My New Laptop works - Whoopee!

[The Liquidator]

Hi I know this may be the wrong place to post this (should be hardware I know but I'm using 13.04 and there's no such heading).

I've just taken delivery of this laptop:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zoostorm-787...oostorm+laptop

Installed kubuntu 13.04 beta 2 on it. The realtek wireless card is supported OOTB by the 3.8 kernel (but not earlier ones- the ubuntu forums indicate that users of 12.10 and below have to get drivers off the 'net for it). Webcam fine, the card reader works with SD cards (although I haven't tried it with more exotic card types). Suspend works OOTB and once I had enabled hibernation (why on earth do Canonical fail to enable it by default?) that does too.

So, at last a laptop where, for me, everything works!

[dmeyer]

Hi I know this may be the wrong place to post this (should be hardware I know but I'm using 13.04 and there's no such heading).

I've just taken delivery of this laptop:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zoostorm-787...oostorm+laptop

Installed kubuntu 13.04 beta 2 on it. The realtek wireless card is supported OOTB by the 3.8 kernel (but not earlier ones- the ubuntu forums indicate that users of 12.10 and below have to get drivers off the 'net for it). Webcam fine, the card reader works with SD cards (although I haven't tried it with more exotic card types). Suspend works OOTB and once I had enabled hibernation (why on earth do Canonical fail to enable it by default?) that does too.

So, at last a laptop where, for me, everything works!

When was the last time you installed Linux on a computer? Nowadays it works out of the box on 90% of machines with no hassle. Nonetheless, Hibernation? Seriously? Who uses that on a laptop? Suspend is so much faster and on modern machines the stand-by time is incredible. Same story with Swap? Most people shouldn't bother having any. P.S. Linux has a kickass hybrid suspend/hibernate option nowadays that might be a worthwhile look.

[Teunis]

Whether Hibernation or Suspend is chosen should be decided by the user who best knows his reasons, I agree it's a nuisance Canonical hides it by default.
But then there seems to be hardware around that causes data loss when Hibernation is selected, as the average Ubuntu (Unity) user is no wiser than a Windows-8 buyer Canonical has good reasons to hide this option. Those that want it know how to enable it.
What I dislike more is that I have to enable disk (shock) protection by hand, that's quite important to have.
But again, those that want or need it know how to get it operational.

Maybe the Blue-Shell and/or Kubuntu team can make these one-tick options in the system settings.

[The Liquidator]

@dmeyer

I have used nothing but Linux since the launch of Mandrake 9.1, exclusively on laptops, the newest of which was a (now) old Dell Inspiron 630m Centrino Laptop. None of them would wake from suspend - any attempt to do so with the Dell invariably required the raising of the skinny elephant so hey, I've got real progress here

It's also worth pointing out that I researched quite a bit before I bought it. Had I not done so, I would probably have installed 12.10 and found non-working wireless, as numerous others are reporting on the ubuntu forum. Quite a basic issue for a laptop which nearly made me look elsewhere. However, because I found out there was support in the 3.8 kernel I installed the 13.04 beta and wireless worked out of the box. So whilst agreeing with you that things have got much better, there was still an element of me having to make it work. I'm interested in the hybrid option you refer to. I've run the command posted at askubuntu that says hybrid suspend is supported by the system. Any tips on enabling it, or is it default now?

@teunis. Would appreciate some tips on enabling on the disk shock protection as it does seem useful to have, especially if one is suspending rather than hibernating.

[Teunis]

Liquidator, I got the instructions on shock protection from this German site:
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Festplattenschutz

These are instructions for Lenovo Thinkpads but other brands and types may run similar.

Because 13.04 has most modules already installed it has become easier than last year.
Install 'tp-smapi-dkms'and 'hdapsd'.
Edit '/etc/default/hdapsd', on my system it was already in place as per example.

# hdapsd default file

# start hdapsd at boottime?
START="yes"

# the name of the disk device that hdapsd should monitor.
#
# usually this is 'hda' for the primary IDE master or 'sda'
# for the primary S-ATA drive
DISK="sda"

# sensitivity
SENSITIVITY=15

# other options to pass to hdapsd.
# the -d $DISK, -s $SENSITIVITY, -b and -p $PIDFILE options are always passed.
OPTIONS=""

# The new interface in kernels >=2.6.28 sometimes wrongly detects HDAPS-capable
# drives as not supported. Set this to "yes" to force-enable the feature.
# Please be carefull with this setting!
FORCEENABLE="no"

SENSITIVITY=15 is the default and can be adjusted as required.

After each change you can restart the daemon:

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd restart

To test first stop and restart the deamon:

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd stop

sudo hdapsd -d sda -s 15

Because a test does not read the configuration file the sensitivity is given in the command.
When you carefuly shake the Thinkpad you should see similar output:

Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: Starting hdapsd Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: WARNING: You did not supply any devices to protect, trying autodetection. Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: Adding autodetected device: sda Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: Selected interface: HDAPS Sun Oct 25 22:17:35 2009: Selected HDAPS input device: /dev/input/event21 Sun Oct 25 22:17:36 2009: parking Sun Oct 25 22:17:37 2009: un-parking Sun Oct 25 22:17:40 2009: parking Sun Oct 25 22:17:41 2009: un-parking

Ctrl+C will cancel the test run

When happy restart the deamon with:

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd start