(*click to see larger pic)

From kernel 2.6, acpi is the default power manager. and there is this convient tool to suspend your laptop when lids are closed or the button is hit.

http://freeunix.dyndns.org:8088/site2/acpitool.shtml

I have installed Fedora Core 4 at the second hdd on my IBM T42 laptop.

The overall installing procedure were pretty clean and neat. On the first trial, I chose the custom packages, but somehow the install process failed and rebooted.

At the point, I was little scared, since I didn’t backup my data on the other hdd, which was the master one. If i maked a mistake, it could’ve been a disaster.

But, since I love risky stufss(or just simply too lazy to copy a few giga data to other usb hdd), I tried again right away. Brave, huh? But I compromised to choose the workstation package to be safe. And that was all. I had linux installed on my laptop!

For the referece, here’s what I’ve done.

- I wanted to dual boot between Windows XP and linux.

- But, I knew that installing GRUB or Lilo at the MBR on my master(1st) hdd could cause a problem. (After the installing, I read that some people could not use the “access IBM” button any more when booting their systems.)

- So, I decided to use windows’ boot loader.

- I installed GRUB at the first partition of the 2nd hdd, which was, in my case, /dev/hdc1.

- Rebooted. On the windows I downloaded bootpart to get the bootsect image from the linux partition. (detailed how-to documents can be found at the bootpart page.)

- Then I rebooted, and I could see the OS selection screen when the system starts to boot.

- Then I changed the grub configuration not to wait for user selection.

- I had to do some locale setting to read and write Korean, but still keeping the menus in English. this guy have been a very great help.

- I downloaded a GNOME theme from http://www.gnome-look.org/ with mac keyword.

 

But still there are things that I have to fix.

- wireless connection. Even with the proper firmware and stuff, I could not use the wireless lan with WEP and other security features.

- location(network) profile manager. I need a better one. The one included in the FC4 sucks. It’s not stable at all.

- Hibernation. This is a very usefull feature for laptops. I don’t want to shut down and boot everytime.

- Netspot(my school’s wireless lan service) availability? If this thing doesn’t work for Netspot, I won’t use linux that much in school, cuz I have to connect the lines and do IP configuration everytime.