http://www.osnews.com/story/8893/Is_SuSE_Ready_for_the_Laptop_Review_of_SuSE_9_2_Pro Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 23 May 2013 18:38:49 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Buy a Laptop with Linux preinstalled. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Sorry to write this, but with my IBM ThinkPad A22p and Linux (it is not SuSE), I have the same functionality as you describe in your article.

I don't see how the stuff you describe is specific to SuSE? Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Proprietary video drivers from NviDIA (sic) and ATI do not work with software suspend. This means that if you want 3D acceleration, you have to sacrifice software suspend support and vice versa.

This is not true! ACPI support has been greatly improved in the 6xxx series. My Dell Insprion 8200 with a GeForce 440MX (mobile) suspends and resumes just fine with ACPI. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? None of my two laptops that have Linux in, resume. They both go to sleep like babies, but none resumes correctly. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Now if nVidia will just release drivers for PPC Linux.... My powerbook running Ubuntu is really nice. Lacks the standard stuff (3D accel, wireless, sleep) and I hope that will be addressed in the future when nVidia and Broadcom release drivers/specs to the PPC Linux coders. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Ahem...
Support "has been greatly improved in the 6xxx series" is somehow true... and somehow not at all.
It's all about quirks and tricks unfortunately; haven't tried 6229 as yet (dropped linux at 6111), but as far as I read on my laptop's linux usergroup, it still need things like changeVT out of X on resume, then switch back to VT7 (if that's the VT your Xserver is running on), and then you (usually) have a usable screen.
Still a little far away from stock drivers with windows, no?

Nvidia says they're almost completing acpi work for 2.6 kernels, but this has been a long-dated claim, and, well, before judging again, I'll wait a newer release in which they declare "ACPI is working".
I'll get back to Linux then... (I *have* to drop windows, I'm wasting nights playing games again like when I was 20... ;-)

Last thing, maybe offtopic but meaningful: not only, ihmo, should the drivers just work, but they should install as easy as possible: to instal them you must be root;now, given the fact that the format of XF86CONFIG (or the newer xorg.conf) have been around for years, why didn't they automatize config file update, so to offer user a easy and quick way to install? Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Same here. Of the three laptops I have had, none have ever worked correctly regarding suspend/sleep/hibernate. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Good article. I'd be interested to read an equivelent on how SuSE is doing with regards to apple laptops. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've had really good results with Kanotix on my laptop. A really great feature is built-in Powernowd which makes the cpu run cooler and use less battery power. Also neat is that the wireless works with my Pentium-M Centrino processor. There was a good review of it on Distrowatch recently:

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=review-kanotix

However, I am not sure about the suspend/resume feature, because I never really use that. Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.gamepc.com/index.asp
http://www.penguincomputing.com/
http://www.ibm.com/us/
http://www.hp.com/
and the list gets longer as time goes by Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Maybe nit-picking, but it's worth noting that a lot of these features are more relevant to Linux or KDE, not just SUSE. I, like an above poster, have my laptop working with the same level of functionality in a non-SUSE distro. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have experiennced that laptops are very difficult to get perfect. With Suse and my Compaq nc8000 wireless has been no problem.The Network card has been no problem witihn the last two releases, but 3D-acceleration has been lousy. 3-D games has been abysmall. Now with the latest Mandrake 3-D-games has functioned well, but wirelss is a no-no. The internal card doesnt get recogniced and standard Orinoco silver cards isnt'nt there at all.
I need Mandrake with good wireless or Suse with good 3-D. I will test the latest Suse when it's released for the public.
When will that be????

Knut Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I haven't had a great experience with Linux on laptops. It wasn't till I installed Fedora Core 2 on my HP laptop that a Linux distro finally recognized that I had a battery on my laptop and could tell me how charged it was.

Im mainly a Mac OS X person, but it seems to me that you have a great amount of potential with students to adopt Linux and if you don't have great laptop support in there, they won't have a good experience and be turned off by Linux. I myself almost gave up on Linux on my HP laptop after I had a horrible time getting Debian to work normally on it even with a few LUG users who knew Debian well tried to help me at an installfest. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I own what I consider one of the nicest laptops available, but most useless for Linux, an emachine 6809 with a ATI Mobility RADEON 9600 graphics card. I have been able to get many Linux distros to run with a row of kernel arguments on boot-up, but just run. Kanotix was actually the first to show any real signs of truly working, but when they added all of the laptop specific odds and ends, it quit working. Now relegated to the same space as Mandrake, Redhat, Mepis and others. I must say that SUSE came close also.

Enter Ubuntu. The best by far, bar none. No really, just about perfect. No issues at all. No extra kernel arguments, nothing.

And the Broadcom wireless that throughs a fit with every distro when turned on with ndiswrapper? Again, perfect. It caused not a single issue.

How hard to install 3D? A simple apt-get.

Hibernate? Well, almost.

Garret Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Funny, a totally stock Fedora Core 3 install works on my Thinkpad perfectly (ACPI suspend inclusive)... It would probably be nice if it automagically added the DynamicClocks and various hardware acceleration lines to xorg.conf, but after over a decade of using various *nixes and every evolution of X11 and the various WMs that have come and gone, adding three lines to xorg.conf is no skin off my back

-uberpenguin Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Novell provides an optional install script via YOU called "fetchnvidia" also seen as "Download NVIDIA drivers" which will fetch and auto-install NVIDIA 3D drivers for SuSE Linux users instead of manually installing. This covers both support for gaming cards Geforce and DCC cards Quadro. I believe it's also the only Linux distribution to offer this. As for ATI they have a long history of poor Linux support which is probably reason why there hasn't been a script called "fetchati" developed. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? What I've read so far isn't linux specific; it's hardware specific. Many laptops have ACPI extensions or brokeness that must be handled in order to work "correctly" as far as susp/resume, heat control, etc. This isn't a Linux issue, it's an issue that is the same across the PC market both in laptops and desktops. New and often undocumented features, broken BIOS controls, etc. The last time I owned a laptop: an older model IBM Thinkpad, everything in it was supported, and supported very well. This includes the sound circuits, the video, powermanagement along with battery meters, suspend/resume/halt everything. Before starting to point the blame at software providers, proprietary or open, first look at the hardware and firmware, that's usually the real cuplrit in these cases.

I saw someone mention Emachines. These computers are an example of what I'm talking about. Of the people that I personally know with an Emachine, either desktop or laptop, about 4 in total each with different models, ALL of them have issues with the BIOS and compatibility problems often even with MS OSes. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? However, my system is dual boot, and I've timed it. It's about 10% longer to boot Archlinux than Windows XP; and Arch is starting up nfs mounts that Windows isn't.
Really, you can get a slack system to boot faster than XP if you cut it down enough; it's just some distributions that take longer because they start so many services and do so much at startup.

It's cool that Suse finds all this stuff automagically. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 02:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I dont know about Laptop support but I tried Suse 9.2 and was unimpressed. In my view Fedora or any other distro will do the same if properly compiled in the kernel. In my view modern distro's should focus more on the Font rendering engine to make it more LCD friendly. In name of Antialaising all we get is fuzzy ugly fonts. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author who wrote this article said that Linux boots slow compared to Windows, this is only true if you are using a one-size-fits-all kernel. So many people don't realize how bloated the default kernels have to be to accomodate so much. The way to go is to build your own kernel, that way you can specify only what you need, and ACPI and all the other stuff you were whining about. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? anand> I dont know about Laptop support but I tried Suse 9.2 and was unimpressed. In my view Fedora or any other distro will do the same if properly compiled in the kernel.

Any Linux will finally do everything that every other linux can do. The point of having a distro is that you don't have to do everything yourself.

So if SuSE does something out of the box that Fedora needs a kernel recompile to do (or vice-versa), how can you say they are the same?

A point people haven't mentioned here about SuSE is the unified interface it provides to configuring power management. It doesn't matter whether you use APM or ACPI, you use the same daemons and config files. As the owner of an IBM which has broken ACPI, I know how useful this abstraction is from an end user POV.

Click on my handle to get more details on this. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here we go again, if you do this and configure that,- you too, can run linux on a laptop and if a person has a problem
with linux, just deny it and blame that person for not knowing how to turn on their computer windows is easy
mac is nice and linux is for servers or geeks Wed, 17 Nov 2004 05:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well played Mr. heh heh, well played indeed.

I've personally been using Mandrake on my laptop since version 9. I've always been "pretty happy" with it (not terribly excited, but it got the job done). Now that their release cycle seems to be based on the calendar, as opposed to releases of milestone software (KDE 3.3, x.org 6.8 to be specific), I think I'll finally move to greener pastures. SuSE 9.2 and Fedora are my main choices, as they're both easy and both have the bleeding edge eye-candy treats, which I admittedly enjoy. An interesting article, although I would have rather read more about features of SuSE as opposed to ACPI and a kicker applet. Regardless, it did offer some useful insight into my consideration. Thank you Mr. Oliver. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 06:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have installed SuSE 9.2 on my laptop.

I can suspend to disk, that just works fine. Suspend to ram however works strange...
The laptop suspends perfect, just like windows. It's when it awakens things goes wrong, or really, go strange.
The laptop awakens just fine, but then my computer receves a "halt", so linux just starts to shut everything down. Which is annoying, because you want to start working.
So I'm using suspend to disk now, which to be honnest works just fine.

Roland Wed, 17 Nov 2004 06:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Here we go again. Another linux article and out come the people that make nonsense statements about how much configuring and tweaking you have to do to get a mostly working system. While you can choose a distro that is 'difficult' to setup, you can also choose one that isn't. Ubuntu linux is a perfect example of the latter. Sure, geeks like linux...lots of fiddle potential. Sure, linux makes for a great server. But if you take the time to choose your distro properly for your needs, it also make a killer 'everyday' desktop system. God forbid you might have to do a little research, but I'll take choice over canned crap anyday. If you don't like (or want to like, which is more common) linux based operating systems, don't use them. If you don't like options and choice, go to you local Walmart and buy Windows or whatever. On the matter of choice and the 'horrors' or too many options, how is wading through the choices offered in the linux world in order to get a stable system YOU like a worse situation than installing windows and having to wade through the choices in regards to which antivirus app, which adware/spyware killer, etc that youre gonna install so that your OS doesnt melt upon connecting to the internet?


Dumb. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 06:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That's complete crap. The size of the kernel has virtually nothing to do with bootup; the kernel is loaded right at the start of the bootup process and takes about two seconds on *any* distro. The part of the bootup process that takes time is, as has already been discussed, starting services and daemons and so forth. Most distributions do *not* have large, bloated kernels; they have fairly small central kernels and compile everything non-essential as a module. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 06:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Mandrake's release cycle has *always* been time-based; every Mandrake release since the start has come out roughly six months after the last one. Six months has always been the release cycle. In the past it sometimes happened to match up fortuitously with KDE and GNOME release dates; currently it's just out of sync, unfortunately. But it's not MDK that's changed, it's KDE and GNOME... Wed, 17 Nov 2004 06:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I know a lot of you guys dont like Linspire, but Linspire has had all of these features for a while. http://www.linspire.com/laptop_features.php Wed, 17 Nov 2004 07:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? the devil is in the detail, and that Linspire page don't have much detail. every distro has some degree of support for all those things... Wed, 17 Nov 2004 07:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi,

I agree with the writer of this article. I have been running SuSe 9.1 for 2 months on IBM Thinkpad T42p and I have ALL of the power management/suspend etc. capabilities that I had in windows. And, suspend/resume to RAM has been rock solid. I have been very happy with suse for that specific reason.

I know that almost any other distribution can be made to work like this using acpid, cpufreqd and what not. The key difference is that SuSE makes it all work out of the box.

This along with SuSE's "unofficial" policy of providing rpms of KDE/Gnome/Firefox etc. right after their new stable versions are announced makes sure that they get my business.

Osho Wed, 17 Nov 2004 08:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I don't see any difference between what the author describes for SuSE 9.2 and what I'm currently experiencing with SuSE 9.1 on an Inspiron 5150.

The most important thing, suspend-to-ram, still doesn't work at -- even when running in text mode, resume from suspend to ram results in running laptop with a black screen.

Resuming from suspend-to-disk really takes too long, especially when you've got a lot of memory filled with active applications. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 09:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? amazing, i wasn't aware SUSE could do this. lol. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 09:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I did try out suse a couple of weeks back and it spent almost as much time as win XP installing on my Dell CPI. Mepis on the other hand installs in less than the time it takes me to blink-well almost. Comes with ndiswrapper already as part of it and i got my cheap 802.11b card working in no time.

It lets me know how much time i have left on my battery and comes with practically all the software i need except for opera which i got by using apt-get.

For a completely dumb brain when it comes to linux to be able to do all this, i am impressed with myself.Coupled with the fact that,I got no help from suse forums when trying to get my wireless card working, on mepis forum, i had someone practically hold my hands till i got it right.

I think ndiswrapper should be a part of any linux distro.If I cant get on the internet, how on earth will i download it? Wed, 17 Nov 2004 10:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have an IBM X20 running linux only - close the lid (or press Fn-F4), it goes to suspend mode. Open the lid (or press the power button if lid is open) - it wakes up. Battery levels can be read correctly. If the battery is almost empty, it suspends automatically. Blank the screen by pressing Fn-F3. All the power-management features I need are there and work.

I have an dual-booting Dell Latitude C640. Debian/unstable with _stock_ kernel and W2K boot in almost the same time. Windows' suspend-to-disk and resume is not much faster. Actually, suspending for the first time is fscking slow (try to write down 1 gig of memoy in a _fast_ way...). Battery levels can be read correctly. Suspending to RAM through Fn-Esc works correctly in both OS. All the power-management features I need are there and work.

I don't want to deny the author's experiences, but my experiences with notebooks and Linux are positive.


As to non-working ACPI - same shit, different day. The producer creates ACPI tables in BIOS that don't conform to the standards/have bugs in them. Fixes that in Windows drivers. For Linux, kernel developers have to fix it themselves. So, how is this Linux's fault? It's like saying, that if you can't catch you favourite radio station in a different city, it's the city's fault. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 10:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I bought SuSE 9.1 Pro to run on my laptop. It is an Athlon64 3200+ with VIA chipset and Mobility Radeon 9600, 1GB RAM and Broadcom 54g wifi. The ndiswrapper refuses to play ball, and the SuSE power management feature does something WEIRD to the CPU, as even running at the full 2GHz it crawls like a 486.

If I uninstall the SuSE powermanagement stuff and then install cpufreqd it workds fine, but i can't check my battery status!

I only bought 9.1 2 months ago, so I won't be buying 9.2 yet. Is this stuff fixed in 9.2?

As for Ubuntu!

The AMD64 iso appears to install fine (but needs vga=771 to to work), then gives an unable to boot message when i reboot. i reinstalled and used pci=noacpi and acpi=off and it installed and rebooted fine, but then X doesn't work! Reboot again into single user mode. X config looked ok, couldn't use xf86cfg as the synaptics touchpad isn't detected correctly.

Had to boot knoppix and copy the xf86config-4 over to ubuntu. only problem is I have a 1400x1050 panel, and it only works under Ubuntu using 1024x768, and the touchpad works but, tapping doesn't.

Not impressed so far. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Problem is I need to know if it will work on my
Compaq Presario 900 US model.

Is there another version of linux that will run
on it?

by the way Suse Linux 9.2 is out correct? Wed, 17 Nov 2004 17:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? installed suse 9.2 pro on both HP NC4010 and NC6000 and they work flawlessly! cept for the crap suse-ed multimedia apps. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 18:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There are plenty of non-SuSE battery meters, it's hardly a complicated type of application. KDE and GNOME both have native ones. All a battery meter does is read a value the ACPI kernel subsystem spits out and print it on your panel, anyway. Woo hoo, science. (Actually, a battery meter would probably make a *great* starting project for a n00b hacker. I guess that's why there are so many of the damn things).

@nxt: I've heard IBM laptops tend to be the best supported by the stock kernel, yeah. Others don't fare so well. If you ever look into the whole software suspend thing it's a mess; there's three entirely different software suspend maechanisms for Linux - the stock kernel one, swsusp, and swsusp2 - and they all have different results on different laptops. They badly need a good merging.

I think the big news from this article is someone is finally starting to test and put front ends on cpufreqd and ACPI stuff. This is a great step, and kudos to SuSE for it; I hope everyone else follows suit, soon. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 18:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The problem with SuSE is that they don't put a frontend on cpufreqd, they have their own tools that do a similar thing, but doesn't like my laptop for some reason. One day I'll actually bother to register my copy and ask the SuSE support people for help. I've no complaints with it otherwise. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I remember APM working great in Linux. Linux worked better on my old Omnibook 5700 and then my Tecra 8000 then windows ever did. Lack of good ACPI support is why I got a Powerbook - it's Unix, it's small and great battery life. Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Oh, that's a bit annoying. I guess it's using the same kernel inteface underneath, though, so I'm surprised it doesn't work.

@matthew - yes, APM always worked great, because it was a small simple standard which no-one seemed to have any trouble following. If only new laptops still supported it we'd hardly have a problem... Wed, 17 Nov 2004 23:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Instead of whining about SUSE, go shout at Dell/Microsoft who collude to produce non-standard and broken DSDT tables. Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well f*cking said, Zucc. Dull & M$ are the ones responsible for most of the propietary mess we have today... I know since I've run Dull PC's and M$ Windoze for a long time... Thu, 18 Nov 2004 03:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Anyone wanting a linux distro they don't have to install or tweak with a laptop should use MEPIS. It has better detection and preinstalled apps than anything else (suse, redhat, fedora, linspire, kanotix) and it was named the best desktop linux disro EVER:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3135712364.html Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? on my Inspiron 8000. Of course, I was using APM. I've continued to use APM in 8.1 and 9.1 with no problems -- suspend to disk works fine, hibernate works nicely (occasionally I have problems when I resume; the kernel seems to be getting excessive interrupts), and yes, the screen blanks correctly. ACPI offers some fancy features, but it has enough headaches that I've never stayed with it for long. Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I really can't see what SuSE 9.2 gives me, that i'm not already getting from SimplyMEPIS. The latter works absolutely flawlessly on my laptop, and i don't get the impression that batterytime is any shorter than with the neighboring WinXP. Thu, 18 Nov 2004 13:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just one question:

SUSE 9.2 (or any other distro) does fine with integrated modem or not on that specific laptop (Inspirion 8600)? Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First off SuSE is my fav distro (and gets used on all my servers - home and work)

SuSE 9 was the first version to work "out of the box" on my dell 8200 inspiron.

Except.....

I've got a 1600x1200 lcd screen and use small fonts which gives me bags of space under win2k.

SuSE knows better however, because even though it is happy running the desktop at 1600x1200. its like looking at a 1024x768 with it very nastly LARGE fonts.

Yes, i can spend a week reconfiguring kde/x etc (including hand hacking config files) to get something similar to windows, but come-on

win2k - 15 secs work to a nice desktop
suse - 1 week to a nice(ish) desktop.

Then there is the fact the ALL the fonts render REALLY crap and basically fuzzy. And after more than 10 minutes my eyeball implode with eye strain.

Then you have KDE to deal with. The KDE tree view in konquerer is un-useable (hci) and konquerer is VERY overbloated. MS explorer (not ie) is a far better product (which i hate to admit)

Yes, SuSE 9 works on my notebook, but it just isnt useable yet. But when the fonts are fixed, you get a decent desktop without much fuss and konquerer is scrapped and replaced with a useable replacement then i'll scrap win2k.

btw under windows i only use the desktop, everything else is OSS. (firefox, open office, python, apache, php, postgresql, mysql) Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You may find
links
to almost 3,000 Linux on laptops and notebooks installation reports at Tuxmobil

http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Vendor "COMAPQ" System " EAGLES" Revision 0x6040000 has a known ACPI BIOS Problem > ACPI BIOS problem

I have "dabbled" with Mandrake linux for a couple of years now, but not on my main desk-top, as I rely heavily on Quick Books, which in turn is dependant on IE, OE and Excel if one wants to transfer data to spreadsheet. But I had a secondary PC solely for internet & e-mail use using Mandrake 9

Some months back we had a Compaq Presario 700 brought into the workshop. Heavily infected with viruses which had damaged the XP operating system. We tried the Compaq recovery disc, reinstalling XP from scratch, backtracked to Win2K, then to Win98. Our client then gave up and bought a new Notebook. We inherited a supposedly defunct Compaq, so we carried on experimenting. We first tried Mandrake, and when that failed, tried SuSE 9.1 - It worked :-))

However at every boot-up I had a message that there was a problem with the powersave functions, and I couldn't get either the internal or any other external modem configured. You will realise here, if not beforehand, that I am not a Linux "Fundi", as we say here in Africa. (Fundi = Expert.)

So, a couple of weeks ago, I did a search for alternatives and found Mepis, downloaded it, installed it, registered it :-)), and I'm now sending mails from the notebook!

Mepis installation was a cinch, and it is the only version of Linux that is showing me where the problem probably lies - see title. It didn't find the internal winmodem, but I have successfully installed an external modem, and Crossoveroffice, on a test basis, and Quick Books, and its dependant IE, and OE programs.

Just for interests sake, QB works fine under Crossoveroffice, and tries its best to send e-mail invoices to OE, which it does, but OE then just rolls over & dies :-(( But I don't need anyone exploring why this doesn't work, (It's something to do with mapi compliance), I'm just gonna get me another Bookkeeping system that will work on a linux platform :-)) Any ideas anyone ?

I have left the "Big Blue E" on my desktop for a while, just to astonish staunch Win supporters, but the sooner it gets removed the better! Sat, 20 Nov 2004 19:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In the interim since I first posted this incident, I have tried Ubuntu linux, and returned to Mepis. I will test SuSe 9.2 a.s.a.p. (I should get the CDs tomorrow) Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Have you tested SuSe 9.2 hardware detection? Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? My Dell Inspiron 5100 runs on Suse9.0. The battery indicator
works fine and the fan control is excellent. No tweaking
was necessary. Mon, 22 Nov 2004 01:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments