Sound and display in Asus laptop

[glengeorge]

hello guys
i just bought an Asus K 50IJ SX 108A Laptop and installed linux mint on it. it was a gr8 os but the display was not vibrant. the colours looked washed out and kept the blinking from time to time. the audio was also pathetic. all i could hear was crackles and hisses when i play music. the performance of both in vista was awesome.
my display is Intel GMA 4500M and
my audio is Via high Definition Audio

laymen like me would dump windows with a glee on our face if there was more hardware compatibility for linux

will the performance be same as that in linux mint if i installed opensuse? will there be the better drivers in opensuse?

thanks in advance

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by glengeorge

will the performance be same as that in linux mint if i installed opensuse? will there be the better drivers in opensuse?

Welcome to openSUSE forums.

IMHO the performance will be very similar.

Linux Mint is a Ubuntu derivative, which in turn is Debian based. If performance is an important criteria, then none of the main distributions in Linux will provide really superior performance as they all have way too much overhead.

In general, if a driver works on one Linux distribution, it will work on another. Sometimes the kernel version in a distribution will cause exceptions to that rule of thumb, but advanced users often work around that kernel restriction by applying their own. But thats not something a new nor average user should consider. I do note there have been major problems with all distributions in handling the Intel GMA 4500M. I do not think openSUSE had the problems to the same extent as other distributions, but I have not been tracking this.

We do have a fairly reasonable forum, and if you try openSUSE and if you post here for help, then I'm confident you will have a number of users attempt to help you with most problems you encounter. I recommend you get confirmation that your Intel GMA 4500M will work with any distribution you plan on trying, and if it does, then go for it. In a month there will be a new release of openSUSE to version 11.2. And if you wait a few months after that, then most of the major bugs associated with the initial release (that slipped thru the testing process) will have been fixed and you should have a better introduction to openSUSE. I suspect 11.2 will have the Intel GMA 4500M problem addressed, but as noted I have not been tracking this.

Reference the audio, I typically try to help users with basic sound. But before you abandon Mint, install the program xchat, and go to IRC channel freenode #alsa and see if you can get the sound gurus there to help you with Mint.

There are good reasons for coming to openSUSE, and I am a big openSUSE fan and I hope you try out openSUSE, but I would not be honest with you if I did not note that sound sound should function OK on Mint.

Best wishes to you, and I hope you enjoy your Linux experience.

[oldcpu]

One further thought comes to mind, ... its always possible to test openSUSE with a liveCD. That gives an approximate idea as to whether openSUSE will function with one's hardware, although

• a live CD performance will be far slower than when on desktop
• if hardware does not function with a liveCD, it might still function if installed on the desktop and then some forum help is obtained to address the hardware problems

For the liveCDs for openSUSE-11.1, go here: Live CD - openSUSE

For the development liveCD for openSUSE-11.2 go here: Software.openSUSE.org

note that 11.2 liveCD is for testing, and not recommended for an operational system here in oct09.

[glengeorge]

thanks a lot....
then i think i will wait till ver 11.2 is released.