[Lancaster] Re: [offlist] Re: Laptop Power Managment

[Ken Hough]

Richard Smedley wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 14:06, Ken Hough wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'll send the laptop RAM chip by post as per address in your last message.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> 
> 
>>A nice idea to recycle old laptops to Africa, etc, but maybe not so good 
>>in practice if my old Toshiba is anything to go by and also a more 
>>modern AJP machine which my sister had. If anything goes wrong, you 
>>would be stuck in Africa, etc. I've worked in several African countries. 
>>Getting spares for anything is a real pain -- and then getting things 
>>fixed?????
> 
> 
> Good point - though as these are machines that most
> people are throwing away, maybe this isn't so important.

Maybe in hardware terms only, but not in personal aggro'. Desktop PCs 
are cheaper, are more readily available and are more robust.

> 
> 
>> Also, RAM is usually limited on old laptops. To realistically 
>>run a desktop manager and office apps a minimum of 64MB of RAM is 
>>needed, and then only if the manager is something like 'icewm'. 128MB is 
>>a more practical minimum for the likes of KDE or GNOME. KDE will run on 
>>64MB RAM, but you may as well go and have a coffee while it's loading.
> 
> 
> Fluxbox is my normal environment when I boot X, though I used TWM
> for several months last year =o)

'icewm' is the one that I used.

> 
> GNOME has its advantages, but is not _necessary_ for any
> particular computer task.
> 

I don't use GNOME. Don't like it! But that's a personal thing. Like KDE 
it's fairly resource/memory hungry.

 >
>>Much more practical to recycle old desktop PCs (>= Pentium CPUs, plus 
>>128MB RAM). They are more robust, use standard parts, are easily 
>>fixed/upgraded and more likely to survive high humidity and ambient 
>>temperatures of 40 degC or so.
> 
> 
> This is true - though consider also the power use of a 
> desktop versus laptop. Also the benefits of a laptop in
> a region with frequent power cuts.
>

That's possibly the biggest thing in favour of laptops in remote areas, 
especially if isolated from the mains supply during the rainy/stormy 
season. Even so, beware unprotected modems. Last year my sister lost her 
laptop's modem during a storm in this country.

Alternatively, use a normal PC with a UPS.

> 
>>On my limited experience with Debian, I certainly wouldn't recommend it 
>>for remote places where expertise is limited. Debian is not friendly and 
>>you have to know it (and Linux generally) to manage it. I've recently 
>>installed/set up both 'woody' and 'sarge' and have to say that I'm not 
>>impressed with either. They may be good in expert hands for 'serious' 
>>server work, but in both cases, installation programmes are (IMHO) 
>>primitive and software is dated.
> 
> 
> Ah, now here I have to seriously disagree with you. I've used
> Debian GNU/Linux as my main desktop for at least five years
> (though I've rarely had much control over what's installed on
> servers in places where I've worked).
> 
> Debian is great for lazy people as it takes next to no management
> to keep it going. Installation may occasionally be a pig, but that's
> just one day out of more than a thousand over a machine's life. :-)
>

Debian great for lazy people?

Hand hacking is not for lazy people (ie Me). I guess you are not 
familier with the likes of 'YAST'. Just tell it what you want done and 
it does it. Now that's what I call being lazy. If you want to hand hack 
a quicky, that's still no problem. I accept that 'YAST' is a bit of a 
heavyweight for low spec hardware.

Debian can be a pig because in many ways, it's not bog standard. For 
example, the standard 'X' setup utility 'xf86config' will fail, because 
by default it writes the config file to '/etc/X11/XF86Config'. Debian 
insists on this file being called '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4'. Also, 
'xf86cfg' supplied with Debian fails miserably for a number of reasons. 
Not only does it by default write the config file to the wrong place, 
the file is incorrect (ie does run up X). Before running up 'xf86cfg', 
it's neccessary to manually set up a soft link (/dev/mouse) to point to 
the actual mouse device. Failure to do this causes 'xf86cfg' to crash.

I've discovered a number of (unneccessary) sillies like this. All very 
well when you know about them.

I will persevere with Debian because a number of people use it, so I 
want to understand it. IMHO, from a desktop users point of view, Debian 
just doesn't cut it.

I'm now climbing into my asbestos suit!

> 
>>Fedora, Mandrake or SuSE would be more appropriate. I'm a SuSE user, but 
>>have played with the others. As you might expect, I reckon SuSE v9.1 is 
>>the best all round from a user point of view and boxed versions come 
>>with good manuals.
> 
> 
> The overhead imposed by all the distro-specific tools and daemons in 
> such distros makes them unsuitable for older hardware.

If it's a question of squeezing a distro onto a small/old PC, then 
Debian can have advantages. However, I've got SuSE v6.2 running on a 
couple of 486 boxes (originally with 16MB RAM on each, now 32MB).

Even with SuSE v9.1, a minimum installation without manual interference 
is only 415MB or so. This can be reduced by manual deselection. From 
memory, Debian needs around 300MB.

> 
> I'm using Fedora Core 2 this week, and it's certainly the best of the
> three you mention, but I'll be glad to get back to Debian =o)

I'm playing with Fedora Core 2 at the very moment and I'm getting fed 
up. One of the Open Office files won't install and Fedora claims that 
this is a fatal error (not true) and insists on rebooting. I've now 
tried three times. SuSE would proceed and flag up any (non fatal) errors 
at the end of installation.


Ken Hough