PCLOS on ibm thinkpad R40

[Terahertz]

just installed PCLOS, great system, just wondering with a fresh install what all should be considered and what usually needs to be done configuring wise? my display adapter isn't quite right i got a radeon mobility 7000 with a sad 16mb of vram but with winxp it ran much smoother with youtube and such. also i have been getting fragments on certain windows. and some screensavers wont show up under themes. is there a direct x supplement? and does linux need defragmenting?
thanks for any help.

[kernowyon]

I would recommend taking a look around the forum and specifically reading any of the "sticky" topics - they generally include vital information.

If you have probs with your video, then probably best to create a topic in the relevant place about that - giving as much info as you can. Graphics are very much specific to particular cards, versions etc.
Youtube should be OK - you might want to check your system is up to date with flash etc. I don't know anything about the Radeon mobility chips, but I know that some mobile chipsets (e.g SiS ones) use Windows only "drivers" and without Windows they are pretty poor.... that is a problem with the manufacturers of the chips and the laptops rather than a Linux issue - they refuse to supply "drivers" or the details needed for Linux devs to write a "driver" for Linux systems. We had this problem with modem drivers for many years and it has now become a bigger issue with video drivers for mobile devices as the old 56k modems have been dropped in favour of broadband.

Direct X supplement?  Not quite sure what you mean there - DirectX is a Windows specific graphics thing. It isn't used in Linux, so it is probably worth asking a more specific question. If you mean about a certain game for example, then mention the game and whether you have tried running it in something like Wine or some other emulator - remember, Linux doesn't run Windows software (including games) natively - but much of the software for Windows can be run with Wine or other tools.

All operating systems will "fragment", although Linux systems do not do so in the same way as Windows. Basically, as far as most people mean, then no, Linux does not need defragging.

Please feel free to ask about the individual issues, with as much detail as possible - that way it is much easier to assist.

[la_monda]

For the flash videos right click on a youtube video>settings>display>enable hardware acceleration and uncheck this box. For me that setting smoothed my flash experience with an old ati card i have on my laptop. Do you have the kde version? If so be sure to disable the desktop effects. Other than that, keep your system up to date and from now  on dont worry like in windows about fragmentation, registry maintenance and stuff

p.s If you want to make your system lighter on resources you can disable some of the services you dont need (bluetooth, printer etc). Also the "apt" service updates your system regularly and relieves you from the task

[Vorteggs]

just installed PCLOS, great system, just wondering with a fresh install what all should be considered and what usually needs to be done configuring wise? my display adapter isn't quite right i got a radeon mobility 7000 with a sad 16mb of vram but with winxp it ran much smoother with youtube and such. also i have been getting fragments on certain windows. and some screensavers wont show up under themes. is there a direct x supplement? and does linux need defragmenting?
thanks for any help.

Which version did you install?
If it is the KDE may be it's somewhat heavy for your old machine.
There are lighter PCLOS versions like LXDE, XFCE and OpenBox.

Look also here please:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ATI_Mobility_Radeon_7000

Optimal xorg.conf settings
This is the currently best working Device section for the xorg.conf of an X31 running Kubuntu 9.04 (X11R7.4):
Section "Device"
       Identifier      "ATI"
       Driver          "radeon"
       Option          "AccelMethod" "XAA"
       Option          "AGPMode" "4"
       Option          "AGPFastWrite" "yes"
       Option          "EnablePageFlip" "on"
       Option          "RenderAccel" "on"
       Option          "DynamicClocks" "on"
       Option          "BIOSHotkeys" "on"
EndSection

xorg.conf is a system file that you could easily change, ask here how to do it safely if you'd like to try.

[Terahertz]

Thanks for all your helpful information. to answer a few questions,
I do have the KDE version. the desktop and programs seem to run quite nice though. But i'll try that enable hardware acceleration option with flash.
Now i have done a full update of the system but now i have run into another issue. It seems as though now i cannot select things with my touchpad when before the update i could. Any ideas?
And i'd like to change that xorg.conf file so how would i go about that?

[Vorteggs]

And i'd like to change that xorg.conf file so how would i go about that?

The file is in the directory /etc/X11. Directory means also "folder".
The first "/" means the upper level of the directory tree. It is similar to "C:\" in Windows. Following the path you should find the file.

You have to edit it with root privileges (administrator).
So open from the menu the file manager Dolphin (or another if you prefer) in root mode. You will be asked about your root password.
Find the xorg.conf file and copy it giving it another name, let's say xorg.conf.original . This is a back up. If something goes wrong you can always rename it to the previous name and the system will use it.

Now open the xorg.conf file for editing and replace the lines between

Section "Device"
.
.
.
.
.
EndSection

with the lines copied from the link I posted.
Save the file, reboot and cross fingers...

If something is wrong you probably won't see the usual login screen but rather the system will ask you if it should repair the situation. Choose yes in every step an you should be back to the initial state.
If not you can boot the machine from the LiveCD that you installed from and rename back the back-up file xorg.conf.original to xorg.conf, again with a file manager in root mode. You can enter the forum from LiveCD too.

[djohnston]

After editing your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file according to vortex's instructions, see here for touchpad solutions.

[Terahertz]

Thanks again for all your help!
Edited the orgx.config successfully and it seems to be running quite well so thanks a lot for that.
Got the touchpad working again via synaptiks application. But the only thing is that there is no tapping during login screen which is weird since it worked before the update.
But everything seems to be running quite nice otherwise. Next thing im working on though is trying to get a few applications i downloaded to work. If anyone is familiar with them maybe they could give me a few pointers on how to make them run properly or if i can run them.  So this is my issue,
a friend recommended this applications called Airfart, Airsnort and Aircrack-Ng,
My laptop has a cisco aironet 802.11b WIFI card. Airfart isn't picking up a signal. Even though my wifi works perfectly fine with the default network manager. Air snort opens but does not pickup anything either when i attempt to scan. I have set everything to the correct device but doesn't seem to want to work. Then with aircrack when i attempt to open it, it activates libreoffice manager but all that did was update the libreoffice manager. (also i have no idea what libreoffice manager is used for) But i can not get aircrack to even open. Any help would be greatly appreciated.