I've got a Compaq Presario 900 laptop (Athlon XP 1900+), and I recently installed Mandrake 9.2 RC2 on it. The installation pretty much went through without a hitch (which is pretty impressive given that I had to go through about three other distros which could barely run the setup program). Linux is running great on it now; however, the fan cycles on and off a lot more than it does with Windows XP. In XP, for example, the fan generally never comes on unless I'm doing something graphically intensive. In Linux, it cycles on and off just typing this message. More than that, the laptop actually feels hotter, and the battery life seems sub-par.

I know it's not due to some daemon or something in the background eating up CPU time; the load average is like 0.06 right now.

Any ideas as to what the problem might be and how I can fix it?

Thanks!

I have a presario 900 too, and i noticed this, too... when i ask to acpi daemon it says that my CPU, in normal condition of work, is around 50 degrees... A little hot i would say!!

Or is it normal?

i have the samee issue, does linux support speed step or does the processor handle that

if the chipset is via, then often proper idleing can be got by setting
a couple of chipset registers. it enables that disconnect crap.
if your computer locks up, you didn't hear it from me.

setpci -H1 -s 0:0.0 70=86
setpci -H1 -s 0:0.0 95=1e

In the 2.4 kernel (up to now) Linux does not support speedstep so the processor is always going at full pelt. This is a bonus from those nice people who develop the Linux kernel : your laptop doubles as an electric hob. Windows people don't get this benefit

However, if you are ungrateful and don't appreciate this added benefit, you need the 2.6 kernel which supports speedstep. I think that SuSE 9.0 has the 2.6 speedstep stuff compiled into its 2.4 kernel so if you want a cooler, long life laptop now, that could be worth a look.

what do you mean by electric hob?

(and how long-with my laptop running linux-till my processor kicks the bucket?)

shit i may go with 2.6

Isn't Speedstep an Intel-only thing? Or is it just the name that's Intel's trademark?

I would think that Athlon would have something similar--either the same (or similar) implementation under a different name, or a different implementation altogether. Nonetheless, what's the status of getting the Athlon "version" of Speedstep running in Linux?

Athlon has PowerNow!, that I think is quite similar to speedstep... I patched my kernel with PowerNow extensions, and it seems to run...

yeah powernow ... I use a cpufrequency patch and cpufreqd to regulate my processor's frequency, and it seems to do the job ... battery gives me +- 1 GHz and AC gives me the full 1.65 GHz ...

Electric hob = thing you put pans on for cooking.
I really don't know if having the CPU run at full power affects the life of the laptop. I haven't had a laptop fail on me yet, but I also haven't run Linux long enough to tell if it causes a problem.