Arch Linux

cam939

Member

Registered: 2010-09-07

Posts: 2

New MSI Laptop?

Hey all!

I'm getting ready to purchase my first linux-only laptop and have it pretty well narrowed down.  I just wanted to run this by a bunch of people who actually know what they're doing to see if there are any obvious red flags in my choice.

I really like System76's Serval Professional, and since this is going to by my main development machine (graphics visualizations mostly) I'm not too shy about shelling out for a decent display/graphics card/processor combo.

I'd want to install Arch on it right away (I've been using it on various desktops for a few years and can't go back to Ubuntu), though, and I'm not sure what kind of nightmare that would entail.

However, I stumbled across the MSI GX660R-60US that has slightly better features for about the same price.

Having never seen either in person, the MSI seems to have better construction as well (even if it is a little flash).  And nothing jumps out at me as being grossly incompatible with Linux (some sites even sell this laptop with Linux preinstalled, unsupported, naturally).  I've only used Nvidia with Linux in the past, but everything I've been reading says I have nothing to fear, that the Catalyst drivers work perfectly with the ATI 5870.

So this is where I'm sitting right now, thanks for reading and I appreciate any feedback on these two laptops you may have.  Especially if it's "Stay Away From MSI!" for any reason.

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: New MSI Laptop?

No special reasons here, the ideal would be to test if everything is supported with a livecd. The System76 was reviewed by Phoronix [1] so you know exactly if there are any catches.

The only things that might cause you trouble with the MSI (and they _are not_ specific to MSI) are:

- the card reader, specially the memory stick part which may not work at all

- the gigabit lan chip might not have the best support yet. This depends on which chip is used, most do work just fine I believe but some seem to still cause a few troubles

- the wireless card which may not be well supported yet or the driver may be in the middle of some improvement and there are still issues

- the sound subsystem, the most common problem is the speakers not muting when plugging the headphones and occasionally not being able to record from the mic.

- the usb3 support, I know some support already got into the kernel but I don't know if it is the current kernel version or the next one (which will be here soon I guess).

All of these except the memory stick problem will get solved eventually. This is usually after 1 or 2 kernel releases or sooner if bugs/problems are reported, this depending on how serious/hard to solve the problem is.

The things that do raise some red flags are the EQ stuff (thats most probably done by software which runs only on windows), the led and audio synchronization stuff, besides flashy is probably windows only too. The rest seems very much standard stuff and should work out of the box.

[1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a … _pro&num=1

Edit:
If the machine comes with windows pre installed then it might be a good idea to check if everything works as advertised with windows _before_ getting rid of it and installing arch, I've been there before and it's good to have some peace of mind knowing that some eventual problem with linux is a software bug and not a problem with the hardware itself.

Last edited by R00KIE (2010-09-07 23:01:36)

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R00KIE
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cam939

Member

Registered: 2010-09-07

Posts: 2

Re: New MSI Laptop?

Thank you so much!  Your reply was perfect.

The only thing that would be a major annoyance would be the WiFi not working, but it looks like if I upgrade to the Intel 6200 chip, it's supported by the iwlagn driver.

The rest is pretty much just chrome, so I don't mind being patient for a bit.

Thanks for the help, and especially the ideas of testing the hardware in Windows and with a live cd first.  Both points I hadn't considered, but definitely will now!