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Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
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Good distro for a new laptop?
Before you say it, I have already checked linuxlaptops and mine is not yet listed. My question is what distro has been good to owners of laptops? Red Hat 8 works fairly well on my HP ze4230 except I cannot for the life of me get power management to work, so no battery meter. I was wondering how Suse or Mandrake are on laptops, as I will die if I have to wait for RH 9..
For power management your laptop probably uses ACPI which is most often not enabled in the kernel by default.
I know SuSE 8.1 has an acpi enabled kernel but SuSE is an ftp install or you'll have to wait for the cd's.I'm not sure but I once read somewhere there was an acpi enabled mandrake cooker kernel.But power management is a kernel issue so just pick any distro you like.
I use slack 9.0 on a compaq presario and I have patched my 2.4.20 kernel with an acpi patch from acpi.sourcforge.net. Works like a charm. Then depending on your wm you could need a patch to get a bat monitor working I guess.
RedHat 8.0 was good on my laptop (really shouldn't call it a laptop since keeping it running in my lap would be a fast way to get hospitalized), Mandrake 9.0 also worked fine and so did Knoppix 3.1 and Arch 0.4. All had/have the ACPI problem though.
Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
Posts: 1,820
Original Poster
Rep:
That's the trouble. RH8 worked great except it completely lacks acpi support in the kernel. I tried to compile a 2.4.20 kernel for it but it has all sorts of problems and breaks a bunch of apps that I need. I guess I have to wait for RH9. Its only a week away anyhow. Thanks for the input people..
Distribution: Ubuntu 11.4,DD-WRT micro plus ssh,lfs-6.6,Fedora 15,Fedora 16
Posts: 3,233
Rep:
Quote:
Originally posted by Mork RedHat 8.0 was good on my laptop (really shouldn't call it a laptop since keeping it running in my lap would be a fast way to get hospitalized), Mandrake 9.0 also worked fine and so did Knoppix 3.1 and Arch 0.4. All had/have the ACPI problem though.
it runs that hot? in that case, why not make the first linux powered pancake griddle
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