Not installing on Laptop

English Hardware
#1

I really hope the guys from Opensuse read this:

I just bought a laptop to install Opensuse to, I configured a high-end laptop with a 1GB GDDR3 Video card, 8GB of RAM, I thought it was just going to be great for running Opensuse, but as per my surprise, once I chose Installation from the menu, nothing showed up, no installation process, no nothing.

Opensuse guys:

I know many of us agree when I say, I’m sick and tired of M$ and their Guindows with all the viruses and malware, but without a distro of Linux that supports hardware like that (I think they put 2 video cards, one on board and a secondary, more powerful one) there is no way guys like me (who want but can’t) can switch to Linux.

So please, include this kind of hardware in your next release.

Sincerely,

A 15 year old Linux Veteran.

#2

On Sat, 12 May 2012 00:06:02 +0000, jfha73 wrote:

> I know many of us agree when I say, I’m sick and tired of M$ and their
> Guindows with all the viruses and malware, but without a distro of Linux
> that supports hardware like that (I think they put 2 video cards, one on
> board and a secondary, more powerful one) there is no way guys like me
> (who want but can’t) can switch to Linux.
>
> So please, include this kind of hardware in your next release.

Hardware support generally comes from the upstream kernel project.

But if you go over to http://features.opensuse.org and look to see if
your hardware is in any of the existing reports - and if it isn’t, then -
with as much specificity as possible - list the brands and models of
hardware that you are using.

Driver development for Linux is often difficult because hardware
manufacturers don’t always publish the specifications for their equipment

  • so support has to come from enthusiasts who have the specific hardware
    and skills to reverse-engineer the interfaces.

That’s not a trivial task.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#3

On Sat, 12 May 2012 00:45:12 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Sat, 12 May 2012 00:06:02 +0000, jfha73 wrote:
>
>> I know many of us agree when I say, I’m sick and tired of M$ and their
>> Guindows with all the viruses and malware, but without a distro of
>> Linux that supports hardware like that (I think they put 2 video cards,
>> one on board and a secondary, more powerful one) there is no way guys
>> like me (who want but can’t) can switch to Linux.
>>
>> So please, include this kind of hardware in your next release.
>
> Hardware support generally comes from the upstream kernel project.
>
> But if you go over to http://features.opensuse.org and look to see if
> your hardware is in any of the existing reports - and if it isn’t, then
> -
> with as much specificity as possible - list the brands and models of
> hardware that you are using.
>
> Driver development for Linux is often difficult because hardware
> manufacturers don’t always publish the specifications for their
> equipment - so support has to come from enthusiasts who have the
> specific hardware and skills to reverse-engineer the interfaces.
>
> That’s not a trivial task.

I should also have added - if you tell us here what specific hardware
you’re having, perhaps someone has already worked around the issues and
can suggest a way to move forward.

Just saying “hardware like that” without saying what you’re using isn’t
going to give anyone they can use to help you.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#4

On 2012-05-12 02:06, jfha73 wrote:
> So please, include this kind of hardware in your next release.

This forum is a users help other users forum, we don’t do the distro. Not
in the sense you talk about.

So if you have a specific problem, explain it and we’ll try to help. If you
just want to bitch, please go elsewhere.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

#5

So we all get upset when something does not work. As a long time Linux user, you know that new hardware is aimed at MS Windows and not Linux most of the time. Leaving Linux users to fend for themselves. The most basic issue seems to be video and the newer the less likely it will work out of the box without extra effort. The big three GPU’s are made by Intel, nVIDIA and AMD. Further, there is tech to have two video types in one system, but which video type is your computer and what does it present to Linux? Optimus can serve up nVIDIA and Intel for instances, a kind of dual personality. There is an effort called Bumblebee to get Optimus to work with Linux for instance. And often the simple thing to try is to use the kernel load option called nomodeset. So, don’t get mad, find the solution instead. Let us know more and then ask for help.

Thank You,

#6

Thanks to this comment, I will send all I can to this website for hardware compatibility.

And to the guy that said it doesn’t belong here:

Dude, I’m just trying to make the best Linux distro even better, I just posted it here hoping an administrator or Opensuse guy read it and give this kind of information, I wasn’t asking user for their opinions.

Thanks again Jim.

#7

Quite a lot of options before deciding that there’s a hardware or driver problem. Check install media for example. BIOS settings for another. Booting from a LiveCD. How was the install medium created. Installing from a NET CD, adding latest stable kernel repo, and on and on.

#8

On Sun, 13 May 2012 17:46:02 +0000, jfha73 wrote:

> Thanks again Jim.

You’re welcome, but again, before you submit a request for the hardware
to be supported, let’s spend some time here actually determining if it
isn’t supported or if there’s a trick to getting it to work.

But to do that, you’ll have to tell us what your specific hardware is.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#9

OK I just ran a test, I first tried running Ubuntu Live and it worked, so I downloaded the Live CD and noticed that even though my wireless card gets turned on, I see nothing on the screen, so it might be the video card is choosing to show me what’s happening, since my laptop has 2 video cards, I think it might just be as simple as that.

#10

This is my new system hardware.

HP dv6z-6c00 Quad Edition

AMD Quad-Core A8-3550MX Accelerated Processor (2.7GHz/2.0GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7690M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics(TM) [HDMI, VGA]
8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
750GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
Realtek RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WLAN

And the lower resolution Video card:
AMD Radeon(TM) HD 6620G

I guess it’s just trying to show on this card instead of the one with 1GB

#11

On Tue, 15 May 2012 23:36:03 +0000, jfha73 wrote:

> OK I just ran a test, I first tried running Ubuntu Live and it worked,
> so I downloaded the Live CD and noticed that even though my wireless
> card gets turned on, I see nothing on the screen, so it might be the
> video card is choosing to show me what’s happening, since my laptop has
> 2 video cards, I think it might just be as simple as that.

Could be - in your BIOS is there a selection for the primary video
controller? If there is, does changing it affect the results?

What you describe from this does sound like it’s just a question of the
autodetection picking the wrong card as the primary, rather than a
question of hardware support.

The good news is that it can be overridden. If we can get someone here
who knows the xorg.conf files better than I (I’ve not had problems with
autodetection so I haven’t had to look into it), we can probably get a
tweak in if the BIOS change doesn’t help.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#12

Sorry I haven’t had too much time, I will check if my laptop has this option in the BIOS, but I think it would be more logical to just display the same screen in all cards when it comes to installation and let decide the user how to display it after it is installed.

Thanks for your suggestion Jim, and I posted it here because at first I thought it was a hardware recognition issue, not this, I should have run that test before posting it on hardware forum.

I will post here what I find.

#13

I checked the BIOS for primary display and it doesn’t have it, so I decided to run another test, this time using 12.2 Milestone 3 Live CD and it worked, so I guess I will have to wait for 12.2 to come out.

Thanks for your help.

#14

So consider that its possible to upgrade clear up to kernel 3.4 for openSUSE 12.1 and getting video during the install just requires switching the video to VESA or VGA and using the nomodeset kernel load option later. Once you get installed and running, there are several ways to do a kernel upgrade including the following bash script:

S.A.K.C. - SUSE Automated Kernel Compiler - Version 2.71 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

openSUSE 12.2 will contain kernel 3.4 and is due out in six weeks or so, and it is OK to wait for the final product, or start playing around today. But using the latest kernel does not require you load the beta release of openSUSE as you do have other options you can use. I am using openSUSE 12.1 and have kernel 3.4 installed, which came out just yesterday in its final form.

Thank You,

#15

That tools looks cool, I will try it and see how it goes. Thanks again Jim.

#16

Hey James, S.A.K.C. is awesome, I used it to compile Kernel 3.4 to openSUSE 12.1 and it worked like a charm, but now going back to the original post, I saw the Beta1 of openSUSE 12.2 and I tried it on my new laptop and all I saw was snow after selecting installation, the live CD of Milestone 3 was working fine, I don’t know what they changed in Beta1 that broke it again.

This time I submitted a bug to see if they can get it fixed before its final release so I can use it.

#17

Happy you like using SAKC. If you have any suggestions or requests, please post those comments to my blog or article on SAKC. As for a video problem and openSUSE 12.2, did you try using a VGA video installation or use the nomodeset command after the kernel gets installed in the grub OS selection menu?

Thank You,

#18

No I did not try that method, but right now I have it working with Ubuntu 12.04, I still don’t like it, but it’s the one that works with my hardware, so I’ll just wait for 12.2 to be released and try it then to see if it works, if it does, I will replace the current Ubuntu for openSUSE.

Thanks.

#19

I can’t believe it, I just downloaded Beta 2 and still no video, all I see is static, I don’t understand why this is happening, I know the drivers for my video card is in the Kernel at least from 3.2 (Ubuntu 12.04 shiws just nice, Fedora 17 works just fine too) so if the drivers are there, why doesn’t it work with openSUSE???

It’s just amazing, the distro of Linux I like the most doesn’t work for me, but all the others work just fine, I don’t want to start thinking they are better.

#20

Have you tried the kernel load option called nomodeset to see if it helps? Could you see if the terminal program called INXI might be usable in Ubuntu. Here is the output from it in openSUSE on my PC:

System:    Host: LinuxMaster Kernel: 3.5.0-rc3-1.4-desktop x86_64 (64 bit) 
           Desktop KDE 4.8.4 Distro: openSUSE 12.1 (x86_64) VERSION = 12.1 CODENAME = Asparagus
Machine:   Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P8P67 version: Rev 1.xx Bios: American Megatrends version: 2303 date: 02/17/2012
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i7-2600K CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 3401.00 MHz 2: 3401.00 MHz 3: 3401.00 MHz 4: 3401.00 MHz 5: 3401.00 MHz 6: 3401.00 MHz 7: 3401.00 MHz 8: 3401.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: nVidia GF114 [GeForce GTX 560] X.Org: 1.10.4 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1920x1200@50.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 560/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.59
Audio:     Card-1: nVidia Device 0e0c driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA ver: 1.0.25
           Card-2: Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium series [EMU20k2] driver: snd_ctxfi
Network:   Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller driver: r8169 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: bc:ae:c5:78:12:8e
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 10358.1GB (10.2% used) 1: /dev/sda Corsair_Performa 128.0GB 
           2: /dev/sdb Corsair_Performa 128.0GB 3: /dev/sdc WDC_WD6000HLHX 600.1GB 
           4: /dev/sdd Hitachi_HDS5C302 2000.4GB 5: /dev/sde MAXTOR_STM310003 1000.2GB 
           6: /dev/sdf ST31000528AS 1000.2GB 7: /dev/sdk INIC 500.1GB 
           8: USB /dev/sdl Desktop_HD_BD07 2000.4GB 9: USB /dev/sdm HDS723030ALA640 3000.6GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 115G used: 34G (30%) fs: rootfs ID: / size: 115G used: 34G (30%) fs: ext4 
           ID: /home size: 559G used: 86G (17%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 4.30GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 37.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 38C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 
Info:      Processes: 246 Uptime: 3 days  9:16 Memory: 1159.3/15301.9MB Client: Shell inxi: 1.7.24

This could help say what IS working for you by chance.

Thank You,