Berk Ulsoy

Hi,
My recent toy (actually 1 year old) is Asus G50vt gaming laptop. It is a perfect choice for people who need high resolutions like 1680×1050, good cpu and graphics adapter with hdmi output and tolerable weight.

Asus G50vt

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and Karmic Koala runs perfect on this. Come and see:

Asus did well with this product. Personally I have no problem with its performance or quality. The chassis is firm. It looks and feels endurable and artistic. The price is totally acceptable for this (1600$ at Nov 2008).

The specs are:

Of course I do not forget lspci


00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9800M GS] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)
07:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
07:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
07:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
07:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
07:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)


I used Jaunty Jackalope and now it is running Karmic Koala for months. Here are the notes:

INSTALLATION

• If you have 2 disk configuration, you can use FakeRAID for RAID1 or RAID0 configuration without putting much effort. It will definitely boost performance with RAID0 but you have take extra care since loss of a disk will mean complete data loss. If you also want to use bundled Windows Vista with better performance, you should really consider this. In this case, you will need to use alternative installer cd instead of regular Ubuntu installer because regular installer does not include support for booting from dmraid devices
• If you want to use FakeRAID, note that GRUB2 does not support it yet. You will need to use GRUB instead.
• Regular installation media works ok if you do not want to use FakeRAID

HARDWARE DETECTION

• Ubuntu automatically discovers every single hardware component, function keys and uses them. You do not need to make any Xorg configuration at all. (Thanks XRandR) I recommend enabling restricted drivers when Ubuntu asks for it.
• NVidia’s original binary driver is unable to process sound through HDMI interface. Since we also have SPDIF, it is not a huge problem.
• OLED driver is also included in the staging drivers area and it is available with Ubuntu. You can check here about what can do with this toy.
• You may hear speakers still running when headphone is plugged. You can add following option to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf|options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N model=g71v
• Traditionally, hibernating is not stable but standby works ok.

This is a screenshot from my desktop, running KDE 4.3

Here is the full size

I would like to conclude by telling that this is a good Asus product with components working with at least Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10.