[CentOS] CentOS 6 driver support

You might try booting off of the CentOS 6 LiveCD. Unless that kernel is
dramatically different from the installed kernel, that make be a good
indication of what kind of support to expect.

Barry

________________________________
From: Nguyen Vu Hung (VNC) <vuhung at vinicorp.com.vn>
To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 7:05 PM
Subject: [CentOS] CentOS 6 driver support


Hello all,

This is the laptop I own:
HP Pavilion dv6t Quad Edition
Spec: Intel Core i7-2630QM 2.0GHz, 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD, VGA ATI
????Radeon HD 6490M

You can also check the spec here:
http://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-dv6t-dv6tqe-Laptop/dp/B00506B7DS/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid12164145&sr=1-3

I am going to install CentOS 6 to it but I want to make sure that
????which drivers will CentOS? 6 support:
Ethernet, Wifi, sound and especially VGA ATI Radeon HD 6490M.

Any help is appreciated.

Nguyen Vu Hung

------------------------------------------

Before you take the leap and modify the partition layout, you can non-destructively explore linux suitability with a Live ISO. I recommend almost any
live distro with a 2.6.32+ kernel. I personally like puppy 4.31 or higher, or for 64 bit, try the Fat Dog ISO (also from puppy developers).

Once you get that booted up, dump the

lspci
lsusb

or even

lsmod


Then you can get some idea of what drivers are required. If the live ISO's fail to work, then the fun begins and you need to ask yourself
if its worth it to try another permanent version of Linux.

From googling, I see that HP is reluctant to release improved bios for this model. Can you find a bios version higher than F13?

elrepo.org has updated drivers for most things packaged for el5 /el6 if
they are not supported by the distro, so it should be easy enough to get
things working even if they are not directly supported out of the box:

http://elrepo.org

The latest ATI proprietary drivers (v11.7) are available, as are the
latest ALSA sound drivers (although sound support in 6.1 should be
pretty good) and updated Ethernet/WiFi drivers for many devices.

Hope that helps.