Fedora

[chiphart]

Now, I know some of you here wouldn't deign to check out Fedora, but I'm wondering if anyone has, nonetheless. I've not had any Sager-specific problems with my machine while using RedHat (8, 8.1, 9), including the firewire-install-lockups.

I'm mildly motivated to move to Fedora in order to have ACPI and GL stuff work for me at the same time (long story), which seems to be the case.

If I do decide to do the upgrade, I'll be glad to post my experiences if anyone is interested...

[pr0ph3t]

I just finished installing it (Fedora Core 1 - yarrow) on my Sager 8887. All I can say is WOOHOOO! :banana: <grin> Very smooth install. It seemed to pick up all the hardware (no hangs due to firewire). It even found and installed drivers for my wireless Netgear MA401 PC Card. I'm in the process of getting the WEP stuff configured properly for that right now. So far I'm very impressed. This is the first distro of Linux that has worked this nicely on my 8887. If you want me to check out anything specifically, I'd be happy to.

[Keen]

I'm going to wait for at least a month or two before upgrading my RH9 box. After reading the mailing lists, it looks like it'll take them a while before all the kinks of the shift to a community-oriented distro are dealt with.

[chiphart]

I just finished installing it (Fedora Core 1 - yarrow) on my Sager 8887. All I can say is WOOHOOO! :banana: <grin> Very smooth install. It seemed to pick up all the hardware (no hangs due to firewire). It even found and installed drivers for my wireless Netgear MA401 PC Card. I'm in the process of getting the WEP stuff configured properly for that right now. So far I'm very impressed. This is the first distro of Linux that has worked this nicely on my 8887. If you want me to check out anything specifically, I'd be happy to.

One thing I read - but it's hard to really confirm - is that some people are having "multimedia" problems. xmms skipping, etc. Of course, others report that it's even better than usual.

Now that freshrpms has a Fedora section, I'm not too worried :-)

Thanks!

[pr0ph3t]

Well, the only thing I've tried is xmms to play mp3's (which it no longer does). I believe some other packages need to be installed for this support to be enabled. Beyond that, everything else seems to be working well.

[chiphart]

Well, the only thing I've tried is xmms to play mp3's (which it no longer does). I believe some other packages need to be installed for this support to be enabled. Beyond that, everything else seems to be working well.

The xmms/mp3 issue has been around since RH8.0 (mp3s are proprietary and RH is trying to do the right thing). You can get the xmms-mp3 plugins from a variety of places, including gurulabs, etc.

[Keen]

Do some searching for the livna repo, IIRC they have many of the things you'd expect to have in a distro (i.e. xmms-mp3, possibly dvd playback).

[chiphart]

Well, no one asked, but I'll give a brief review anyway.

Nuked my RH 9 partition (so I could grow it) and installed Fedora from scratch. Very nice, no changes from my other RH experiences - nothing hung, everything detected, etc.

I enjoy having ACPI as well as the 2.4.22 kernel running concurrently. Fast! Very Fast! Running over to freshmeat, installing apt/synaptic - I love it.

The multimedia problems reported as OSNews are weird, as I'm getting a noticable improvement in places (little things...like the opening movie on Enemy Territory).

The new graphical booter IS kinda' cool. I didn't like how, on 9.1B, the booter would simply take away your ability to watch the startup process (give me practical over eye candy, well, most of the time). The new flavor simply gives you the [OK] process inside a window. Looks nice.

ONE problem: I hung, completely, in the middle of an scp transfer. I powercycled and expected to reboot properly. Well, everything continues, but when the machine detects a bad shutdown, it bails OUT of the graphical boot process and then hangs. Ultimately, I booted into single user, shutdown, and then rebooted.

I also know three people with PCMCIA/wireless problems. I use a Gold Orinoco card which worked flawlessly in RH6 -> 9 (unlike, say, Windows...). When I was loading, I had some problems, but eventually got my config right...but, now, after working fine for a couple of days, the pcmcia has stopped working and has even gone to the point of hanging on bootup. If I skip it with interactive mode, it'll then work. No biggie, but things like that bother me.

More later, off on vacation!

[allofitsik]

chiphart, I was wondering how much you have messed with the ACPI on your fedora box. I have a 5660 (Sager) running rh9 with kernel 2.4.22/ACPI. the main reason I recompiled to 2.4.22 was to get ACPI working to hopefully improve battery life (i just want to be able to watch one full movie on battery... thats it, is that too much to ask?).

I was thinking of switching to fedora. I think that is where I actually first learned about ACPI from there docs page. anyway, back to the point. .. they have some info about their kernel and it says something about both throttleing and "cpufreq". I have throttling working but it stops working when on battery and defaults to a 50% throttle (when I set my Throttle Duty cycle option in my bios to 0% then the throttle defaults to 0%) and is unchangeable as far as i can tell. have you had this problem in fedora? also about the cpufreq... this looks like you should be able to ACTUALLY throttle the cpu frequency... whether or not this lowers voltage/reduces power consumption i dont know... buti would like to find out.
I have spent a lot of time setting up RHL9 and to be honest i would rather continue with that rather than start anew. but if that is what it takes to be able to watch one movie on an airplane... then so be it.

thanks for any insight.

[chiphart]

chiphart, I was wondering how much you have messed with the ACPI on your fedora box. I have a 5660 (Sager) running rh9 with kernel 2.4.22/ACPI. the main reason I recompiled to 2.4.22 was to get ACPI working to hopefully improve battery life (i just want to be able to watch one full movie on battery... thats it, is that too much to ask?).

Well, I haven't "messed" with it since I got it working with version 9, out of the box. I certainly use it all day long (at the very least, inside my gkrellm temp monitor). I think it's great.

I have throttling working but it stops working when on battery and defaults to a 50% throttle (when I set my Throttle Duty cycle option in my bios to 0% then the throttle defaults to 0%) and is unchangeable as far as i can tell. have you had this problem in fedora?

Ah. No, I haven't played with it at all in that regard. My battery is screwed up (it reports being at 2% after about 15m off the plug and then stays for about an hour or so). When I'm unplugged and need to use it, it's almost always to do text-based work, so I just boot into single user and take care of things. Lazy, I suppose.

Have you seen the articles here from laclass about ACPI? Very helpful. I don't have any doubts that Fedora would allow me to adjust it properly.

this looks like you should be able to ACTUALLY throttle the cpu frequency... whether or not this lowers voltage/reduces power consumption i dont know...

I believe that's the entire point.

However:

but if that is what it takes to be able to watch one movie on an airplane... then so be it.


1) On a 5660, the stock battery is WEAK. This is well documented. If you want to get more battery life...get an extra or replace our stock ones with something decent. :-(

2) As for needing Fedora to do what you're looking at, I don't think you need to. I'm getting the same functionality, AFAIK, from Fedora as I did from RH9.

[allofitsik]

Thank you, I suppose i will just continue to try and get either 2.4.22 working with cpufreq or figure out how to just compile the 2.6 kernel... I havent had a lot of luck.

is there somewhere that sells replacement batteries/better batteries for the 5660? also batteries for the modular bay? ( hopefully cheaper than from sager ).

again, thanks.

[chiphart]

Check on the 5660-specific forum for the battery replacement issue; someone there might be able to help. Good luck, meanwhile.