What laptop hardware do you recommend for using genode? I noticed one of the presentations was done using genode to display slides from a lenovo thinkpad of some sort. Is this what the genode team is using and what they're targeting for daily use? What particular hardware is being targeted?
Hello Tim,
On 01/05/15 23:08, Tim Newsham wrote:
What laptop hardware do you recommend for using genode?
Since we mostly use Thinkpads for testing as well as developing Genode on, a Thinkpad is the obvious recommandation. Even when using a Thinkpad there is things to look out for, though:
* the native resolution of the display needs to be available in the VBE mode list because Genode currently only has a VESA driver and otherwise you will get a blurry picture
* full support for Intel AMT — some Thinkpads claim to have full AMT support but do not have it actually (note: AMT is not required for running Genode but eases debugging by providing a serial connection)
* working ACPI implementation because on some Thinkpads, e.g. T440s, wrong IRQs are reported via ACPI leading currently to non-working drivers
* able to use a Intel wireless 6xxx oder 7260 card (Lenovo/IBM BIOS unfortunatly has a whitelist for wireless cards) if you want to use wlan
A Thinkpad model that works well in our experience is the X201 (that is the one Norman mostly uses for his presentations) and from my experience the T430 does too relating to the list above.
Cheers Josef
Hello,
some additional remarks from me.
On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 11:15:54AM +0100, Josef Söntgen wrote:
- full support for Intel AMT — some Thinkpads claim to have full AMT support but do not have it actually (note: AMT is not required for running Genode but eases debugging by providing a serial connection)
The best is to look out for the "Intel vPro" label and to make sure the reseller does not fiddle with the AMT feature (as Dell did with a notebook we purchased last year).
- working ACPI implementation because on some Thinkpads, e.g. T440s, wrong IRQs are reported via ACPI leading currently to non-working drivers
It's not easy to ensure a working ACPI interrupt table as recent OSes mostly use MSIs (message-signalled interrupts) on capable devices. For this reason, we plan to enable MSI support (at least on NOVA) this year. A short-term quickfix is to manually identify the correct GSI numbers and patch the drivers as we did for testing/demoing recently.
A Thinkpad model that works well in our experience is the X201 (that is the one Norman mostly uses for his presentations) and from my experience the T430 does too relating to the list above.
We have positive experiences with T61, T400, T410, and T420 too. Furthermore, we enabled (with some effort) a Dell Mobile Workstation (Precision M6800) and some other mobile PCs.
Regards
-
Christian Helmuth -
Josef Söntgen -
Tim Newsham