[NBLUG/talk] Laptop Distro

Kyle Rankin kyle at nblug.org
Wed Nov 17 13:20:38 PST 2004


On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 12:50:19PM -0800, Robert Hayes wrote:
> Yeah. I've installed it twice. I prefer Knoppix 3.3 to version 3.6 on my 
> Compaq Presario XL1200 laptop. Pretty much everything *including* my wireless 
> card, but *not* my winmodem (I don't use it anyway) 'just runs'.

I've had a similar experience with Debian and Knoppix both on my fujitsu
but I've been lucky because it supports both APM and ACPI. ACPI is what
really trips up Linux on a  laptop. A lot of this page is fujitsu p series
specific, but you can follow some of the power management tips at least to
see how to create a suspend-to-disk partition:

http://greenfly.org/fujitsu/

> 
> The only thing I needed to tweak, and this is why i went back to version 3.3 
> is the hibernate feature. Google 'phdisk' for the program that will write the 
> appropriate file system to a hibernate partition. Then use cfdisk to set that 
> partition type to A0. 
> 
> After that you can just tap the power button and the machine will write all 
> RAM to the harddrive and full power down. Sweet. Never reboot again.
> 
> Sleep and snooze or whatever they're called never worked correctly, but 
> hibernate is so fast, and so safe that I prefer that anyway.

I was able to get all of this working with APM but again I haven't tried
ACPI. Even was able to get it set in the BIOS so the machine will sleep
when I close the lid and wake up when I open it.

> 
> I seem to recall that there was a problem with a complete shutdown as well. 
> Again, I haven't done one in something like two years. You issue the shutdown 
> command, then when it's all said and done you need to hold down the power 
> button for four seconds to engage the ATX shutdown.
> 
> On Wednesday 17 November 2004 11:56 am, Steve Johnson wrote:
> > Hmm, I was just thinking, what about the knoppix HD installer?  Has
> > anyone installed this on a laptop?  I know right from the knoppix CD,
> > everything 'just works'.. Seem's that would be the easiest thing to
> > try..
> >
> > What about updates on knoppix, since its debian based, is it as simple
> > as 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade'?
> >
> > -Steve

An upgrade isn't exactly that easy. There's a hack in the book that walks
you through the process step-by-step, but basically you have to change
/etc/apt/apt.conf and change the "testing" to "unstable" so it will pull by
default from the unstable tree, comment out the stable and testing sources
(and optionally the experimental and third party sources) in
/etc/apt/apt.conf. You don't have to comment these out necessarily but it
helps to organize things. Then you run apt-get update && apt-get
dist-upgrade. Do a dist-upgrade because you are migrating from testing to
unstable.

Then from that point on you have a mostly-sid system that you can run
apt-get upgrades from.

If your ultimate goal is to install directly to hard disk, I've also heard
good things about the Kanotix live cd because it's more "pure" Debian and
easier to upgrade.

-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org

> >
> > On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 11:53:29 -0800, Steve Johnson <gnuguy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Mostly problems with shutting down, the power management isn't quite
> > > working with it..  I've also seen some non-laptop issues that worry
> > > me, mainly issues with SATA drives.
> > >
> > > I'm running C3 on my workstation at work, and am having zero problems
> > > with it, its actually pretty nice, and I see a performance improvement
> > > over teh C1 I had on here before.
> > >
> > > I think my biggest complaint about Fedora is that it does not support
> > > MP3 natively, you need to download another package from freshrpms in
> > > order to get MP3 support..  Now I do understand why the fedora group
> > > chose to disable MP3 support.. but its a drag..
> > >
> > > A friend of mine is trying to talk me into trying Suse.  I may give
> > > that a try.  Maybe I'll just do a Debian install =)  I know Debian the
> > > best of all the distros I've used.  But last time I did debian on a
> > > latop, getting wireless to work properly took a bit of work and time..
> > >
> > > -Steve
> > >
> > > On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 11:39:04 -0800, Mark Street <mark at oswizards.com> 
> wrote:
> > > > Whine Whine Whine, Dream, Dream, Dream, talk to Linksys and Broadcom
> > > > about driver hassles.  I have a 5100, run FC1 on it.  Maybe I will go
> > > > to FC3 and bleed a little.
> > > >
> > > > What types of 'problems' did FC3 cause on laptops specificially?
> > > >
> > > > On Wednesday 17 November 2004 11:15, Steve Johnson wrote:
> > > > > I was wondering what your opinions on laptop distros of linux were. 
> > > > > I have a Dell 5100 Laptop and I want to put linux on it (again). 
> > > > > Before I had FC2 on it, and it seemed to work fairly well.  So I was
> > > > > going to install FC3 on it, then I read on the fedoraforum.org site,
> > > > > that C3 is having problems on laptops.
> > > > >
> > > > > Basicly, I'm looking for a distro that right from the install will
> > > > > support the Broadcom nic, the Linksys Wireless card, and the
> > > > > winmodem. With out much config hassels.
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Mark Street, RHCE
> > > > http://www.oswizards.com
> > > > --
> > > > Key fingerprint = 3949 39E4 6317 7C3C 023E  2B1F 6FB3 06E7 D109 56C0
> > > > GPG key http://www.oswizards.com/pubkey.asc
> > > >
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> > >
> > > --
> > >       "Knowing others is wisdom, knowing your self is Enlightenment."
> > >                                                    -- Lao-Tzu
> > >
> > > |C8H10N4O2|
> 
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