Laptop heat

I’ve been using SuSE 9.1 on my laptop (Compaq 2195us) for a while now, dual booting with Windows XP. One thing I haven’t been able to do is get ACPI working so that it will throttle the processor. Why is this important? Heat, and lots of it. The processor in my laptop is an AMD XP-m 2500+ and it creates a lot of heat if it runs at full speed for a long period of time. This isn’t a problem in Windows XP because Windows throttles the processor when it’s not being used.

I’ve been trying for about a week now to get ACPI working and it’s all been a flop. Short of recompiling the kernel, I can’t find any info on what to do. I have hit so many Linux support sites that my bookmarks list now scrolls. It’s a shame because SuSE runs very well on my laptop but the heat issue is major because nothing kills the hardware in a laptop like heat. Ok, maybe water, but that’s not created by the laptop during normal use.

Since I have gotten frustrated with SuSE, I’ve decided to try out Mandrake 10.1. I’ve read on different message boards that Mandrake 10.1 has much better ACPI support and a lot of laptop users were happy with the ACPI performance when they switched to Mandrake. Plus, it has a larger hardware support list and supposedly it supports Broadcom wireless NIC’s. In SuSE, I had to use NdisWrapper and the Windows driver to get my wireless NIC working.

I know, a lot of Linux die-hards think that Mandrake is the fluffer of the Linux porn world but I need something easy to learn on before getting into the more advanced distro’s. Kind of like learning Windows desktop before getting into Windows Server. Why learn Linux? Diversity of operating systems and it’s priced right for my budget.

One thing I have noticed is the more prevelant use of BitTorrent for distributing software. Mandrake and OpenOffice.org offer .torrent files to download their software. I like it because usually I get better speed using BitTorrent to download files than I do using FTP . The work load is spread out when you use BitTorrent instead of bogging down a single server with multiple request. When I was downloading OpenOffice.org, I hit over 300 kb/s both times I downloaded it (XP and Linux). Right now, I’m getting a little over 200 kb/s downloading Mandrake.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. New Years is right around the corner.

Edit: I just noticed that WordPress changed all the kilobit abbreviations (lowercase b) to kilobyte (uppercase b). I know the difference between them and did not post it that way. I’ll have to look into that and see why it changed them.

26.Dec.04 Technology