[plug] Linux on Laptops

[W.Kenworthy]

On Fri, 2005-07-15 at 13:20 +0800, Benjamin Woods wrote:
> Hey guys,
> 
> Starting a new thread for a related topic (old one was "Buying a Laptop").
...
> I use Slackware linux and/or ArchLinux and have used HEAPS of other distros 
> before. Basically I want to make sure some of the laptop specific things work 
> properly for me.
> 
gentoo works well on a laptop and allows one to easily "fiddle" with the
underpinnings which is often necessary to support oddball laptop
hardware etc - but it is more complex than most binary installs as the
installer must be competent with the workings of linux, not so much a
typical user.  However, Mandrake (Mandriva?) used to do a nice laptop
install that autodetected and correctly set up most things - however it
quickly became a pig when you had to resort to doing things outside
their own management toolset.

> I have already thought of a few things:
add swsusp2 to the list.

> 
> CPU Freq. Scaling
cpufreq is the more comprehensive userui here, but I use speedfreq which
is simpler to set up.
> Battery monitoring
ACPI covers this, user interfaces depend on GUI choice. (setting up ACPI
on earlier Dells is  always a problem so I use APM on the laptop, but
ACPI on other machines I use is fine)
> PCMCIA auto detection of new devices
Normally part of the distro - gentoo's is quite nice here, buts its been
awhile since I have "experienced" another distro's pcmcia
wireless/network setup other than a knoppix liveCD (which didnt work,
whilst gentoo's sort of did, which enabled me to identify a resource
conflict which I cant fix - so far)

> ATI Mobility FireGL T2 graphics (FLGRX ??) <- want acceleration
> (ie... dont wanna use ati in xorg.conf)

Use the xorg radeon drivers and save yourself some grief: esp
suspend/resume, wierd display artifacts at odd laptop screen resolutions
and just downright flakyness (e.g., crashes, lockups, black screens that
wont come back, ...). The xorg radeon driver is much better for a
laptop, though the advantages are less obvious for a desktop. Nothing I
have seen so far has changed my mind that this is still not the case as
I still see emails cropping up about these issues.

> Can you guys point out how to do these things?
> 
> Are any distros best for laptop linux? i heard ubuntu is great and it has 
> flgrx in its repositories...? would prefer to use slackware and i noticed 
> flgrx was in linuxpackages.net...
> 
> thanks in advance
> 
> From: Benjamin Woods
> woodsb02 at iinet.net.au
> Registered Linux User #372573 
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