Linux: Still not quite there

[andrewducker]

So, I had a laptop with a copy of Windows 2000 on it - an old Dell C600 that used to belong to surliminal. And it was a bit crusty with software installs, so I decided to wipe it and start again.

However, having played around with Linux a bit recently - both in VMs and on the Eee, I thought I'd give it a go on the laptop. I downloaded the latest Ubuntu install, burnt it to CD, stuck it into the drive and set it installing.

The install process was incredibly easy - took about 45 minutes (including drive formatting) and asked me only a few simple questions. It came up with the terribly pretty Heron desktop picture, and everything looked ok. Well, except that the wireless card didn't work, and the screen resolution wouldn't go about 800x600. Oh, and it wanted to install 195 updates to system files. So I let it do that.

Sorting out the latter problem looked to be simple. I've never edited an x.org config file, but it didn't look like it would kill me. Getting the wifi working looked harder, as I found multiple conflicting suggestions. I was willing to give it a go though. First I had to pop out, so I told the laptop to suspend and.... the screen went white.

So I told it to unsuspend, and it came back to a corrupted screen and then hung.

Fine, I though - I'll just have it hibernate. Nope, that didn't work either.

So I checked about, and discovered that switching to APM rather than ACPI might help. For which I'd have to edit the startup scripts. Looked easy though - so I chucked in a noacpi parameter and gave that a go.

No dice - still won't resume from suspend or hibernate. A quick check finds that a fair number of other people have had the same problem, with no resolution.

And as Windows 2000 will do both of those, and they're kind of vital for laptop use, it's back to Win2k for that machine.

I strongly suspect that this is an "old driver" issue - and that as the C600 came out in 2000, it's just not comformant enough to specs to work well. Modern hardware will, no doubt, work better.

Oh well.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Laptops are still a little bit variable; you'll have a lot more luck with Linux on a desktop box (it's usually a 100% turnkey solution, except for exotic hardware such as some biometric readers or USB missile launchers and such).

Ubuntu have a fairly good database and host support fora that usually help me get machines working, and there's also the old linux on laptops project (similar, multi-distro). For modern machines with a popular user base there are some tailored Ubuntu distros -- for example, my new HP MiniNote came with SuSE, which I dislike, so I grabbed the MinBuntu beta: Ubuntu 8.04 with various tweaks and drivers pre-loaded so that it'll do a clean wheels-up install on the MiniNote. There's similar stuff for Ubuntu on the Eee, incidentally ...

[andrewducker]

Happy enough with the Eee as it is (it has Firefox, Thunderbird and Pidgin available instantly, and that's all I need 99% of the time). But cheers :->

[martling.livejournal.com]

That really stinks, as everything used to work perfectly on my C600. There is a real ongoing problem with Linux on older hardware, as people stop using it and so regressions go unnoticed.

Please do file a bug in the Ubuntu tracking system here and subscribe me (martin-launchpad@earth.li) to the report. I still have my C600 here so I can work on it.

[andrewducker]

Done.

I can boot it from the CD again if there's anything I can do to be useful.

[dreema.livejournal.com]

might be worth upgrading the bios to the latest one available on the dell website. Used to be the first thing dell tech support got us to try before they'd actually listen to what the matter was (and on occasion it did fix the problem)

[andrewducker]

Did that a few months back, in order to get suspend working with Windows :->

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Did you try flipping on the ATI or nVidia proprietary drivers? That has generally fixed any resolution problems I've had.

To be honest, I'd try Linux Mint instead. It's Ubuntu based with a bunch of extra gubbins including wireless setup utilities.

Modern hardware is more variable than you'd think. As far as I know, ATI graphics cards remain a complete nightmare if you have a dual screen setup or want desktop effects.

[andrewducker]

Resolution would probably have been sorted by editing the config files - the showstopper was the suspend/hibernate not working.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand that it's a show stopper. I was just pointing out that you probably didn't have to dig into xorg.conf to fix GFX the problem.