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#1 2006-09-05 07:25:56

ihavenoname
Member
Registered: 2006-01-09
Posts: 198

Laptops w/ Arch?

Hey, I am thinking of buying a laptop and I was wondering if people here feel that archlinux is a good choice for a laptop? I am debating between Fedora Ubuntu and Arch. Are there a lot of extra things that need to be done to get arch working on a laptop or is everything generally pretty straight forward? What do you reccomend? ( I am not planing on tinkering with this laptop, I need to to work well) I understand it varies but I am talking in general, things like suspend to ram (and other laptop oriented things) are they a pain on arch?


In this land of the pain the sane lose not knowing they were part of the game.

~LP

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#2 2006-09-05 07:36:19

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

I'm using a Lenovo T43 with Arch Linux and it works quite well. WLAN, the synaptics touchpad, speedstepping and hdaps (HD protection) works great - it's even possible to set a lower voltage level for the ati grapics card/chip! I had suspend2disk working for a few months but I screwed something up - it isn't working atm but thats my fault, I think ;-)

I never used the bluetooth and infrared ports, but this shouldn't be a problem.

I'm really satisfied with Arch on my Laptop!

edit: typos


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#3 2006-09-05 07:55:35

liem
Member
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 71
Website

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

Thinkpads works. Try to get it with linux installed to avoid Windows Tax.


Zepto is rather nice too. *patriotic*


Sebastian  A. Liem

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#4 2006-09-05 08:21:04

ihavenoname
Member
Registered: 2006-01-09
Posts: 198

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

liem wrote:

Thinkpads works. Try to get it with linux installed to avoid Windows Tax.


Zepto is rather nice too. *patriotic*

Wow, those are some nice laptops. My only problem is that I am in the U.S. and to convert to  euros means, I will be paying a lot  of money. (900 euros (apporx. $1000+) , for a laptop that I can find here for $900s.)


In this land of the pain the sane lose not knowing they were part of the game.

~LP

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#5 2006-09-05 08:41:29

liem
Member
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 71
Website

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

zepto.com wrote:

2. Payment
[...]
All prices are calculated in DKK (Danish kroner), US Dollars, English Pounds and EURO's.

Sure they are a bit pricy, I dunno about tax and stuff for U.S.

But they are nice. Oh, on 6014W and 6214W you can design your own cover. A nice Archlinux logo anyone?


Sebastian  A. Liem

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#6 2006-09-05 09:18:24

brazzmonkey
Member
From: between keyboard and chair
Registered: 2006-03-16
Posts: 818

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

zepto's are nice, indeed !
i should get a new job soon, and i expect to get a laptop for it.
my concerns about arch and laptop are energy management. especially because i run kde : powersave is still in instable repo, kpowersave in AUR is not up-to-date and it looks like no one is maintaining that one any more.

this is one of the 2 things i used to have on gentoo, which i don't have on arch (the other one is boot splash - i haven't tried such things on arch yet).

finally, what makes a good laptop OS ? in no particular order :
- efficient power management,
- easy, fast boot, suspend, shutdown processes,
- easy and working wireless configuration,
- easy video projector setup.

i think more work should be done towards these topics. so that arch would really become suitable for laptops.


what goes up must come down

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#7 2006-09-05 11:29:01

lanrat
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2003-10-28
Posts: 1,274

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

First read this thread

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#8 2006-09-05 11:59:39

Neuro
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2005-10-12
Posts: 352

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

brazzmonkey wrote:

zepto's are nice, indeed !
i should get a new job soon, and i expect to get a laptop for it.
my concerns about arch and laptop are energy management. especially because i run kde : powersave is still in instable repo, kpowersave in AUR is not up-to-date and it looks like no one is maintaining that one any more.

I tried powersaved and kpowersave recently (since I've bought myself my first laptop)... and it's horrid. It's nice to have a kde applet controling the powermanagement, sure... but it's so bloated and hard to configure. I have a Asus A6JC with Core Duo T2300, and I couldn't get proper frequency scaling with powersaved (only one core was scaled, the other lagged one setting behind), not to mention making it use suspend2 for suspend to memory hmm.

So,  after giving it a ride for 2 days, I'm back to cpufreqd+laptop-mode+acpid+suspend2 (hibernate scripts) combo which works just fine if you configure it properly.

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#9 2006-09-05 12:03:10

patroclo7
Member
From: Bassano del Grappa, ITALY
Registered: 2006-01-11
Posts: 915

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

brazzmonkey wrote:

zepto's are nice, indeed !
i should get a new job soon, and i expect to get a laptop for it.
my concerns about arch and laptop are energy management. especially because i run kde : powersave is still in instable repo, kpowersave in AUR is not up-to-date and it looks like no one is maintaining that one any more.

this is one of the 2 things i used to have on gentoo, which i don't have on arch (the other one is boot splash - i haven't tried such things on arch yet).

finally, what makes a good laptop OS ? in no particular order :
- efficient power management,
- easy, fast boot, suspend, shutdown processes,
- easy and working wireless configuration,
- easy video projector setup.

I think more work should be done towards these topics. so that arch would really become suitable for laptops.

you can do all the power management you want with arch. Powersave is actually quite unstable (in any distribution, it is the package itself, not the way it is distributed), but powersave does not do anything you can not do in many other ways: use simple and modular methods (acpid, inkernel cpufreq governors, inkernel laptop mode, etc.).
Arch boot method is faster than any othe linux boot system, except perhaps the unstable, baroque, dabgerous initng.
Suspension is nowadays possible in most laptops (in any distribution, there is nothing distro specific), both n ram and on disc.
Wireless configuration is easy in arch as in any other linux distro (obviously you have to edit text config files, this is arch philosophy).

Finally, I agree with you that projector setup is often a pain in linux (any distro).


Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis

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#10 2006-09-05 12:15:02

brazzmonkey
Member
From: between keyboard and chair
Registered: 2006-03-16
Posts: 818

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

powersave + kpowersave worked fine on my gentoo (no laptop). kpowersave seemed to be a good way to integrate power management stuff. i don't know about the other ways, but i trust you.
imho suspend on disk is more useful than suspend to ram. i know it now usually works.

i don't have any experience in wireless, nor in projector setup. too bad if the latter is a hassle in linux. this is a good way to advertize linux - not if you need to spend ages trying to set things up...


what goes up must come down

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#11 2006-09-05 12:33:35

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

brazzmonkey wrote:

i don't have any experience in wireless, nor in projector setup. too bad if the latter is a hassle in linux. this is a good way to advertize linux - not if you need to spend ages trying to set things up...

I don't have any experience in projector setup either, but it doesn't seem to be such a hassle to me. I recently built a ArchLinux LiveCD and presented it to the LUG of my school. I've never used a projector on my notebook before and was eased to see that the projector started to show the booting of my LiveCD...  There was no configuration needed, I've just removed all the MODES lines out of xorg.conf. 8)


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#12 2006-09-05 12:36:21

brazzmonkey
Member
From: between keyboard and chair
Registered: 2006-03-16
Posts: 818

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

so your mileage may vary... just curious : what is your video card brand ?


what goes up must come down

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#13 2006-09-05 12:40:13

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

brazzmonkey wrote:

so your mileage may vary... just curious : what is your video card brand ?

Its an ATI x300 in a Lenovo thinkpad T43.


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#14 2006-09-05 12:41:12

Blayder
Member
Registered: 2006-07-29
Posts: 43

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

Asus A6R and it works just excellent big_smile

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#15 2006-09-05 12:51:40

patroclo7
Member
From: Bassano del Grappa, ITALY
Registered: 2006-01-11
Posts: 915

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

On some laptops (not my actual one), I experienced strange interactions with bios settings,  and I was unable to manage the behaviour (only the projector, both projectori and screen, so on). But may be it is actually my ignorance. Anyway, it should be something more easy, since typically you can not test it at home, and you arrive directly at a conference without being sure that it works.


Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis

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#16 2006-09-05 14:20:25

Neuro
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2005-10-12
Posts: 352

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

AFAIK projectors are usually treated as normal DSUB (VGA) connected monitors and a configuration of 1024x768@70Hz should work without problem on most of the modern ones.

As for wireless support, networkmanager looks promising (haven't tried it really), but it lacks (?) a proper CLI interface (you don't always run an X server, you know).
I particularly like Arch's netcfg script with it's network profiles. Sure it doesn't support roaming or anything, but it does it's job pretty well. I'm working on it to add suspend/resume support (to be able to reconnect to the same wifi-network after suspend2disk) and automatic nfs/samba mounts.

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#17 2006-09-05 14:31:11

brazzmonkey
Member
From: between keyboard and chair
Registered: 2006-03-16
Posts: 818

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

Neuro wrote:

AFAIK projectors are usually treated as normal DSUB (VGA) connected monitors and a configuration of 1024x768@70Hz should work without problem on most of the modern ones.

good thing to know


what goes up must come down

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#18 2006-10-14 10:26:19

con
Member
Registered: 2006-05-11
Posts: 89
Website

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

Acer 3003 LMI works great! Cant say I have had any problems really... Everything except some keys and wifi (you need ndiswrapper) is supported.


charlie dont surf!

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#19 2006-10-14 17:53:29

Recrof
Member
Registered: 2006-09-30
Posts: 12

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

My Sony Vaio VGN-FE770 is working just fine so far, the only things I have left to do are to configure a few FN key, hibernate & the built in webcam.

Arch Linux is great for laptops, afterall; Linux is linux - to a point. I'm personally liking arch because it isn't bloated and things are nice & clean.

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#20 2006-10-16 15:10:57

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

HPs and Thinkpads work fine - I'm not to keen on thinkpads though, after buying one, as IBM seems to do thinks in "IBM specific" ways - I mean, normal acpi doesn't work, you need the ibm_acpi module... things like that.
I had much more "out of the box" success with the HP though that one had more hardware troubles.

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#21 2006-10-16 18:42:36

shen
Member
Registered: 2003-09-05
Posts: 272
Website

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

So far my new Toshiba Satellite has worked pretty much with everything. So far all power saving features have worked once I learned how to set them up. Only thing I still need to get working is my buttons and how to adjust the screen brightness. Those are all learning issues and nothing more. I get around 4hrs battery life and perform is great so I will give the laptop a th[/mod]umbs up.

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#22 2006-10-23 08:47:16

dmax
Member
Registered: 2006-10-21
Posts: 58

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

Toshiba Satellite P25-S507 works great!

Arch and FreeBSD

just started using arch and love it!

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#23 2006-10-23 16:46:06

chrismortimore
Member
From: Edinburgh, UK
Registered: 2006-07-15
Posts: 655

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

My Dell i8600 works fine, check the sig for the tech stuff.
Also got Linux working fine on a few other Dells.


Desktop: AMD Athlon64 3800+ Venice Core, 2GB PC3200, 2x160GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10, 2x320GB WD Caviar RE, Nvidia 6600GT 256MB
Laptop: Intel Pentium M, 512MB PC2700, 60GB IBM TravelStar, Nvidia 5200Go 64MB

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#24 2006-10-27 17:59:41

_nalle
Member
From: Stockholm/Sweden
Registered: 2006-01-11
Posts: 70
Website

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

My dell latitude c400 works great with linux except for a few details such as the video drivers makes X crash when ever i close the lid of my laptop or try to put it into S3 mode..


Swedish Archlinux Mirror Administrator - ftp.gigabit.nu

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#25 2006-10-27 21:12:02

karc
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2006-08-12
Posts: 36

Re: Laptops w/ Arch?

Acer 3025WLMi works here fine. The temperature of laptop is even cooler than under Windows, fan is almost quiet. I've set in acpi config to halt the system when i close the lid.


#404848
karc // jabberpl.org
We all have our chances of living in peace

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