Suggestion

Suggestion

[Harry Sileoni]

Hi!

While fighting for some time with my Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop and a new
kernel. No matter what I did in the APM-settings, the computer just
freezed after some minutes of uptime. Now I noticed a page witch
informed me that APIC support should not be used. I disabled APIC
support from the kernel config, and now it works perfect.

So, I suggest you add a line "This option might make your system hang
randomly" to the APIC support help page, so that other innocent people
with the same problem don't have to do hours of fighting with the APM,
which really wasn't the problem as I first though. :)

Thanks for a great kernel, and keep up the good work! :)

Re: Suggestion

[Mikael Pettersson]

Harry Sileoni writes:
 > While fighting for some time with my Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop and a new
 > kernel. No matter what I did in the APM-settings, the computer just
 > freezed after some minutes of uptime. Now I noticed a page witch
 > informed me that APIC support should not be used. I disabled APIC
 > support from the kernel config, and now it works perfect.
 > 
 > So, I suggest you add a line "This option might make your system hang
 > randomly" to the APIC support help page, so that other innocent people
 > with the same problem don't have to do hours of fighting with the APM,
 > which really wasn't the problem as I first though. :)

1. All recent 2.5/2.4 kernels have a blacklist rule that is supposed
   to prevent the kernel from enabling the local APIC.
   That kernel version are you using? What .config?
   Doesn't the kernel boot log contain something like "Dell Inspiron
   with broken BIOS detected. Refusing to enable the local APIC"?
2. There is no "APIC support help page" that I know of.

Are you sure you didn't mean ACPI instead? APIC != ACPI but
people keep confusing the two.

Re: Suggestion

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Fri, 10 Jan 2003 14:12:53 +0100, Mikael Pettersson said:
> Harry Sileoni writes:
>  > While fighting for some time with my Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop and a new

> Are you sure you didn't mean ACPI instead? APIC != ACPI but
> people keep confusing the two.

The Dell Latitude C840 (what I have) and the (AFAIK) Inspiron 8100 both use
the NVidia geForce4 Go graphics chipset, and apparently the posted patches
to make nvidia's closed-source drivers work under 2.5 have issues with ACPI
on some platforms.  Digging back, I only found like one message on the LKML
archives that mentioned the nvidia drivers don't play nice with ACPI.

Harry - does that match up with what you have?
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech


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Re: Suggestion

[David Woodhouse]

Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu said:
> The Dell Latitude C840 (what I have) and the (AFAIK) Inspiron 8100
> both use the NVidia geForce4 Go graphics chipset, and apparently the
> posted patches to make nvidia's closed-source drivers work under 2.5
> have issues with ACPI on some platforms.  Digging back, I only found
> like one message on the LKML archives that mentioned the nvidia
> drivers don't play nice with ACPI.

Note that you can buy replacement non-nVidia graphics cards for the I8x00 
as spare parts fairly cheaply, and they're very easy to install.


--
dwmw2

Re: Suggestion

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Fri, 10 Jan 2003 17:00:32 GMT, David Woodhouse said:
> Note that you can buy replacement non-nVidia graphics cards for the I8x00 
> as spare parts fairly cheaply, and they're very easy to install.

It's easier to get my employer to pay for my time to fix software issues
with the laptop they paid for than it is to get them to shell out money
for what they'd consider a hardware workaround.  And even at "fairly
cheaply", I'm not going to buy it out of my own pocket.  It's a hell of
a lot easier to simply skip ACPI till somebody (perhaps I) figure out how
to fix it... ;)



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Suggestion

[Kolusion K]

Hello


Recently I have been fed up with all the low quality hobby software in the open source world and I have been wishing there was a true alternative open source operating system to Windows which doesn't suck. I had considered TempleOS but my games don't run on it. :)

This got me looking into the history of operating systems where I read MS-DOS was written in just 6 weeks.

Somehow I got onto looking at the Linux Standards Base and I was surprised at how well organised it is as well as how complex it is.

This got me thinking... With the amount of effort that went into creating the Linux Standard Base, that effort instead could have been used to create an official Linux userland etcetera and turn Linux into an operating system.

The world likes real operating systems. That's why MS-DOS dominated and why Windows continues to dominate, and why Microsoft is the worlds leading software developer. More people create applications for Windows than any other operating system and the applications are overall higher quality than applications for other operating systems.

My suggestion is instead of working on the Linux Standard Base, instead use that effort to create Linux into an actual operating system.

The world needs a true open source quality operating system that isn't just hobby software.


Sincerely,

Kolusion