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Laptop Linux Experience

I've installed on multiple models of Toshiba and IBM Thinkpads. Both run Linux great.

Current Linux Distros

Server: Debian Sarge This is the better server distro because there's solid support. Somebody probably had your problem.

Desktop: Suse 9.3 This is the better desktop distro. IMHO needs about 900mhz to be pretty responsive when opening OpenOffice.org

Old Hardware: Vector Linux is great for old hardware. The one area that makes it a little challenging is locating packages that are not in the distro. They are definitely out there, but there's a little hunting to do.

KDE Experiments: Don't Try This at Home

Even though it did not go off without a hitch, I have to give Novell big-time praise for even posting the binaries for an upgrade to KDE 3.5. I used ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_9.3/yast-source to update to KDE 3.5. In theory this article claims there's a good way to do this, but like most things, the details got very messy. It took a few hours to straighten the problems out after the upgrade finished.

KDE 3.5 runs noticeably faster than 3.3 and the media handling is noticably better on my sleepy p3 500 Thinkpad. I understand that Konqueror is supposed to be doing better things too. I haven't gotten there yet.

I would recommend the upgrade to anyone that is comfortable changing conf files and working on the command line for a little bit. You may (potentially) need a few hours to spend cleaning up the details. Last word: Backup your home folder before upgrading and Google and Pico are your friends!

COMPOSITE!!!

I got compositing to work on my new T23 laptop! For those not in the know, compositing is x.org's word used to describe using transparency in the window manager. Another way to say it is "eye candy for KDE." Here's the xorg.conf With very few exceptions, all applications behave as expected.

I'm using it with 64MB of AGP video RAM and 512MB RAM on a 1 GZ PIII laptop and it can get slow. Very pretty though! One of the other compositing desktops is Enlightenment. (E17) I ran it for a little while and found it much faster and very pretty, but not finished. So much potential for greatness with E17. Even on older hardware.

The mouse

Suse's Yast really screwed me up on this particular "feature" by recognizing the second USB mouse just fine, but when the mouse wasn't plugged in, I had no mouse. You create an entry for the mouse in xorg.conf. Check out my Xorg file for the details

XORG and Suse:

It seems to me that Suse is uses their YAST/graphics configurator thingy in very conservative modes. This xorg.conf works beautifully on my replacement T23. I've got very pretty graphics with compositing working beautifully with KDE 3.5. It pays (and pays and pays) to go to the drivers page at x.org and lookup your driver to see what features are complete.

All content copyright 2002-2005 Michael Papet. All rights reserved.