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Not what I meant. I was talking about when I close my lid and my machine crashes and only can be revived back to life by killing the power.

Do you have an ATI chipset with fglrx enabled, by any chance? There is a bug with kernel 2.6.22 and the proprietary ATI driver that prevents suspend from working.

There are three things you can do:

1) Make it so that closing the lid *doesn't* suspend the laptop (System --> Preferences --> Power Manager or something like that, my Ubuntu's in French...); pick another option, like turning off the screen or powering down the computer.

2) Not use the proprietary ATI driver. Of course, this means you won't be able to use desktop effects and 3D apps.

3) Install kernel 2.6.20 and use that one instead (that's what I did). You do need to tweak /etc/default/acpi-support a bit, though, i.e. make sure the following options are set:

SAVE_VBE_STATE=false
POST_VIDEO=true
USE_DPMS=false

Good luck!

You do not have to enable anything. Ubuntu kills your laptop hd slowly out of the box.

K, sorry but I'm pissed by this behaviour and there is no official fix available.

Edited 2007-11-02 17:09

yes there is.

where ?

Really? Any source for this?

Well, no. Your laptop vendor slowly kills your hard disk out of the box, and Ubuntu doesn't do anything to stop it. This could very well be a problem on other distributions as well. Windows basically ignores the firmware and sets its own defaults, so the hardware vendors haven't had any incentive to make their defaults reasonable. It's possible that some Linux distros handle this issue better than Ubuntu, but it's not an Ubuntu-specific issue. Any distro that trusts the hardware power management defaults will have the same problem.

I expect Ubuntu and other distros to ship workarounds for this problem, but they should also start bitching and moaning at the OEMs, like their new pal, Dell. It really is their fault, although for practical reasons it's easier for the OS distributors to address the problem for laptops that are already out in the field.

There are a bunch of workarounds. I used this one:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695/comment...

Computers suck. FOSS can make dealing with them a lot more pleasant, but the community cannot ignore whatever they can't fix properly. All developers, especially systems programmers, at some point reach a catharsis about the futility of perfectionism and cease to be surprised or outraged by the inherent suck that surrounds their work. I recommend a good scotch.

hey butters, is there a way to check if this bug if affecting my particular laptop?

If what you are describing is the same as my experience, then your problem is solved in Fedora. On my Dell the screen would turn black and the keyboard would lock up using Ubuntu 7.10 - not Fedora 8 RC.

I agree that back in F2-F3 Yum was dog slow. Never the less, it has steadily improved on each release.
As long as your have fastestmirror package installed, Yum/F8 can rival apt in speed.
There are still some issues to fix (the assoying checksum-match problem - that should be auto-handled instead of need a manual 'yum clean all'), but there are getting there.

As for "Seems like in the past Fedora has made it difficult to get codecs" part, First it's wasn't Fedora's fault - the U.S. prevented them from doing anything that might help the user break the U.S law. (By gaining access to questionable codecs such as MP3)... but it was never "hard".
All you needed to do was to install a single RPM (livna-release) and install the missing codecs.

- Gilboa

Edited 2007-11-03 10:03

"""
I agree that back in F2-F3 Yum was dog slow. Never the less, it has steadily improved on each release.
As long as your have fastestmirror package installed, Yum/F8 can rival apt in speed.
There are still some issues to fix (the assoying checksum-match problem - that should be auto-handled instead of need a manual 'yum clean all'), but there are getting there.
"""

The three distros I use in my daily life and my business are CentOS, Fedora, and Ubuntu. I ran F8 for a bit, recently, for testing purposes. And while yum has gotten a lot better and has perfectly acceptable performance, it still can't match apt for speed. Apt handles dependencies faster, and downloads over my 12mbit connection faster. I think apt can pull bits from multiple servers at once.

That said, I have *not* had a chance to try out the new "presto" capabilities that have been enabled by default in F8. I'm anxious to see the benefits of delta patches.

Edited 2007-11-03 10:49

IMO, presto is not ready yet. (But I've yet to test it on newer versions of F8).
It was stable, but somehow, even on a dual quad-core Clovertown, yum seemed (IHMHO!) slower.
Hopefully it'll be ready by F9.

As for speed, a couple of months ago I would have agreed with you... however, my local Debian mirror is down and I'm forced to use remote servers, slowing down apt considerably. (netselect-apt didn't really help)
For now, with no local mirrors, apt is just as fast (or as slow) as yum.

- Gilboa

Edited 2007-11-03 10:58

I still have some machines running FC1. (They are POS stations which are never exposed to anything outside of their own small, trusted network.) I occasionally have need to install some package on them. And *oh my god!*, remember when yum downloaded all those zillions of little header files that it needed one by one uncompressed? Yum has, indeed, come far.

On delta updates. Suse has, of course, been doing them for years. At least they used to, and I assume they still do. I distinctly remember being thoroughly disappointed by their performance. Of course, that was a *long* time ago and things may have changed.

At any rate, the potential of deltas is huge for a distro like Fedora. I just spot checked (by adding up all the sizes of the updates in the i386 F7 updates directory), and Fedora has released over 6 Gigabytes of updates to F7 in less than six months. Of course, most people do not have *everything* installed, but still.

I should note, for those unaware, that this is not because Fedora is buggy and needs all those patches to fix stuff. Fedora tracks upstream, and if the upstream releases a 1.02 version to replace 1.01, Fedora will push that out.

If you anyone is interested in Presto, there are working repositories available at

https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/presto/

Presto is a pretty neat feature IMO. Check it out.

the assoying checksum-match problem
Ah, I am not alone.

I live in town with very greedy ISP, end watch for any extra traffic byte. After another kernel update( i tend to install only secutity or low size (< 1mb)updates ), start yum update kernel. metadata downloaded (5 MB!!!! terrific traffic, but necessary, 2-3 days w/o online and i compensate it), and... checksum error, try another mirror. Wait... another 5 mb metadata, checksum error... Damn, CTRL-C. Trying another mirror... CTRL-C CTRL_C CTRLC ... 5 &#1084;&#1073; loaded, checksum error, another... I urgently open terminal to server, hands tremor, wrong password, annother try, ok, killall pppd, Yes, it shut up. 30 MB traffic to trash, great.

That was worst day, I loose not only traffic but faith in progress. RedHat is very serious company, they support guys that familiar with black magic (CPU TLB issues, non standard hardware, all that stuff beyond mortal ) and so loose in simple file downloading.

Edited 2007-11-03 11:22

"""
I live in town with very greedy ISP, end watch for any extra traffic byte.
"""

To quote Flash Gordon... why don't you team up and fight 'em? ;-)

Why are torrents an issue for you? There are myriad of Bittorrent clients available on the Internet for any computing platform. These reange from fast and extremely simple (Transmission) to full-featured (Azureus.) Give Bittorrent a whirl. Cheers!

He could be using Comcast.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071021-comcast-traffic-block...

Why are torrents an issue for you?

Yes, it is slower, at least for me.

torrents are an issue for me too. I have Comcast broadband and I have been downloading the DVD for over 12 hours. bittorent-curses says I have 5.5 hours left! The problem with torrents is if not enough users have seeds available the download speed is very slow. I try to do my part and let bittorent upload from my torrent for several days after a release. Comcast is throttling uploads and probably limiting download speed of torrents too. I think there was some legal action against them recently.

Yes, Bittorrent is not often the fastest way to download.

Perhaps not a big surprise if some internet service providers may restrict Bittorrent traffic when many estimates state that Bittorrent and other peer-to-peer file sharing traffic may be responsible for about 40% of all Internet traffic.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-dominates-internet-traffic-07090...

Also according to Comcast the reason for occasionally delaying peer-to-peer file sharing traffic is "[i]to conserve bandwidth and allow customers to experience the Internet without delays."
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/comcast-were-delaying-not-...
http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=10300CL7I43E

I use Optus in Australia which counts uploads as well as downloads against my usage. So I don't use bitorrents as I would reach my cap quicker that way. I get shaped to 64Kb/s after 2000MB. And yes they did this becuase so many people are using P2P systems which actually costs them.

2000 MB per day? Per month?

Per month. I wish was per day.

what about those of us who have isp's that rate limit torrents, or work for comapanies who only allow http access?

and frankly, ftp would be way faster.

The only issue I see with using Mepis, is the fact that is is the work of only one developer. I'll admit he's doing great work, but I could easily see the distro falling out, such as was the case with Libranet. Personally, I would rather use a distro that has some backing, and support. The fact that the Mepis creator has been very quiet the past month, had several people worried, he might have health issues, when in fact, it just turned out, he got a job, and was devoting much time to something he can make money from.

"The only issue I see with using Mepis, is the fact that is is the work of only one developer. I'll admit he's doing great work, but I could easily see the distro falling out, such as was the case with Libranet. Personally, I would rather use a distro that has some backing, and support."

Yes, I see your point. We can only hope it turns alright. I really like the concept of Mepis 7.0. If it's a success, the project may get more developers.

Finally Fedora will have a KDE version. I will have to try it.
Huh? I've been exclusively using KDE as my desktop environment for ages under Fedora.

"Huh? I've been exclusively using KDE as my desktop environment for ages under Fedora."

Yes but I'd like to find a *good* distro that has KDE as the *default* Desktop Environment. I'm a KDE "fan", so I don't want a distro that treats KDE as a second class citizen.

*And*, to recommend it to other people (mostly newbies), I want it to have good default settings, so they can feel comfortable with it right from the beginning.

So far, I've not been able to find a KDE based distro which meets both of these requirements.

EDIT: added quote

Edited 2007-11-02 22:58

"
Yes but I'd like to find a *good* distro that has KDE as the *default* Desktop Environment. I'm a KDE "fan", so I don't want a distro that treats KDE as a second class citizen. "

Well, for the KDE spin of Fedora, KDE is the default desktop environment and pretty much the same as vanilla upstream KDE apart from a bit of a cleanup. Try it out, you might like it.

"Well, for the KDE spin of Fedora, KDE is the default desktop environment and pretty much the same as vanilla upstream KDE apart from a bit of a cleanup. Try it out, you might like it."

Good to hear. Sounds like something I've been looking for.

"So far, I've not been able to find a KDE based distro which meets both of these requirements."

Not sure what you are looking for, but Mepis, Mandriva, and openSUSE all have good defaults for KDE. They are all KDE based distros.

OpenSuse and PCLinuxOS both have a fantastic KDE

"Not sure what you are looking for, but Mepis, Mandriva, and openSUSE all have good defaults for KDE. They are all KDE based distros."

I didn't like the default panel layout of Mandriva 2008 (e.g. there is very little room for apps in the taskbar). It's also a bit too commercial distro for my taste. Otherwise it's pretty damn good. I especially prefer Mandriva's software management tool over Adept (esp. when doing updates).

OpenSuse.. hmmm.. haven't tried it yet. I have to admit that the deal with MS is still kind of a turnoff for me.

I'll try Mepis 7.0 as soon as it's out.

EDIT: added quote

Edited 2007-11-03 03:22

How about Slackware and its derivatives?

Give PCLinuxOS a try. Its probably one of the best KDE distros out there. Been using it for the past couple of years and have always gone back to it after trying out several others.

"Give PCLinuxOS a try. Its probably one of the best KDE distros out there. Been using it for the past couple of years and have always gone back to it after trying out several others."

Actually, I already tried PCLinuxOS. Not sure why I didn't like it either. It was quite good for my personal use but I couldn't recommend it to other people in my country - mainly because it lacks good localization (e.g. the installation program is only in english and localization in Firefox didn't work at all).

The most interesting feature of PCLinuxOS was the possibility to "roll your own distro" with just one command. Makes me wonder why distros don't make monthtly versions with all the updates included. It would be much more user friendly if you wouldn't need to install hundreds of megs of updates right after finishing the installation.

Fedora also has a "roll your own distro" application. It is called Revisor. Read about it: http://www.linux.com/articles/114347

"Fedora also has a "roll your own distro" application. It is called Revisor. Read about it: http://www.linux.com/articles/114347"

Thanks for the info. Maybe I should roll my own distro and recommend that..;) OTOH, I'd prefer to be able to just say "Download Distro X, it's very good. You'll absolutely love it!".

Edited 2007-11-03 00:22

have you tried debian-kde?

Not bad :-)

Nope, they have not 'fixed the mp3' problem. Until there is a codec that is totally free from any copyright and/or patent problems then it won't ship with Fedora.
Full Stop. Never No Way. no How.
That is how it is. Please get used to this and don't keep on asking for it with every release. It just is not going to happen. This has been explained ad nauseum for years (Sigh).
If you want mp3 (and other) codecs, then just add the livna repo to your YUM repo list and you are done.

Yes, YUM is much faster to get to the point where you start downloading.

Lets hope that the Laptop HDD problems that are in Ubuntu (OOTB) are not in Fedora.
I have rc3 running on a PPC Mac mini and everything works OOTB (like F7 BTW)

The CodecBuddy application with Fedora 8 allows you to install a free mp3 codec from Fluendo. All the other codecs Fluendo offer cost money. It is reasonable though, I think about $40.00 USD for a collection of windows media, mp3, mpeg, etc. Of course you can get the ugly gstreamer codecs from Livna for free. I thought it was a good compromise since it keeps Fedora free of patent problems but allows a user to easily add in media support.

Edited 2007-11-02 19:08

I think fluendo is pretty irrelevant as most users probably will add the livna and or freshrpm repos.

That is an awesome DVD cover, I like the whole WEREWOLF naming convention they used since it was around Halloween I assume.

So is Fedora Core 8 going to install by default as either a Gnome gdm or KDE kdm manager?

I am a bit confused to how the install is going to perform or do you have to download KDE after the install?

So, we have several different spins which are variants of Fedora targetted towards different kinds of users. Among these, if you are a GNOME user, you pick the GNOME Desktop spin which is a live image that you can install to a hard disk or usb flash too. Similarly there is a KDE spin for KDE fans.

You can also download the regular Fedora DVD image and you get a choice of either GNOME or KDE. So have it the way you want it.

That sounds pretty cool thanks for the update on that, I like the usb flash option!

:)

Mirrors take days to sync which is why this is torrent only. By the time mirrors pick this up, we would be ready for the general release is six days.

i think that is an old anaconda bug that nobody has managed to fix yet

Why wouldn't it be right. Thats the planned release date.