Arch Linux

daJense

Member

Registered: 2009-05-17

Posts: 45

Arch on Samsung Q310

Hi,
about half a year back I bough a Samsung Q310 notebook. The main indicators are as follows:

- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU     P8600  @ 2.40GHz
- GeForce 9200M GS
- 4GB RAM
- 320GB SATA

Well, what can I say - Don't buy this!!! There are several issues with this notebook. In the beginning I was quite happy. Most things run out of the box, installing linux is no hassle at all. But ... the trouble started when I wanted to swith to x64 in order to actually use the total of 4GB RAM, as 32bit OS only use a max of 3GB. When I started x64 install disc I had constant reboots on loading the ACPI modules. Turning of ACPI in GRUB sovled this, but for a notebook that's actually no solution at all. It turns out, there is a bug in the bios version, which causes some kind of memory allocation error or something. This problem is indepent of the used OS (same problem in Vista or XP). Samsung does not plan to release a bios update. There answer to my request was something on the line of "We only support 32bit OS on this model" and after I kind of insisted "stop bothering us". So the choice I am given is to either have the CPU run at full power all the time, with fan and everything, or to live with using only 3GB of RAM. By the way, it seems this issue would be the same if I patched the 32bit kernel to use 4GB (which I haven't tried).

Yes, that had me allready pissed. Now, after just 6 month of usage, the GPU starts overheating using composite .... it's quite unrelated to the applications I am using. If I switch on compositing and use twinView I can watch the GPU temperature rising until it hits nice 100°C. Then, of course, the system goes down for halt in order to stop it blowing up. I have had data loss etc.. for this reason.

Well, I manly posted this because searching the internet didn't turn up any related results for the graphics issues and I thought I might save others some trouble. But if you have any bright ideas on how to solve any of these issues I would very much appreciate it. Else, I guess I am just gonna hope this thing blows up in a year or so, and that they don't have any more models in stock to replace this notebook and must give me a new one

cheers