FC1 and Laptops?

[lwj]

On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 20:53, Jay Daniels wrote:
> > -Ross
> 
> If you can stand 1024x768 on a 15" display, I have installed Fedora
> Core 1 on my HP ze4630us and most everything works except the ACPI.

Have you enabled ACPI? To do this you must add the line acpi=on to the
boot line in grub. If you have tried and it does not work correctly, you
may need to update your DSDT (see ACPI project on sourceforge:
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php) If you are lucky someone may
have already published one that works.

> 
> The fan runs constantly and the suspend doesn't function properly
> under kernel 2.4.x  Mainly because when I run the suspend script, I
> loose my USB mouse.  With the fan running constantly the battery
> doesn't last long and I don't see anyway under this kernel to get the
> cpu temperature and adjust the fan speed automatically.  Also, Gkrellm
> fails to get the cpu temp, fan speed, etc.

Once ACPI is enabled, you will need to install the CPU clock throttling
module. This will allow the cpu clock to be slowed down when the system
is idle. This allows it to run cooler and save battery. See the section
entitled "Kernel Notes" in the release notes (the default home page for
Mozilla) This will get you started and point you to the docs in kernel
source.

Finally, you will need to edit /etc/acpi/events/sample.conf. This will
allow you to execute commands when certain ACPI event occur. For example
you can change the CPU policy from 'performance' to 'powersave' when the
AC power is removed, etc. I am probably missing some things here, I am
learning this in my copious spare time.

> 
> note: I downloading and installed this supsend.sh script from another
> source.  There is no "suspend" command installed on my laptop be Fedora.
> 
Suspend is not support in the 2.4 Kernel. There is a patch but I have
not tried to apply it. I read a post by someone who did and it appears
that the Fedora kernel changes make it difficult. This support is part
of the 2.6 kernel. From what I understand, suspend to disk works but
most device drivers have not been updated to support suspend to RAM yet.


> WINDOWS XP
> In Windows the fan on this HP never ran!  Of course I only used it
> with Windows XP a couple of times before installing Fedora.  It did
> seem to get very hot though which I'm told is normal for this laptop.

Once I got ACPI working and the cpu throttling installed, my laptop
stopped running so hot. With the CPU in powersave, the fan hardly  ever
comes on unless I am doing something CPU intensive.

> "The reason I like IBM is that little joystick or trackpoint.  I hate
> touchpads!"

I love my touchpad :-) and I hate the little joy sticks. (Isn't choice
wonderful!)
> 
> Touchpad doesn't work on the HP in Fedora, but I don't care.  I HATE
> TOUCHPADS!  The first thing I did was plugin a good USB scroll mouse
> which also was detected by Fedora.
My touch pad works better under Fedora than Windows! Under Windows it
keeps switching to some compatibility mode where the pointer jumps to
the scroll bar when I use the scroll area.


> Sorry, I haven't tried the builtin wireless device yet but according
> to all my probing it was not detected.

This area can be problematic. Mine originally came with a Wireless B
card that worked fine. I later upgraded to an Atheros based B/G card and
that works pretty good too.

> The Lid
> Closing the lid turns the screen off but that's about all it does.
With ACPI enabled to can make the lid event do anything you want by
capturing the event in your ACPI event script (referenced above) Of
course you can't get it to suspend to RAM :( until you update to the 2.6
kernel and get a hold of device drivers that are updated to support it.