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Greetings.
First of all, I was unsure of whether I should put this in the laptop forum or in the newbie forum, but I suppose most questions will be most suited for the latter. If this is proven wrong, I will consult an admin regarding moving it.
I will introduce this thread as a question bin for my project setting up a swift, efficient Arch linux system on my Dell Latitude D531 laptop. Most have already been worked out, but a few issues are somewhat harder to solve, hopefully doable with help from the excellent Arch community.
I have, as much as possible, consulted the Arch wiki (which is brilliant) and google hits, but from now on I will try to consult the community, and as far as possible, contribute myself.
Allright, all set? Then we go.
Openbox
#1 - The first thing I did was installing openbox, which is going to be my working environment. However, I face an issue I have never seen before - changes done to menu.xml does not seem to take effect, including menu.xml files made by obmenu. I have tried reinstalling openbox, remaking the menu.xml file, syntax checks and soforth, but nothing has worked so far. Any suggestions?
#2 - I have chosen NetworkManager and nm-applet as my network manager as this computer mostly will switch between three different networks, and the nm-applet provides a nice and easy environment for me to swap, reconnect and administer my connections. However, I have some problems in both gnome and openbox for the applet itself to appear in the system tray on reboot, as it wants sudo access to start propery. Does anyone know any workaround or how to enable it to ask for sudo access through gnome's autostart and openbox' autostart.sh?
Raedon driver
#1 - Allright, this is my number one issue - the graphic performance is horrible, and I believe it is caused by the driver. Unfortunately I have an X1200 series onboard graphic card by ATi, which is neither supported by the opensource radeon driver nor the catalyst proprietary driver (atleast only prior to 9.3, if I got that part right). The strange part is that the performance is better in Gnome (with docky running) than in openbox, both when it comes to moving windows, scrolling in browsers and in glxgears. Glxgears reports approx. 250 fps in gnome, and approx. 8 in openbox. Openbox has only tint2, gnome-settings-daemon and nm-applet running. This is using the radeonhd driver, which I believe is the only one to support my chipset. Is it anything I can do to point out exactly what is going wrong, or if I have any good alternatives to the radeonhd driver? Any experience with the Latitude D531 would be much appreciated!
Another thing: I know GNU/Linux in general experience lots of problems with Flash technology, and in addition that Adobe has yet to provide a proper amd64 player for Arch, but my girlfriend (also the gnome user, for the record) enjoys watching films online, streaming with flash (I have yet to figure out why). I have yet to feel the need for flash, but I have some problems adding the flash plugin both in Firefox and Opera. The latter browser is my preference, even though it is proprietary, due to its adaptability, sync and performance in particular, so the need for plugin there is obviously most urgent, but not mandatory.
General performance
#1 - This is a fairly minor issue, but I feel gnome in general to be a bit sluggish in use - Applications uses a couple of seconds to start up, menus and browsers feels a bit slow. I ran XFCE and arch earlier, which felt a lot more responsive. Are there any settings in gnome I could tweak to improve performance, or is the best solution simply to migrate to XFCE?
As a bottom notice - I will probably keep on using this thread until I am completely satisfied with my arch setup, partially by adding/removing bulletpoints in this post, and also by adding posts in this thread.
Thanks in advance!
Last edited by lycantrophe (2010-07-06 21:23:17)
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I know this might be a shameless bump, but I wonder whether or not it is better if I dedicate one thread per question rather than gather them all up in one thread. Titles, solved tags and readability will come out improved, don't you think?
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To controll the fans and system temperatures you have to use lm-sensors and fan speed control. Take a look here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fan_Speed_Control. Maybe your Cpu scaling is not working. You have to install the cpu frequency utilities or the powernow daemon. Read about it here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cpufrequtils.
You could also try to undervolt your CPU with PHC to get t even cooler. The wiki page is here:http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PHC.
You could modify the ACPI scripts, that your laptop suspends or hibernates if you close your lid. If i want to hibernate or suspend my laptop, i just use the console. You could also use laptop mode tools which can hibernate your laptop if you are running out of battery. Just take a look at the wiki.
Last edited by miau (2010-07-06 20:56:27)
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Allright, thanks. I'll try to use both - through console (openbox entry) and on lid close. I'll take a look, and removing the bulletpoint from the original post.
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