Linux Woes

Hey all,
I have been meaning to write this for a while. I know there are other threads under this forum about Linux, but there has not been one recently that i have seen. I have recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 on my machine (see sig). Overall, I enjoy using the OS and would like to spend more time using it, and less time using windows. However, there are some kinks that are really holding me back that I have not found a solution for. I was just wondering if people have been able to resolve any of these issues , but have not posted on this forum. So here goes:

1.Laptop suspend/hibernate ( I prefer suspend for closing my lid). Honestly, how can i have a productive linux environment on my NOTEBOOK computer without suspend? I believe the problem has something to do with the motherboard in these computers, but does anyone have a work around yet?

2.Touchpad drivers/configuration tool. I know synaptics has great support on linux, but the synaptics programs/drivers for linux do not seem to recognize elantech hardware in terms of configuration. Ubuntu recognizes my touchpad out of the box, but the configuration is nearly useless. Sensitivity/Acceleration settings just are not effective enough to be useful. Furthermore, i'de like to configure double tapping, etc, if possible. I cannot find one for my distro that seems to work properly, or i have not properly installed it, but anyone on ubuntu please share.

3.Recommended burning software? My CDR speed is dismally slow, usually around 10-12x which I believe is way below what I can do in windows. Also has trouble recognizing certain CDR blanks that windows has no problem with.

4. Laptop appears to get MUCH warmer idling in linux than it does in windows (even under computational strain). I really have no idea about this, but it really sucks. This might be especially the case in the area where my HDD is. I did a direct comparison yesterday by letting it idle in linux for a while, and it got very hot. I then immediately restarted into windows and let it idle after startup, this time with many more background processes (antivirus, other utilities, basic windows stuff) and the comp was much cooler after 5 minutes of idling. WTF mate?

One more thing, Has anyone been able to use analogue out to display on a tv or projector? i.e for power point presentations, etc, on Linux?

 

All these questions are better off being posted in the official Ubuntu forums at ubuntuforums.org.

1) & 2) are long answers which you can find in the forums

3) Means enabling DMA, adding libdvdcss2, 3 to your system and a few other tweaks. Search for that on the forums

4) Again, the Ubuntu forums. Sorry about the short replies, but this has been talked about in-depth over there.

5) You must enable "Twin-View" or whatever your GPU calls it. Twin-View is for NVIDIA. You need to download and install the latest GPU drivers, my suggestion is to find Albert Milone's "Envy" Python script which does it for you.

 

I was almost going to make a new thread, but then I saw this.

I'm currently on the same OS and I'm experiencing a... medium problem. Not major, but not minor either. Basically, Edgy seems not to like my graphics card very much.

First, I tried to install the newest available drivers from the universe repository using the SP manager. That gave me a "BSOD" when starting X saying something about incompatible graphics drivers.

I then used the mentioned 'Envy' script, which led to more or less the same BSOD.

Finally, I just downloaded the drivers from nvidia's site and installed them myself by booting into recovery mode and running "sudo sh *driver name*", then setting xorg.conf manually to "Nvidia" rather than "nv". This made X work again, at least to the extent of booting up. However, when I run anything that uses 3D acceleration, be it a GL screensaver, watching a movie in VLC, an openGL game or D3D games under Wine, I get some severe issues, which appear to be caused by driver instability.

I will try to sectionize and clarify:

Videos: Work fine when I've just booted X, but if I try to watch after watching another video or playing a game, I just get a black screen with sound.

GL screensavers: When I move the mouse, the screensaver dissapears and I'm returned to my desktop. However, the desktop freezes for a seemingly random amount of time (5-15) seconds. During the freeze, the whole desktop "blinks" a few times.

With OpenGL games natively or D3D games in wine, it's pretty much the same thing. When I first start the game, everything works fine. 15-30 seconds after starting the game, the game freezes for 5-15 seconds, and the screen blinks a few times. Then the game works fine until I close it, which leads to exactly the same behaviour as "closing" the screensaver. I've never seen anything even remotely like this on Windows, and I'm stumped on how to solve it since my linux experience is still not quite top-notch. Hoping the minds on this forum can help out

Note: Everything works perfectly with the standard "nv" driver (except 3D acceleration )

Thankful for help,

Nicke.