August 20, 2003

A step closer to laptop nirvana

debswirl.pngAfter several hours of fighting with my laptop, I've finally got closer to the flawless mobile computing that others have.

My old laptop handled suspend/resume in the BIOS. (suspend/resume is the ability to turn your laptop off, come back to it later, and start where you left off - with all the things you had running before you turned it off.) Because it was done in the BIOS, it didn't matter what operating system I ran (windows or linux), it just worked. Unfortunately, my new laptop leaves it up to the operating system - and linux didn't handle it very well!

However, with kernel 2.4.21, software suspend for linux, and this bugfix for pcmcia card services, I can now suspend, resume, AND use my wireless network card without any problems at all. I've also added the pre-emptive kernel patch (for more responsiveness), and the laptop patch (reduces writes to hard disk, saving power), and re-enabled framebuffer consoles (text console at 1400x1050 ... yum).

Now I just have to get bluetooth working again ...

Posted by savs at August 20, 2003 9:58 PM
Comments

What kind of notebook do you have Andrew?

Cheers,

Marcus

Posted by: Marcus Crafter at August 22, 2003 3:57 PM

I have the Clevo 5600 'desktop replacement', ie a big heavy brick. It is fantastic for power computing with a 2.4ghz P4 and 512mb of RAM, but really stretches the term "laptop".

(See also http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/5600P.asp and http://cpbotha.net/clevo5600/clevo5600_linux/)

Posted by: Andrew at August 22, 2003 4:08 PM