[3513] in Release_7.7_team
Need
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Thu Sep 19 21:25:18 2002
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: kathleen@mit.edu, ganderso@mit.edu, othomas@mit.edu, longpd@mit.edu
Cc: owls@mit.edu, release-team@mit.edu, pismere-dev@mit.edu
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Date: 19 Sep 2002 21:25:15 -0400
Message-Id: <1032485115.2392.37.camel@tokata.mit.edu>
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I'm sharing this note widely because it neatly illustrates one of the
real challenges about certifying laptops for Linux.
Today Kathleen Moriarty got me one of the new Dell Latitude C640's for
testing (on loan from Dell.)
My initial reactions to it were very favorable. I got Athena to install
very quickly. The X configuration happened smoothly and automatically.
After a little bit of fiddling I got wireless up and running, and
documented all this on the laptop-athena.html web page that I've been
drafting.
Then the power-saver in the BIOS blanked the screen.
No problem. Hit a key and get the display back, right? That works on
the C610, and both IBM systems...
Nope. The X server is hopelessly confused. The only recovery is to
power cycle the machine.
Should we say that Linux works with this machine? If the user is
careful to go into the BIOS and turn off screen blanking, it will work.
Note further that neither the C610 nor the C640 properly recover from
suspend. Interestingly, the IBM T30 and R32 work just fine with
screen-blank and suspend. In my opinion, the IBM laptops DEFINITELY can
be classified as working even though hibernate does not work. Hibernate
is widely recognized by the Linux community as difficult. Screen blank
is widely recognized as a common event, and one that should be correctly
handled. The Dell C840, requiring a special X server can be classified
as Athena-Unsupported, but the Dell C610 and C640 are in an interesting
gray area.
It will be interesting to see if the big-screen IBM T30, which has very
similar video to the Dell C640, will properly handle screen blanking.
(I test that on Monday with Bill Brids of the UNIX Help Desk.)
QUESTION:
What is our simple classification of the Dell C640?
-wdc
