>> X is a very large number though, even after a weekend in standby the 
>> battery is still at 90-something %.
>
> I think the last time I used my laptop was about 4 months ago?

Right, well mine is on continually during the day at work (I use it for 
email and my desktop for other work), and sometimes in the evening or at 
weekends I use it for a while eg in front of the TV or in the kitchen.  It 
also gets used on the road (eg on the train, in the hotel, at customer 
meetings) every few weeks if I need to travel anywhere.

> Right. Unlike "Hibernate", which writes the RAM image to disk, so next 
> time you cold boot it can just reload that.
>
> Either way, don't you find that huge amounts of hardware stops working 
> properly when you start it back up again?

No, the only thing I notice is that if I put it into standby while it is 
docked at work, then undock it and boot it up at home, the screen resolution 
is wrong for the internal LCD (1600x1200 instead of 1920x1200).  But I can 
cope with that, I usually make sure to undock it before putting it to 
standby (undocking it changes the resolution back from the external monitor 
to the internal one).

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>> Man, it takes longer than that to just get through the BIOS before it
>> gets anywhere near an OS!
>
> True in many cases, I agree. But BIOS settings can have big influence on
> this too. For example: I don't have a floppy disk drive connected at
> all. But if I disable it from BIOS, loading the kernel takes 2 secs more
> than if I had it enabled. So grub is someway confused. Maybe a BIOS or
> Grub bug.

Yeh, this is why I stand-by rather than shut-down, it means when I come back 
I don't have to go through the BIOS.

As a side note, on my BIOS I have to insert my USB security key and enter a 
password, but even without that it still takes longer than it does to resume 
from standby.

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>> Either way, don't you find that huge amounts of hardware stops working 
>> properly when you start it back up again?
> 
> No, the only thing I notice is that if I put it into standby while it is 
> docked at work, then undock it and boot it up at home, the screen 
> resolution is wrong for the internal LCD (1600x1200 instead of 
> 1920x1200).  But I can cope with that, I usually make sure to undock it 
> before putting it to standby (undocking it changes the resolution back 
> from the external monitor to the internal one).

Ah yes, the wonders of docking stations. ;-)

The Dell system we have here is great. If the laptop is powered on while 
docked, it sends it video signal to the external monitor at the correct 
resolution. If you open the laptop, it switches to the internal LCD 
monitor, at the correct resolution. And if you close the laptop again... 
it goes into hibernate mode. o_O

Do you have ANY IDEA how ANNOYING that is?!

You'd expect doing the reverse of what you just did to undo the changes, 
but NOOO... that would be too easy. :-P

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> The Dell system we have here is great. If the laptop is powered on while 
> docked, it sends it video signal to the external monitor at the correct 
> resolution. If you open the laptop, it switches to the internal LCD 
> monitor, at the correct resolution. And if you close the laptop again... 
> it goes into hibernate mode. o_O
>
> Do you have ANY IDEA how ANNOYING that is?!
>
> You'd expect doing the reverse of what you just did to undo the changes, 
> but NOOO... that would be too easy. :-P

You probably have the "When I close the lid" option set to "hibernate", I 
set mine to "do nothing".

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>> Do you have ANY IDEA how ANNOYING that is?!
> 
> You probably have the "When I close the lid" option set to "hibernate", 
> I set mine to "do nothing".

Probably. But it's not like I'm going to go to all 6 laptops and change 
the setting *now*... :-/

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Severi Salminen wrote:
> 
> True in many cases, I agree. But BIOS settings can have big influence on
> this too. For example: I don't have a floppy disk drive connected at
> all. But if I disable it from BIOS, loading the kernel takes 2 secs more
> than if I had it enabled. So grub is someway confused. Maybe a BIOS or
> Grub bug.
> 

I have one mobo (Asus SK8N) that complaints about floppy drive not found
if FDD is disabled from the BIOS. OTOH enabling it removes the error,
even while there is no floppy drive.

-Aero

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Invisible wrote:

> scott wrote:
> 
>> I always put my XP laptop to sleep rather than turning it off, from
>> hitting the power button to windows unlock prompt is always under 5
>> seconds - it would drive me mad if I had to shut it down and boot it up
>> from cold each time I used it.
> 
> Doesn't that mean that after X hours the battery runs flat and you need
> to cold boot it anyway?
> 
> (I guess it depends on exactly which "sleep mode" you mean...)

I think Vista has a feature where it saves the RAM contents to disk and gets
into sleep (not hibernate) mode. If battery lasts enough to keep the RAM
alive, it will be fast to get out of sleep mode, unlike hibernation. If it
doesn't, you have the data saved to disk anyway, unlike sleep.

Or, maybe, the feature was that when it's running low on battery, it wakes
up, saves RAM to disk, and hibernates.

I don't remember the details.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I think Vista has a feature where it saves the RAM contents to disk and gets
> into sleep (not hibernate) mode. 

Yeah. They stole that from OSX. ;-)

> Or, maybe, the feature was that when it's running low on battery, it wakes
> up, saves RAM to disk, and hibernates.

That's the old way that XP uses. Works poorly if you set up the timings 
wrong, as waking and spinning up the disk and such kills the battery half 
way thru hibernating if you do it wrong.

In Vista, sleep *looks* like it goes to sleep (turns off screen and 
speakers, etc, rather than the XP way of showing you a progress bar), then 
saves the RAM to disk, then actually goes to sleep. You can set it to go to 
full hibernate after some time, so you save lots of battery if you're not 
coming back to it.

Then there's "Away mode", which means hitting the sleep button turns off the 
screen and speakers, tells anyone who cares that you're "away", and then ... 
leaves the power on.  For people who are running servers on their machine 
but want it to look like they're being energy-efficient, I guess.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:00:02 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Now go find a Linux binary application that runs on Windows without
>> something like Cygwin.
> 
> Most of the utilities are ported to native Windows. The appropriate
> google term is to tack "win32" onto whatever you're searching for:
> gunzip win32
> diff win32
> ... and so on.
> 
> Just in case you ever go looking.

Oh yes, I did know that - but always good to have a reminder. :-)

Jim

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On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:35:20 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Things have improved since 2006 then. ;-) I wasted a whole day trying
>>> to get the nVidia drivers to work...
>> 
>> 2006 is about 4 generations ago for openSUSE.
> 
> Actually is was (IIRC) Debian at the time, but whatever. ;-)

It's still "n" generations.

>> Yeah, things have changed
>> since then.  The ATI drivers used to be a royal pain the ass to install
>> and configure.  Not anymore.
> 
> All I remember is that even after endless fiddling, I couldn't get 3D
> acceleration to work. (Actually producing a picture didn't require any
> special attention at all.)

Yes.  *Used* to be.  Not anymore.  Time to update your knowledge - that's 
what I'm saying.  It's like saying "Windows can't run DirectX 10" and 
then admitting you're talking about Windows 98.

>>> (Of course, a few months later I upgraded my graphics card, making my
>>> Linux partition non-bootable. That was roughly when I decided to just
>>> not bother fixing it.)
>> 
>> Probably rebuilding the kernel?  Otherwise, I can't see how a graphics
>> card change would affect the hard drive at all.
> 
> OK, to be completely clear: It booted, but X wouldn't run.

That's quite different from "the Linux partition was non-bootable", which 
is almost a direct quote of what you originally said.  X not running is 
something that used to be an issue with a kernel update.  It's rare now.

>>> Sure. And it'll probably continue to get larger over time. But right
>>> now, it's still fairly modest by comparison.
>> 
>> You must be looking at different places than I.  Go have a look at
>> sourceforge.net, freshmeat.net, and at the repository list for openSUSE
>> at the number of packages available.  There's TONS of software for
>> Linux.
> 
> Most of which is only marginally functional.

Percentagewise, perhaps - look at the raw number of usable applications.  
It's not "6".

> Don't get me wrong, there *is* some seriously quality software out
> there. But there's also a lot of stuff that doesn't work very well.
> (E.g., klogic. It does almost exactly what I want. But it doesn't *work*
> properly. It randomly segfaults, and sometimes it GIVES YOU THE WRONG
> ANSWER. It's also fiddly to use for no good reason.)

And did you submit bugs against this, or did you just say "this thing 
doesn't work" to yourself and go somewhere else.

> Anyway, how much *commercial* software (such as big-budget games) are
> there for Linux?

Ever hear of Cedega?  Transgaming?  Loki Games (OK, they're now defunct - 
a shame because now they'd probably do OK)?

You have to keep in mind as well that the mindset of the typical Linux 
user is different - commercial applications are secondary considerations 
*most* of the time - after all, if I can find a quality OSS solution for 
no cost, why would I look to a commercial application?

>> Then add to that Windows apps that work with WINE (and that is growing
>> significantly every month).
> 
> It's news to me that *anything* works under WINE yet. (But then,
> admittedly it's not something I follow closely. If I want to run Windows
> software, I just run Windows...)

Go and look at the Wine AppDB.  The list of supported apps is 
significant.  Which reminds me, I need to try running Framemaker 8 under 
it.  One less reason to run Windows in a VMware session.

>> Now tell me again that you have more choice on Windows than on Linux.
> 
> Most of the software *I* want runs only under Windows. Not all of it
> (there are some notable exceptions), but most of it.
> 
> Of course, it depends what you're trying to do with your PC...

Exactly.  And that's part of the reason why the approach of saying what 
you said that got me started is the wrong approach.

Jim

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