In general the distribution works out of the box. Just a few hints to make your life easier and your computer running smoother.
1. To disable the annoying BIOS bug at the boot screen, add noapic in /boot/grub/menu.lst (leave the # sign intact)
# defoptions=quiet splash noapic
you can add vga=791 to the same line to get nicer text console and then run update-grub to apply the changes.
2. To get your the NVidia drivers running properly (almost) edit the following files:
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist: add these two lines
blacklist agpgart
blacklist sis_agp
/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-kernel-nkc: add these two lines (the second is just in case)
options nvidia_new NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1 NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1
options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1 NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1
Restart the computer to give up on sis_agp module, then you will get the following result:
cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/statusStatus: Enabled
Driver: NVIDIA
AGP Rate: 8x
Fast Writes: Enabled
SBA: Enabled
3. If you want to be able to throttle your CPU, replace powerd with cpufreqd (cpufrequtils) then add p4_clockmod option module in /etc/default/cpufreqd:
CPUFREQ_CPU_MODULE="p4_clockmod"
Comment the line "#MODULE=speedstep-ich;" and add new "MODULE=p4-clockmod;" in /etc/init.d/loadcpufreq
# Right. Check if it's a P4 without est.
# Could be speedstep-ich, or could be p4-clockmod.
#MODULE=speedstep-ich;
MODULE=p4-clockmod;
# Disabled for now - the latency tends to be bad
# enough to make it fairly pointless.
To be able to alter the frequencies I have made this change in /etc/cpufreqd.conf
[Profile]
name=Performance High
minfreq=20%
maxfreq=100%
policy=performance
#exec_post=echo 8 > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness
[/Profile]
Restart the daemon.
sudo /etc/init.d/cpufreqd restart
You can add the "CPU scaling monitor" applet to the Gnome panel but to be able to use it as user run the following command:
sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector
Alternatively, use the following commands to alter the parameters: cpufreq-info, cpufreq-selector, cpufreq-set. I was not able to find convenient GUI tool that will do it from the tray but hey - it works.
4. If you find your hard disk clicking - here are some setting to alter to solve the problem.
/etc/hdparm.conf: set ROOTFS = /dev/sda and add these lines at the end of the file.
/dev/sda {
apm = 254
}/etc/apm/event.d/20hdparm: uncomment the line
#APMD_DRIVES=APMD_DRIVES=
Here is a table of VESA video modes (VGA codes):
640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200 Ask user at boot.
8 bits vga=769 vga=771 vga=773 vga=775 vga=796 vga=ask
16 bits vga=785 vga=788 vga=791 vga=794 vga=798 vga=ask
32 bits vga=786 vga=789 vga=792 vga=795 vga=799 vga=ask
If you know how to make the computer SUSPEND - please let me know.
Installs and works without problems after web update from fully patched SP2. Feels like the computer runs faster, although I have not performed any test for comparison. There is only one annoying thing - some rare short lockups. I am not sure if this can be attributed to the upgrade since shortly after upgrading to SP3, I have switched my antivirus program from AVG Free 8.0 to Avast 4.8 Home Edition. The turning point for the change was that AVG was very slow on opening a folder full of executables - the program scans every single file before you get the icons to appear. Some time it took up to 3-4 seconds to open a folder containing a small collection of about 25 small and useful programs.
