Comments on: PCLinuxOS 2008 on my ThinkPad T61 – Part 2

By: PCLinuxOS Minime 09.1 on my Thinkpad T61 « An alien’s viewpoint

PCLinuxOS Minime 09.1 on my Thinkpad T61 « An alien’s viewpoint — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:16:32 +0000

[...] install the English version from Synaptic if you prefer. For further recommendations see the “General and ThinkPad T61 Specific Recommendations” section of my 2008 review. I can’t think of anything else that would be a stumper. You [...]

By: rm42

rm42 — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:31:29 +0000

blip,

Thanks a lot for the tip. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on my T61. I disabled Compiz and 3D desktop effects, but even then it won’t come back from Suspend to RAM. I wonder if it is a display driver issue since the machine does in fact return from sleep, but the display remains dark.

By: blip-

blip- — Sun, 25 May 2008 00:26:18 +0000

I managed to get suspend-to-Ram working with MiniMe 2008 on my Lenovo T60, so this should work for you as well (i’m using ext3 file system for root and home in case this has any effect on suspend-to-ram recovery).

From Synaptic get the following:
1) The latest kernel 2.6.22.17.tex2
2) “suspend”, “suspend-s2ram”, “suspend-scripts”, “kpowersave”.

Now edit your grub menu.lst manually or through the PCC Boot area and remove the 2 bootcodes that say:
splash=silent
vga=888
This will give you a simple text-mode startup but it helps with recovering from suspend-to-ram.

Now try kpowersave or klaptop to suspend-to-ram. Both of these should work. Also on my system the Fn+Sleep shortcut button works as well.
It’s worth mention that i have laptop-mode-tools disabled because all it does is control the spin down time for hard disks (nothing to do with cpu speed or standby support) and in my experience it caused my battery to last less in fact, since the drive was frantically spinning up and down.

NOTE: In some rare cases, the system may fail to recover but it rarely happens with me. I’m still trying to find out what causes that failure. To avoid any probs if it fails to recover, just save your work before going into standby.

Hope that helps

By: rm42

rm42 — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:25:19 +0000

Yes, I am very happy that I went with that graphics card. It performs very well for my needs and gives me better battery life. As for the full version of PCLOS 2008, I’m sure it will be great. Every day that passes, a little more polish is being applied. The good thing is that by just keeping my current installation up to date I get all those new goodies.

What I am looking forwards to is to try the “Digital Photography Edition of PCLinuxOS”:

http://www.dfpe.pclinuxos.nl/

There were some minor language related glitches with the first release, but I think I will give the next release a try.

By: manmath

manmath — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:27:22 +0000

RM, nice review! I am glad that you have got your gma965 working in PCLOS MiniME. I would suggest you to look for PCLOS 2008 full version. I am sure it will be more polished and usable.

By: rm42

rm42 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:24:36 +0000

Davecs,

I don’t believe that kernel works well with the Intel GMA X3100 GM965 video card. I rather just hibernate from the custom button I made and make sure the rest of the machine is OK.

By: davecs

davecs — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:03:34 +0000

Nice review rm. Practical and helpful.

If you want hibernate working with klaptop, you might need to load up an older kernel from synaptic, one of the 2.6.18.8 versions. This is due to a known bug in klaptop itself, which prevents it recognising that it can hibernate safely with later kernels. Strange!

Of course other stuff may not work. But laptop users might be best advised to try the older kernel and check everything out. If it all works, then the kernel is new enough!!