Medion AMD64

[komputes]

Bonjour Theodore,

Thank you for reviving the laptop testing team mailing list!

Now that that's out of the way, I think I know what you're talking about
when you say SiS screws up your VGA display. You did not make it clear
what make/model laptop you currently have. I would also recommend you
reply with the model of the video card in the laptop - you can get all
this information by running this command in a terminal, and attaching
the output from your home directory to the reply email:

lspci -vvnn > ~/pci.id.medion

I have an Acer and it has an AMD Turion in it, basically I have video
issues as well. I thought I would try to help you out. Obviously Acer
went the cheap route when equipping their laptops with video cards and
passed the savings (and grief) along to their customers.

Take a look at the following bugs which may describe what you are
seeing. My friend and I can confirm these issues on the Aspire 3000/5000
series.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/317658
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/291294
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/264769

I have tried contacting the maintainer of the driver, but have not
gotten a response. I have also contacted Bryce Harrington - Ubuntu's
lead X.org expert, who has taken a look at these bugs. All I can tell
you is that I have had video problems with this card (Silicon Integrated
Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter
[1039:6330]) only after Ubuntu 7.10 - so you can try the work around
explained in these bugs (the sisfb option) or you can backup /home and
go back to 7.10 which has flaws and has hit end of life recently (so is
no longer getting security updates).

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/gutsy/

Either way, event though I am a free software advocate, I would
recommend Picasa over F-stop any day (I'm talking about quality here),
and Ubuntu over Ubuntu Studio. If you have to get a cheap laptop that
you can hide from those who may want to confiscate it, i would recommend
a small netbook - under 1KG (and under $300) which you can pass along in
a small bag with a thin camera. Get us some nice pictures! Hopefully
some of the kids of the region holding up the ubuntu logo: the circle of
friends. Hope this helps.

Cheers and peace,

-komputes

Theodor Fruendt wrote:
> Hi to everybody,
> you might find this funny, but against all pro photographers 
> recommendations I want to take things seriously and try to give Ubuntu 
> Studio a try.
> Working mainly on low budget laptops (I report from hostile regions and 
> socially unstable societies where confiscation of equipment is common). 
> So I can not drag a Ubuntu machine around. Currently I work on a Medion 
> AMD64, a cheap thing because the Accer found a new owner in Afghanistan. 
> However I came across this SiS thing which screws up my VGA Display. Due 
> to my lack of experience this seems not to be solved any soon unless 
> some one of you has time to send me some hints.
> It is already tough to explain picture desk editors that I am not 
> willing to use Adobe products unless they are willing to increase, 
> instead reducing, their fees. Also, I'm pretty happy working with GIMP 
> and F-Spot instead of Photoshop and I-View oder Fotomechanic.
> Being native German speaking, living in France, I'm would help with 
> translations and with evaluating in photo editing issues.
> Cheers
>
>