[LUAU] Fedora Core "3" Test 1

Hawaii Linux Institute wp at HawaiiLinux.us
Wed Aug 4 01:10:39 PDT 2004


Today's Slashdot has a thread on "Linux notebooks from HP".  When I said 
that FC3T1 installs and works "perfectly" on my HP ze5000 laptop, I was 
not making an overstatement.  And I thought that the odyssey that I had 
gone though tells an excellent story of how advanced Linux has evolved 
with regard to hardware compatibility.  This example also illustrates 
the importance of choosing the right Linux distro.

When I purchased this HP laptop a few months ago, I was betting that it 
will eventually work with Linux (or more particularly RedHat/Fedora).

As I mentioned earlier, FC1 initially wouldn't install at all.  The 
Honorable Alan Cox (does anyone still remember Alan?) offered several 
suggestions. None worked.  However, his suggestions gave me a hint to 
try almost every possible startup option, including NOSUB. This finally 
did the trick.  But there were several other problems, including the 
inability to go into power-saving mode (i.e., no ACPI), that I had to 
turn off PCMCIA, and the CPU fan never stopped running.

Then FC2 came along and I had no problem installing it.  ACPI also 
seemed to work OK.  However, when I put the laptop into battery mode, it 
began crawling.  Apparently, there are bugs with the PowerNow driver.

With FC3T1, everything now works like magic.  When I unplug the AC 
power, PowerNow immediately kicks in, but this laptop still runs better 
than some of my desktops.  With PowerNow working as designed, under 
certain conditions, I was able to squeeze out more than 3 hours of 
battery life.  This is truly amazing, considering that I was using one 
of the cheapest batteries.  If I use a more expensive 12-cell battery I 
think I might be able to squeeze out 5 hours.

After the success of FC3T1, I went back to FC2.  Everything now works 
like charm with my fully patched FC2.

There are two other very exciting developments.  First, RealPlayer 10 
for Linux came out today.  I had no problem installing it in Fedora Core 
1/2/3.  So far, it works great.

The second development, which may not interest a lot of people here but 
is of CRITICAL interest to me is the publication of the first 
comprehensive macro book for OpenOffice.org:

http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/oome.htm

Or you can wait until it becomes available at Amazon.com (cheaper and 
free shipping):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1930919514/qid=1091605589/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-6319084-8639941?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 


While it appears that SUN is bashed by everyone in the Linux community, 
by opensourcing OpenOffice and taking the lead in its development, SUN 
is, IMNSHO, making one of the most significant contributions to the 
Linux/OSS movement.  wayne



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