supported 2 GB
250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
10.1” Diagonal WSVGA LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (shared) with up to 128MB total available graphics memory.

With 1gb of RAM and the Intel 950 I doubt it would run KDE with much gusto. I have also experimented with an E17 desktop using Bodhi (a lightweight Ubuntu based spinoff). I actually prefer Bodhi to Ubuntu.

I have a 32gb SSD laying around that I might stick into the HP just to see if it runs faster or longer with it.

**sithlord48** · Apr 02, 2011, 07:56 PM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

thats exactly whats in my netbook but the intel 945 and a 2gb ram stick, but when i had the 1gb stick in mine it ran kde just fine. i would try it from a usb stick.

**oshunluvr** · Apr 03, 2011, 01:56 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

I installed Bodhi today on the SSD. Works great. It's a 32gb Patriot Warp v2 - a real bottom end SSD but it's faster than the 5400 sata drive.

**dibl** · Apr 03, 2011, 06:21 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

The E17 desktop is light and fast and attractive, IMHO. I still have an old E-Live bootable USB stick that use sometimes. I'll have to take a look at Bodhi -- thanks oshunluvr!

**wizard10000** · Apr 03, 2011, 07:34 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by oshunluvr

I have an HP Mini 110-1126NR and everything works well. I'm currently using Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 32bit daily build from 03/28 because I wanted to try out the new Unity desktop they're using.

1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor (512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
1 GB DDR2 RAM (1 Dimm), Max supported 2 GB
250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
10.1” Diagonal WSVGA LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (shared) with up to 128MB total available graphics memory.

With 1gb of RAM and the Intel 950 I doubt it would run KDE with much gusto. I have also experimented with an E17 desktop using Bodhi (a lightweight Ubuntu based spinoff). I actually prefer Bodhi to Ubuntu.

I have a 32gb SSD laying around that I might stick into the HP just to see if it runs faster or longer with it.

I've got a Mini 110-1100DX (Compaq branded) that runs Kubuntu 10.10 with KDE 4.6.1 with quite a bit of gusto. Mine's got a 500gb 7200 rpm hard drive and it made all the difference in the world, so your SSD idea will perk the thing right up. The rest of my hardware is the same as yours with the exception of 2GB RAM - which ran me about $40 at newegg but the machine doesn't use the RAM anyway.

I replaced kwin with compiz because compiz has been more stable and has a smaller memory footprint, installed preload, disabled akonadi and nepomuk and shut off a couple of unnecessary services. The machine uses ~170mb of RAM at idle.

The netbook takes six seconds to load LibreOffice Writer and about the same amount of time to load MS Word 2007 or Firefox. Between RAM and hard drive, believe it or not the bigger performance bottleneck was the 160gb 5400 rpm hard drive. With the 500gb drive I'm getting solid 100mb/sec reads and writes. Track to track seek is a little slow (Samsung says 11ms, seeker says 16) but this netbook runs KDE more than acceptably.

I put Openbox on the thing last week just for fun and decided the 1 sec quicker application launch wasn't worth the decreased functionality and integration. I've had both XFCE and LXDE on this machine and both use ~30mb less RAM than KDE does but again, the decreased functionality doesn't make it worth it for me.

**wizard10000** · Apr 03, 2011, 07:40 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by dibl

The E17 desktop is light and fast and attractive, IMHO. I still have an old E-Live bootable USB stick that use sometimes. I'll have to take a look at Bodhi -- thanks oshunluvr!

I've tried hard to like E17 and even loaded it up again two weeks ago. I think there's a ton of potential there but it doesn't look or run a whole lot better than it did when I tried it a year and a half ago

Although I used to be a diehard GNOME user KDE has grown on me the past couple of years and now even GNOME feels foreign.

**dibl** · Apr 03, 2011, 08:28 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Unfortunately E has been in development for over a decade, and is still at Alpha status. (not that I have helped any) Except for the occasional project to put together a "demonstration" distro, like E-live, it doesn't seem to have much push behind it. I have the impression that some of its original unique features are now standard features of Gnome and KDE.

**wizard10000** · Apr 03, 2011, 09:17 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by dibl

Unfortunately E has been in development for over a decade, and is still at Alpha status. (not that I have helped any) Except for the occasional project to put together a "demonstration" distro, like E-live, it doesn't seem to have much push behind it. I have the impression that some of its original unique features are now standard features of Gnome and KDE.

OT, but I just saw your sig. You got that i7 up to 4.2GHz? That's a pretty good trick. Mine (i7-920) gets a little unstable at 3.3GHz (from 2.66) but I'm unwilling to increase voltage to make it stable - it's rock solid at 3.2 though and that's fast enough.

**oshunluvr** · Apr 03, 2011, 10:03 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by dibl

Unfortunately E has been in development for over a decade, and is still at Alpha status. (not that I have helped any) Except for the occasional project to put together a "demonstration" distro, like E-live, it doesn't seem to have much push behind it. I have the impression that some of its original unique features are now standard features of Gnome and KDE.

The guy doing Bodhi knows what he's doing. It's a distro worth looking at. I've been playing with E since 2006ish and this is the closest to "well done" I've ever seen it. It's very usable and even has a couple of features I really like. I.e. a netbook/tablet "sliding" desktop that works like a smart phone. My netbook doesn't have a touch screen, but there's a tablet in my future and this is the first distro I've played with "out-of-the-box" that seemed ready for a tablet.

Originally posted by wizard10000

OT, but I just saw your sig. You got that i7 up to 4.2GHz? That's a pretty good trick. Mine (i7-920) gets a little unstable at 3.3GHz (from 2.66) but I'm unwilling to increase voltage to make it stable - it's rock solid at 3.2 though and that's fast enough.

Dibl has "crazy mad" hardware <insert "jealous" smiley here> alright. But dude, it's all about voltage and cooling - lots of cooling! -see bottom line of sig below.

Seriously, those new i7's are cooler by nature and can take the volts! I had my old 2.4 Q6600 (B0 stepping) at 3.8ish for a while but I got worried about the rest of my components. Once I expanded my water cooling to the GPU and north and south bridges, I had to back down to 3.2 and I recently had a PS problem so I'm currently at 3.0. Once I get a free day I'll bump it back to 3.4ish.

As far as KDE and the netbook - I see the effect some of the things I like about KDE has on my desktop (CPU and memory) so I kind of assumed I wouldn't be as happy with it in such a confined space and with so little to work with.

The SSD is proving to be worth it's weight and the E netbook desktop is tailor made for the available screen footprint (is that the right term for screen size? - maybe "windowprint"

). The Jury is still out on how long this SSD will last, but by the time it dies I can replace it for half the cost with twice the performance. The RAM is on the list, but I'm going to monitor it's use. Maybe I don't really need it.

**wizard10000** · Apr 03, 2011, 10:27 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by oshunluvr

...But dude, it's all about voltage and cooling - lots of cooling!

Yup. I've been overclocking for years - my first was an Atari 800XL. It was a eurospec machine (I lived in Germany at the time) and when I moved back to the states I bought a US power supply and got a free 12% overclock due to the difference in line frequency

First IA processor was a 133MHz AMD 486 that happily ran at 160MHz for years and I've cranked up just about every chip I've owned since then.

This particular i7-920 isn't the best die I've ever seen as it runs a little toasty even with a big Zalman 9900 cooler. Running eight threads of folding@home at 3.6GHz the thing hit 80° fairly quickly and the processor started throttling back - and I don't particularly want to water cool this thing - been there, did that, over it

Oh, well. I think my next one might be a six-core black edition AMD. I might get the thing to run faster than this i7 and six real cores is way cooler than four hyperthreading cores

**oshunluvr** · Apr 03, 2011, 10:37 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

I went water foremost for the noise. My desktop is 24/7 and my office is open (no wall) and just outside my bedroom. We use natural ventilation rather than A/C or heat so my bedroom door is open more than closed and the noise became an issue.

Once I had the water cooling in place - I went a little nutty

I still have two fans that cool the radiator but I dream of a totally fan-less solution some day. I've even looked into oil cooling!

**dibl** · Apr 03, 2011, 11:54 AM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by wizard10000

OT, but I just saw your sig. You got that i7 up to 4.2GHz? That's a pretty good trick. Mine (i7-920) gets a little unstable at 3.3GHz (from 2.66) but I'm unwilling to increase voltage to make it stable - it's rock solid at 3.2 though and that's fast enough.

Yeah I did. I'm running it at default clock ATM, (no DVD encoding this week), but my Asus mobo/BIOS has the "Asus OC Profile" feature, which lets me save the profile that supports running at 4.2GHz. I kinda built the computer with overclocking and air cooling as my goals. So it's in a giant Corsair 600T case, with two added Scythe exhaust fans, and I used a Venomous X CPU heatsink, with a pair of Scythe fans in "push-pull" configuration. It moves a lot of air, but the noise is not objectionable at all, especially when the usual music or TV is in the background anyway.

A downside of running OC on this mobo is that the BIOS OC overrides the Linux cpufreqd, thus preventing it from shifting down when there's no demand. So it runs continuously at 4.2GHz. But it's pretty cool -- around 40C idling.

**wizard10000** · Apr 03, 2011, 01:52 PM

Re: Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Originally posted by dibl

Yeah I did. I'm running it at default clock ATM, (no DVD encoding this week), but my Asus mobo/BIOS has the "Asus OC Profile" feature, which lets me save the profile that supports running at 4.2GHz. I kinda built the computer with overclocking and air cooling as my goals. So it's in a giant Corsair 600T case, with two added Scythe exhaust fans, and I used a Venomous X CPU heatsink, with a pair of Scythe fans in "push-pull" configuration. It moves a lot of air, but the noise is not objectionable at all, especially when the usual music or TV is in the background anyway.

A downside of running OC on this mobo is that the BIOS OC overrides the Linux cpufreqd, thus preventing it from shifting down when there's no demand. So it runs continuously at 4.2GHz. But it's pretty cool -- around 40C idling.

Yeah, although I'm happy with the performance I'm not particularly happy with this particular chip, which seems to run warm no matter what I do. This is my first and last experience with a Gigabyte board as I had a SATA port die about three weeks after I built the machine. Gigabyte won't cross-ship hardware, not even with a credit card number so the machine was down for about three weeks.

Hell, since I got my netbook the i7 doesn't do much *but* video encoding

Announcement

Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Best Hardware support among some netbook models?

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment