Gateway(TM) 450X and RedHat 8.0 Linux

Laptop Specifications:

Processor:		Intel ® Pentium®-4 M 1.9/1.2 GHz
Memory:		256MB DDR SDRAM
Motherboard:		PIIX4 chipset revision 2
BIOS:		Phoenix 6.00, supports APM 1.2, ACPI 2.0
Hard Drive:		IBM Travelstar 30 GB Ultra ATA
DVD/CDRW:		Modular QSI 8x DVD, 16x/10x/24x CDRW
PC Card Slots:		Two Type II or One Type III
Other Ports:		IEEE 1394 Firewire, USB 2.0 x 2, SVGA, Parallel, Serial, PS/2, and NTSC/PAL Video Output, Headphone/Speaker Jack, Line-in and Line-out Mic /Jacks, 10-base T and RJ45 phone jack.
LCD Screen:		non-DDC compliant 15" XGA Active Matrix TFT Color
Display Card:		ATI Mobility Radeon M6 LY w/ 32MB DDR Video Memory
Pointer:		EZ Pad® Pointing Device
Battery:		4000 mWH Lithium Ion Battery with external AC charger
NIC:		Intel® PRO 10/100 VE
Modem:		AC97 / SmartLink V.92 56K Winmodem
Floppy*:		Modular 3.5" Diskette
OS:		MS-Windows(TM) XP/Pro
Func Keys:		Help, Status, LCD/CRT, Standby, Pad Lock, Scroll Lock, Pause, Break, Volume Up, Volume Down, Screen Brightness Up, Screen Brightness Down
Weight:		~6 lbs.

*Floppy drive is optional for additional $79 US.

Summary:

This laptop has hardware which is very linux compatible.  Surprisingly, the salesperson seemed to known this (stated they had several friends running linux on these models), and was very helpful.   I looked around quite a while for a new notebook, and I choose the Gateway 450X for this reason, and highly recommend it to others. I suspect the 400X/SX and 450SX are equally compatible. Unfortunately, what I'm not sure of is whether or not Gateway will be here if I run into trouble (they closed the store where I purchased the laptop the following week !)

Installation:

Amazingly, this laptop is lighter than my old Toshiba 330 CDS despite 3" larger display and lots more hardware. You kindly get Boot Options/BIOS Setup (F2) screen flash on boot rather than just windows splash (thank you, Gateway).  It is possible to never to run the installed WinXP/Pro, as default setup is boot from CDROM first, if you're willing to trash the single NTFS partition, or have a tool which can resize it from a CDROM boot.  I went ahead and booted XP/Pro (no phone registration required), installed Partition Magic 4.0, and resized the NTFS partition down to 8 GB, leaving the rest to Linux. I strongly suggest charging the laptop completely before install (both transformer and laptop get pretty hot), and suggest avoid any ACPI-enabled install kernel which is not also enabled for and capable of thermal managment.

I was hoping to install Suse 8.1 or Mandrake 9.0, but: [1] Couldn't boot from Suse 8.1 DVD (and/or wouldn't give choice r.e. software install), [2] the fans *never* came on, even when they clearly should have (hotplate time) under the Suse install kernel, which for some reason didn't load APM, rather ACPI, though it appears not be be enabled for anything but shutdown under ACPI, and [3] obtaining a copy of Mandrake 9.0 turned into a flail (it's finally here now, but Mandrake seems to be circling the drain, unfortunately).  In contrast, Redhat install works fine in graphical mode/Disk Druid (7.2/8.0), installs under APM, and lets the BIOS/MB turn the fans on and off appropriately.

What Works and What Doesn't:

HD: IBM Travelstar IC25N030ATCS04-0 ATA supported in UDMA, 32-bit mode, udma 5 default. Default power managment at 50% maximal level & adjustable. DVD/CDRW works fine to read, haven't tried burning yet,  UDMA supported, automatically set up as scd0 hdc=ide-scsi on install.

DVD/CDRW: Between dmesg and cdrecord this appears to be a QSI ATAPI CDRW/DVD, model SBW-241 VX09.  Just burned some backup CDs at 8x without problems using cdrecord.  Does DVD playback work ?  If it's legal, my answer is that ogle works beautifully on the quite impressive truecolor radeon display.

Ports: Haven't tried firewire, parallel, or serial, but ohci1934 module loaded at boot with no errors. Video/NTSC out OK controlled by function key (screen off when NTSC output active).  Phone, 10-Base T OK, USB keyboard and mouse automatically recognized and work, sound outputs OK.

PCMCIA: What's to need PCMCIA for when you've got internal modem and NIC ?  Wireless, I guess, and IDE/SCSI. Loads as Yenta socket.  A 1520 Adaptec SCSI card recognized, loaded, and works OK. 

NIC: recognized as EE Pro, driver set up and loaded on install, instant network with DHCP.

Graphics Card: ATI driver, radeon module, works fine with XFree86 4.2

Modem: Very difficult to identify.  Windows states "GTW V.92 Voicemodem", the PCI info shows it as an Intel 82801CA/CAM AC'97, unknown device 2486 rev 02 ((8086:2486 ICH 3 + p c)), controller subsystem Askey Computer Corp. unknown device 1050 (144f:1050), and scanModem finds the  ac97 codec to be AD1881, and the modem codec to be a Silicon Laboratories Si3036. ATI commands revealed the modem designation to be "SmartLink 56K Voice Modem", with a  "protocol factor" of 6c3df41.  The unsupported SmartLink HAMR5600 modem driver ver. 2.7.8 compiles, modules load with expected GPL warning, and modem works fine for dialup terminal, ppp connection, and fax class 1, though driver reports error  r.e. unsupported codec.

Sound: ESS1988, set up with maestro3 driver on install. Haven't tried MIDI, but CD/MP3/WAV/System sounds OK.

Function Keys: "Status" pops up battery info in graphic or text mode. Screen brightness function keys work. LCD/CRT switches between screen, both, VGA out only when monitor attached, between NTSC out and screen (not both) when connected to video out. Lock/break/pause keys work.  Volume keys do not work, and only the power and standby buttons seem to be identified via ACPI (see Experimental section). See Power Management for section for "Standby".

BIOS Capabilities: Can set to non-PNP OS, and set default disk management to "Other" mode (specifically suggests for Unix).  Standard stuff like boot device.  There are quite a few options in BIOS to control power mangement selectively in battery or AC mode, and hard drive and screen power management.

Power Mangement:  If you are using APM only (default RedHat install kernel) the Standby key does suspend, but you need to make sure that the Power Button is set to "Suspend/Resume" in BIOS, or you will not be able to resume.  I don't suggest suspend in any case, as this seems buggy, system behaving very sluggishly after resume (something not "waked up", perhaps HD ?). Also, the radeon display gets squirrely after suspend/resume, and won't display anything until the screen needs refreshing (press a key) after exiting graphics mode.  If you want hibernate function you'll have to set up kernel/patch init for Sysreq-d (only supported via OS).

Battery life seems about 1.5-2h under heavy load (e.g. compiling kernel, compiling/installing other programs), and longer to much longer under standard use (e.g. 89->62% charge after 45 minutes running StarPresents presentation).

Experimental:  Using ACPI enabled 2.4.20 custom kernel with latest ACPI patch gives some interesting capabilities, including ability to turn on/off fans manually to keep cpu cooler than limits (pretty toasty 66C+ for turning on fan in lowest active cooling mode, but I guess it's set to preserve battery life), perhaps ability to set limits (don't know how - acpi docs sparse), switch processor speed on fly, monitor temp and battery closely. Nothing I could figure out to write to /proc/acpi/sleep seemed to cause laptop to suspend,  but perhaps I'm doing it wrong.  In contrast, echo -n 5 > /proc/acpi/sleep snaps off the power instantly.