davecs
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PCLinuxOS: A revolution in personal computing
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« on: August 10, 2009, 06:12:49 PM » |
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My dad's wife wanted me to fix her laptop. It had slowed down to a crawl, Skype was always a problem and now the webcam isn't found by it, the desktop was littered with useless icons.
... and for me to go there is a 500 mile round trip!
I used to have an identical laptop, an Acer Aspire 1692WLMi. I got it to run Linux in the past, however it required a bit of a hack when first running the LiveCD to get to a graphics screen. What is more, it has ipw2200 wireless built in, but I have read posts on the net that ipw2200 worked OK once installed, but not when running live.
Well with our latest PCLinuxOS KDE3.5, 2009.2 issue, I'm pleased to say that both video and wireless, and just about everything else worked out of the box. What is more, it runs much quicker than I remember it running when I had the same model.
Mini-Me took a little hack, you had to boot up in Vesa mode, to a 1024x768 screen, set up the internet (no problem, the ipw2200 firmware is there), then install the ATi "fglrx" driver, and after the X restart, go into the PCLOS Control Centre and then manually change the resolution to 1280x800, restart X again, before moving on from there. No problem for more experienced users.
But with the "standard" disk, everything was a breeze, on a laptop which used to be problematic. ACPI stuff scored 2 out of 3, suspend to ram worked, as did using the power button for a "safe" shutdown. But suspend to disk caused the unit to reboot, clearly it recovered correctly, if only it had stayed off when hibernated, and recover like that when started again, it would be perfect. I'm sure I can find out stuff and make it work next time I pay them a visit.
Meantime, she is pleased. A faster computer, Skype working, Firefox starts up FAST, she loves DigiKam, so easy plug in camera, select "download photos with Digikam" from the icon that appears (I set it up to appear on the taskbar using the Storage Media applet), and add. And when she Skype'd her son-in-law, he said her webcam picture was clearer. By the way it's a "Creative Live! Cam Optia Pro".
So, another satisfied customer. Well she would be a customer if I was getting paid ...
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