Hi,

i am reading Sony TR World for about 2 or 3 months now and am curious if there are any users out there actually using a TR running gnu/linux full- or parttime.

I am planning to get mine in about a month or so (a european TR5) and hope to use it most time in gnu/linux. As far as i know the only thing which isn’t working at the moment is the camera.

So, hidden non-windows-user, show up :shock: 

Simon

[quote author=“Simon”]Hi,

i am reading Sony TR World for about 2 or 3 months now and am curious if there are any users out there actually using a TR running gnu/linux full- or parttime.

I am planning to get mine in about a month or so (a european TR5) and hope to use it most time in gnu/linux. As far as i know the only thing which isn’t working at the moment is the camera.

I did run Linux full time when I first got the TR3A, but I quickly tired of working on making the machine run so I could do actual work.

Everything about it was a bitch.

Wireless, X, Sound, ACPI, Suspend Support

I eventually reinstalled with Windows XP and left a partition for Linux.

But, that partition has been eaten by MP3’s now.

If Linux support on this laptop matures a little and someone writes visio file support into dia, then I’ll look into it again.

i bought mine tr in the usa and am going to fly back to germany in about 2 weeks. after i got there i’ll try to install a debian on it - and throw xp away… i’ll report my experiences!

I have a working gentoo on my TR2MP
Dualboot with windows because i need some windows apps.

No Problems so far :D

rec

sounds nice…

i know that there is quite a bit of work to do if everything (besides the camera which would be a nice gadget ) should work properly…

Its quite sad that sony, which I always experienced as quite cool hardware-company for linux users because everything worked fine from the beginning, won’t officially support linux because there would be only some small steps to make us happy ....

The thing with 1280*768 and the motion eye don’t look very good for me…

some french coder has to build up a quite strange workaround because they don’t seem to be able to properly maintain their bios…

nice evening anyway..

greetings from austria

Simon

I’ve been using Debian (unstable) since about a month after I got the TR2/B in Japan.  It’s excellent, only the camera is non-functional (which I’ve never used and can easily do without).  Using the 2.6.7 kernel and the XiG accelerated X-Server the machine is a dream, and I use it for development and system administration work.

There’s not even a Windows partition anymore - long ago I formatted that as a ReiserFS slab for movies

[quote author=“pheller”]
Everything about it was a bitch.

Wireless, X, Sound, ACPI, Suspend Support

I eventually reinstalled with Windows XP and left a partition for Linux.

But, that partition has been eaten by MP3’s now.

If Linux support on this laptop matures a little and someone writes visio file support into dia, then I’ll look into it again.

Hm, I’ve never used the suspend support but ACPI works well for me with the other features (temparature monitoring, battery life, so on).  And the latest laptop-mode kernel switch gives me a sick battery life of close to 10 full hours.

Sound was simple, I just went with the ALSA drivers - compile everything related to the card (or to make it easy, everything) as a module and your distribution should make it a simple task to have the sound configured.  Wireless works fine with the Madwifi drivers, and the Atheros chipset can actually function as an access point too (very, very cool).  And kismet still has no real competitor on any other OS.

For X though I wussed out and just out and bought the server from XiG.  The setup was straight forward with it.  And I believe that Visio should function perfectly under Crossover Office (I use it to run IE for website compatibility testing).

Also, to post for a third time in less than an hour in the same thread, there is one thing I miss about having a Windows partition - the game Silent Storm.  I paid for a copy of it when I got the TR, and it ran like a dream.  It’s also one of the best tactical strategy games I’ve seen… but luckily the best (in my opinion of course) is Alpha Centauri.  Which has a native Linux port.

well i’m quite happy to see some movement in here

anyone ever tried   ?
This is a hack done by a nice french guy which allow uncommon resolutions on common (free!!) x-server.

i’ll try it when i finally get my TR ..

hopefully someone will do the same to the nice motioneye, even though it’s not needed to survive…

some guide for the new resolution-hack:
 

LukeyBoy:  Are you serious…you have Alpha Centauri?  :shock:  I thought I was the only one who owned that primitive, yet addicting, game.  I didn’t even know it worked under Linux as I haven’t played it in months.  I got that game like 3 years ago…My first PC game… I may have to play it again just because of this.

Totally serious.  I still play it way too much.  And it doesn’t just work under Linux, you can order a natively-coded CD set from http://www.tuxgames.com/ that comes with the first game plus the expansion pack.  Multiplayer, play-by-email, all of that works well too.

[quote author=“Simon”]
anyone ever tried   ?
This is a hack done by a nice french guy which allow uncommon resolutions on common (free!!) x-server.

Yes I use this hack. Runs nice.
The only issue is, that the normal Console looks very weird as soon as I enable the patch.
But I haven’t spent much time on this yet.
I think this can be fixed somehow.

rec

rec, is the Xv (XVideo) extension functional using the hack and the open source drivers?  Xv is key for playing multimedia (I’ve found) and I’m worried about it just not working.

Also, in regards to my earlier post about Alpha Centauri - it’s no longer available on Tux Games.  Probably because Loki is gone.

Is there an easy way to check if it’s working ?

rec

Can you play DVDs and DivX/Xvid files?

As far as I remember it works.
But I haven’t used my linux for a few weeks now.
(Too much other things to do)

I’ll check tonight after working and let you know.

rec