Slack on a LapTop, Bad Idea???
 

Hello all, i'm about to purchase a compaq 2104us laptop and i was going to put slack 10.1 on it, my question is, well is this such a great idea cause i know laptops have issues accepting linux as a operating system, should i jus stick w/ windows or will i be fine w/ slack, thanks in advance for the help.

Slack drives my lappy just fine. Install was a breeze and everything configured quite easily. Of ccourse as always, your mileage may vary.

I'm running only Slackware on my laptop and it works fine. ACPI isn't quite perfect, but it suits my needs. Good luck!

No problems here. I use a Toshiba and they actively support linux on their laptops. Slackware works better then the XP it came with. (And is no longer on it). The only issue you might have is with a winmodem.

Same here..Slackware on Dell Inspiron...works beautiful...:)

According to this page Debian works fine on that machine, so I guess there is no reason Slackware won't.

Slack 10 runs great on my IBM laptop, I had two identical IBMs for a while (one personal, one from work) the work one ran XP and was WAY slower than the personal one running Slack. Also on the XP one wireless was a real PITA for some reason, but on the Slack one it works great:rolleyes:

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Here is a page that describes Slackware on this model I think

I have on one IBM laptop only Slackware, on other dual boot with winXP an no problems.

No problems with Slack 10.1 on a Dell Latitude D505 apart from a sound issue which you can find a solution to on this forum.

I've used Slack on my Toshiba with great success. I think it really depends on how much effort you want to put into your install and how much you want to learn.

Waiting to dual boot iBook with Slackintosh and Tiger. :)

slackware is good for laptops. I used for 1 year in my toshiba satellite

I have slack on my compaq presario, runs great, I highly recommend it.

Slack on an HP Pavilion works great, everything is detected except for the built in modem.

Dell Inspiron works fine also.

Running Slackware on an Asus M6000N, a little hacking for the touchpad and the wireless but it all works. ACPI is just not good enough to really use, suspend to disk tends to make it not wake up anymore etc.

AxeZ,Hello! :)

By the way,I installed Slackware 10.1 on laptop (Dell Inspiron 300M). How do you configure it to match the special hardware on this laptop?

e.g. 1.Broadcom NIC
2.Memory allocation of graphic card

Because I can't use X Windows because of something related to the graphic's memory allocation,I guess.Do you have any clues or tips about this?

Yeah,I think Slackware 10.1 is good enough for Desktop,Server & Laptop. :D

That's a BIOS problem I think. Check Dell website see if there are any BIOS updates. I had to do that for a Dell desktop pc with an Intel 865G graphics card.

KMcD,thanks for your swift reply. :)

By the way,is it quite dangerous to update the BIOS?I've heard that if you are not fully understand how it works,don't even try to update the BIOS.Is it true?

Thanks.

only if you do something very stupid. Is ur laptop dual boot with windoze? If it is then you should be able to get a .exe file that will run within windoze that will update the BIOS, definitely the preferred option.

Otherwise you will have to make a DOS bootable diskette yourself. This is where things get tricky and mistakes can happen.

If you need to update the BIOS make sure you follow all instructions given to the letter or find someone who knows how to do it for you (but that's not the slackware way!).

I have an old Compaq K6 350 MHz 1270 Laptop with only 4 GB of harddrive space and 96 MB of memory. Slack 10 upgraded to a 2.4.30 kernel works great on it!

The best way to update a BIOS is by flashing it with a DOS disk.

Compaq EVO N115 laptop, here. Slack works fine right out of the box.

Hardware (basically the same as the 715CA/715US, different software load at factory):
AthlonM 1.2GHz
256MB RAM
VIA 82C chipset (sound, IDE, video is an S3 TwisterK)

The only weirdness is DVD playback, which for some reason doesn't display at full colour depth. Seems to be 16-bit instead of 24-bit, but only in DVD playback. Veddy weird, but not annoying enough to make me want to fix it.

how'd you guys get the touchpad to work? im using the kernel 2.6.11.6.

thanks

Out of the box, no config needed, for me.

If you're talking about the web navigation buttons, I never bothered with them, but it's a hack to xorg.conf: it's actually an 11-button mouse in my case.

I never bothered to get the internet keys working right, either. They're a slightly higher priority, but still somewhere behind "cure cancer" on my to-do list.

my touchpad is a synaptics. works better with the 2.4.x series kernel than with 2.6.x, with which it's too sensitive. The are projects that are meant to fix this, click here.

hmm, i must have done something wrong with the kernel compile then. might have removed something for the touchpad. any idea what it might be?

novice26 if you already have a mouse, the touchpad won't work out of the box, you've to configure 2 input devices in your xorg.conf. I don't know the details because i don't have a laptop, but I know a friend who does and when I told this, he google a little bit a got it solved.

thanks, well im currently recompiling kernel but will try that after. thanks.

nope it has to be with the kernel, with the stock settings touchpad was fine but i did a custom and went through it to try to make my kernel smaller. now i lost my touchpad and have no idea what to add by to the kernel?

just go back to the original config that worked for your touchpad and again make the changes you want to make kernel smaller but leave charachter devices alone. See if that works. Most touchpads are ps2. What machine are you using?

KMcD, i'll go ahead and try that. compaq r3240us laptop

Thats my site btw, everything works fine with a 2.4 and 2.6 kernel including the modem and touchpad. The general acpi functions work but suspend doesn't.

If its a synaptics you need to build evdev ( I think ) into the kernel for the touchpad to work with the synaptics driver.

Website needs updating because I'm back with slack 10.1 now.

Slashdot article
 

For those interested:

http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/0...id=184&tid=106

Slack runs great on my Dell Inspiron 5000 (600GT). After a little tweaking (and help from these forums) I have the touchpad, wireless, sound, ACPI, and DRI running fine. I'm not sure if the modem works or not, I've never used it, and I've never tried suspend either. DVD's play fine, Burns CD's fine, and ALMOST plays Unreal Tournament (a shortcomming of the graphics chip, not the OS) ;)
Current specs:

P3 600, 512MB pc100, 8MB Ati Rage Mobility-P, 40GB HDD, 16x8x4x24 DVD/CDRW combo, ESS Maestro 1, Microsoft MN-520 802.11b, and a Netgear FA511 NIC.

Everything worked out of the box.

I have a HP-Compaq nx9005:Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, 512 MB RAM, Mobility Radeon(R320), etc..

I am running a heavily customized Slackware 10.1, although simply using 10.1 with a little config would do as well. Here are my observations:
1) The Winmodem is a problem... Maybe I could set it up if I had some time, but that is one of a few reasons I keep WinXP that came with the notebook.
2) ATI graphics card is now OK with Xorg, but needs some configuration. I think normal Xorg drivers are better than the ones ATI offers.
3) Suspend features. It worked for only one installation, but unfortunately I messed it up trying to learn more about Linux. I don't know what I do wrong, but OS won't come back after suspend.
4) Touchpad. Once configured, it has some extras which i didn't find in Windows(neither I care, actually :) ) You can use your two fingers as a middle button, three fingers as left click, things like scrolling are OK too..
5) Battery management is perfect! I have KDE, Fluxbox and Windowmaker as windowmanagers/DE's. When plugged in, I use KDE, and when running on battery, I switch to one of the others. I also use powersaved. At least 20% more battery life than working under Windows...