acertimeline team mailing list archive

[Sean Russell <seanerussell@xxxxxxxxx>]

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Here's another 4810 experience:

I replaced the internal harddrive with a 30GB OCZ SSD that I had
already formatted via USB on another Linux box, to ensure that the
block sizes were "optimal"
(http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/20/aligning-filesystems-to-an-ssds-erase-block-size/).

I installed from a Kubuntu 8.10 CD and did a dist upgrade to 9.04.
Everything went fine, except upon reboot the BIOS hung (didn't even
get to GRUB) and then rebooted; when it came up, I went into the BIOS
and changed the interface from AHCI (or whatever it was) to IDE; that
fixed it.  It booted without problems directly into KDM.

   1. The driver was correctly identified, and the screen resolution
      was correctly set.  Compiz was enabled by default, and the eye
      candy worked (mostly) fine.  There were some artifacts
      (background windows obscured by pop-up alerts were often not
      refreshed correctly when the alerts were dismissed).
      Considering how insanely buggy KDE 4.2 is, I'm inclined to blame
      KDE.
   2. Wireless networking started out beautifully, but at least once
      the connection would drop and KDE would refuse to reconnect.
      Again, at the moment I'm blaming KDE (see below).
   3. I haven't tried bluetooth yet.
   4. USB is *mostly* fine; an RF mouse with dongle worked as expected.
   5. KDE wouldn't recognize a USB memory stick (again, definitely a
      KDE bug -- see below)
   6. Within a couple of hours, the KDE panel crashed.  Not a laptop
      issue.
   7. Suspend/resume worked with no problems.  In fact, it's got the
      *fastest* resume of any laptop I've seen -- it is incredible.
   8. Haven't tried hibernate yet.
   9. The "toggle the touchpad button" works, but it is a one-way
      trip.  Once you turn it on, it won't turn off.  However, I've
      discovered that turning it off, suspending, and resuming causes
      it to come back on again.  In fact, turning the touchpad off,
      suspend, and resuming causes it to come back on again -- even if
      the button is lit, saying that the touchpad is off.  I think
      this is a Ubuntu problem.
  10. The SD/MMC/etc. slot works perfectly.
  11. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the machine.
      The screen is beautiful, and bright.  The battery life seems
      about on par with the advertised time (haven't done any
      strenuous testing, but my wife had it on battery for most of the
      day, so 8 hours wouldn't have been far off the mark).
  12. The sleep button doesn't seem to be recognized by the default
      Ubuntu set-up.
  13. The brightness keys are recognized, but don't seem to have any
      actual effect.
  14. The audio keys are also recognized, but I haven't tested them yet
  15. The "blank screen" function works beautifully -- why don't all
      laptops have this??

KDE was so twitchy that I installed ubuntu-destop and re-logged in to
Gnome.

   1. I haven't seen any artifacts related to alerts, so #1 seems
      fixed by this.  Hence, it seems to be a KDE problem.
   2. I haven't had any problems with wireless, so #2 seems to be a
      KDE problem, too.
   3. Gnome correctly recognized the USB stick, and would let me mount
      it; #5 is definitely a KDE problem.
   4. The battery life *seems* a little less robust under Gnome, but
      I'll do some timings next week-end.

So, though I hate Gnome because of it's insistence on moving the order
of "Ok/Cancel" buttons, it is definitely less buggy than KDE 4.2, and
the laptop works much better under it.  <rant>The button swap was a
horrible user-interface decision.  Many people are forced to use
Windows at work, and the order of Ok/Cancel buttons has been a
de-facto standard in UIs for years.  The decision to change this order
causes confusion for people having to use multiple desktop
environments, and was entirely arbitrary, or based on vague,
poorly-supported guesses on usability benefits.  It should rank as one
of history's worst UI decisions.</rant>

In summary, the laptop works well under Linux.  The "disable touchpad"
button is a god-send under Windows, and if anybody figures out how to
get it working correctly under Linux, please post about it.  This
touchpad is extremely sensitive, and being able to disable it is
critically important -- and while that part works, being unable to
re-enable it (easily) means that an external mouse is really a
requirement for this laptop under Linux.

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