alessandro basili wrote:
> Moreover I'd like to understand if some of the tools I need to work are
> Debian compliant, considering that they work surely under RedHat (I'd like
> to add that they are not open source, they are hardware tools for FPGA
> development). Can someone of you give me some hints?
> Just one more, having just a try is too long for me, because of my ignorance
> in this field, so I'd rather like to know if it is possible to do so in a
> "brief" time (without ending after 4 weeks with something like: "ok, it's
> not possible to do").

I don't have a HP laptop.

The quickest and easiest way to find out, what is working hardware-wise
is to download/get a Knoppix-CD or DVD, insert it and boot from it. From
a running system from CD it's also possbile to install the
Knoppix-system onto your hard disk. Check out

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

Knoppix is a CD/DVD-based 'live distribution' based on Debian.

Johannes


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alessandro basili wrote:

> Thanks a lot for your answer. Do you have any experiences in getting
> rpm packets on debian? do you think is possible to use a software
> designed for RedHat on Debian?
>
> Thanks

To my knowledge, it is not possible to use rpm packages on Debian, or
use deb packages on non-Debian distributions. I don't know exactly what
you meant by a "software designed for Redhat", but there may be a
equivalent for Debian. But Red Hat or Fedora-specific tools aren't
available usually in other distributions.

Besides, you should give a try of Knoppix which is, as Johannes
Wiedersich said, an excellent tool to test your laptop's Linux
abilities, as its hardware detection process is quite powerful and accurate.

Regards,

---
François Obada


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François Obada wrote:

> alessandro basili wrote:
>
>> Thanks a lot for your answer. Do you have any experiences in getting
>> rpm packets on debian? do you think is possible to use a software
>> designed for RedHat on Debian?
>>
>> Thanks
>
>
> To my knowledge, it is not possible to use rpm packages on Debian, or
> use deb packages on non-Debian distributions. I don't know exactly
> what you meant by a "software designed for Redhat", but there may be a
> equivalent for Debian. But Red Hat or Fedora-specific tools aren't
> available usually in other distributions.
>
> Besides, you should give a try of Knoppix which is, as Johannes
> Wiedersich said, an excellent tool to test your laptop's Linux
> abilities, as its hardware detection process is quite powerful and
> accurate.
>
> Regards,
>
> ---
> François Obada
>
thank you both! I'll have a try and let you know...

regards

Alessandro


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François Obada wrote:
> alessandro basili wrote:
>
>> Thanks a lot for your answer. Do you have any experiences in getting
>> rpm packets on debian? do you think is possible to use a software
>> designed for RedHat on Debian?

There is a package called 'alien'. With this is it possible to install
individual software packages from rpm archieves etc. (Ie. convert the
rpm-format to debian format and install).

If your application has no special requirements on things like exact
kernel version, special libraries, kernel modules etc. there's a good
chance it will work out of the box.

To quote from the manual:

DESCRIPTION
alien is a program that converts between Red Hat rpm, Debian deb,
Stampede slp, Slackware tgz, and Solaris
pkg file formats. If you want to use a package from another linux
distribution than the one you have
installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your
preferred package format and install it.
It also supports LSB packages.

WARNING
Despite the high version number, alien is still (and will probably
always be) rather experimental soft-
ware. It's been under development for many years now, but there are
still many bugs and limitations.

alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like
init, libc, or other things that are
essential for the functioning of your system. Many of these packages are
set up differently by the differ-
ent distributions, and packages from the different distributions cannot
be used interchangeably. In gen-
eral, if you can't remove a package without breaking your system, don't
try to replace it with an alien
version.


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Hi there!

I'd agree with one of the other posters that said to try knoppix. If
nothing else, it does a very good job of autodetecting the hw. If it
can't find something, that can give you a good idea of where your
trouble spots will lie.

As far as installing Linux goes, here's what you will likely find:
* Your CPU, graphics card, display, trackpad, keyboard, hdd, ethernet
card, usb, sound card, and PCMCIA bus will be supported.
* Your wireless card may be supported. If you do an lspci (under
Knoppix/Debian) and tell us *exactly* what wireless card you have (more
precisely what chipset it uses), someone will be able to tell you if it
is supported
* Suspend to ram will probably not work (Seems to only work on IBM
Thinkpads)
* Suspend to disk will probably work (Seems to work for most people.)
* Your built in sd/memory stick/etc reader may work (about even odds).

As far as using RedHat software, try the "alien" package if you can't
find what you need to use packaged for Debian. Alien allows you to
install software directly from an RPM (RedHat Package Manager file).

HTH,
-Ian

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 19:48 +0200, alessandro basili wrote:
> Hi everyone, I'm very new to Linux in general and expecially to
> Debian, but, considering that I've just bought an HP pavillon
> zd8156ea, that I consider a monster from the harware point of view (at
> least for a laptop), and that I do not want to use Windows anymore
> (because even with 2GB of ram and 3 GHz processor clock looks like it
> is a 8086 processor), I would like to ask if anyone of you have tried
> installing Debian on it. Somewhere I found that Debian is one of the
> most complete linux distribution for laptop, is this true?
> Moreover I'd like to understand if some of the tools I need to work
> are Debian compliant, considering that they work surely under RedHat
> (I'd like to add that they are not open source, they are hardware
> tools for FPGA development). Can someone of you give me some hints?
> Just one more, having just a try is too long for me, because of my
> ignorance in this field, so I'd rather like to know if it is possible
> to do so in a "brief" time (without ending after 4 weeks with
> something like: "ok, it's not possible to do").
>
> Thank you very much...for all your suggestions
>
> Alessandro


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On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 05:52 -0700, Ian Greenhoe wrote:
> * Suspend to ram will probably not work (Seems to only work on IBM
> Thinkpads)

Who told you that? I'm able to suspend to ram and resume from it with my
Acer TravelMate 6000. I never use it (the laptop is on AC most of the
time), but it works anyway.

Koen


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Koen Vermeer wrote:

> On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 05:52 -0700, Ian Greenhoe wrote:
>> * Suspend to ram will probably not work (Seems to only work on IBM
>> Thinkpads)
>
> Who told you that? I'm able to suspend to ram and resume from it with my
> Acer TravelMate 6000. I never use it (the laptop is on AC most of the
> time), but it works anyway.

Seems to work on my Inspiron, too, though I haven't figured out a safe way
to wake it (it comes back from resume and then shuts down).
--
derek


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On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 13:38 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Seems to work on my Inspiron, too, though I haven't figured out a safe way
> to wake it (it comes back from resume and then shuts down).

I also experienced that. In my case, it was caused by a double ACPI
power event. Maybe the same is happening to you.

Koen


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On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 17:18 +0200, Koen Vermeer wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 05:52 -0700, Ian Greenhoe wrote:
> > * Suspend to ram will probably not work (Seems to only work on IBM
> > Thinkpads)
>
> Who told you that? I'm able to suspend to ram and resume from it with my
> Acer TravelMate 6000. I never use it (the laptop is on AC most of the
> time), but it works anyway.
>

I stand corrected. Thank you.

-Ian


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On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 13:38 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:

> Seems to work on my Inspiron, too, though I haven't figured out a safe way
> to wake it (it comes back from resume and then shuts down).

Unable to resume == does not work. This is how it "works" on my current
laptop as well. Sorry, but this really does not qualify as working.
That's like saying that a human can fly without wings: Yeah, you can
travel thru the air, but landing is a real problem.

FWIW, I've heard a lot of reports like this. Which is the reason why I
made my blanket statement.

-Ian




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Ian Greenhoe wrote:

> On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 13:38 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
>
>> Seems to work on my Inspiron, too, though I haven't figured out a safe
>> way to wake it (it comes back from resume and then shuts down).
>
> Unable to resume == does not work. This is how it "works" on my current
> laptop as well. Sorry, but this really does not qualify as working.

No. It works just fine. I didn't say it was unable to resume.
Unfortunately, once resumed, it immediately starts the shut down sequence
because Dell uses the power button to resume. I should have been more
precise. I already knew what happened, I just see no reason to use suspend
over hibernate - so I haven't modified the acpi config to prevent the power
button doing a shutdown on resume. iirc, the way to prevent this is to
turn off acpid during shutdown, then turn it on during resume, then it
doesn't queue the power button press, but as I say I haven't experimented.

> That's like saying that a human can fly without wings: Yeah, you can
> travel thru the air, but landing is a real problem.

It really wasn't _anything_ like that. It would be a pretty week analogy
even if I _had_ said it was unable to resume.

> FWIW, I've heard a lot of reports like this. Which is the reason why I
> made my blanket statement.

Then you started making blanket statements about other people's
experience...
--
derek


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On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 09:18 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> No. It works just fine. I didn't say it was unable to resume.
> Unfortunately, once resumed, it immediately starts the shut down sequence
> because Dell uses the power button to resume. I should have been more
> precise. I already knew what happened, I just see no reason to use suspend
> over hibernate - so I haven't modified the acpi config to prevent the power
> button doing a shutdown on resume. iirc, the way to prevent this is to
> turn off acpid during shutdown, then turn it on during resume, then it
> doesn't queue the power button press, but as I say I haven't experimented.

No. This is still not working. You have a belief that you can get it
to work; you see that with some (possibly minimal effort) you could get
it to work; but you do not actually have real evidence that it works.
Further, the type of failure that you describe makes it possible that it
is not fixable with the current state of the kernel. OTGH, you do have
a valid alternative: instead of suspend to RAM (S3), you can suspend to
disk (S4).

With that said, on my old laptop, I couldn't get S4 to work -- and there
were times that I *really* wanted S4 to work. However, I didn't lose
too much sleep over it since S3 worked. Part of this is that I had an
older laptop, and for some reason which I remained unable to trace down,
kernels past 2.6.8 would not work -- apci/pcmcia issues, and since I
only had networking via a pcmcia card... This is relevant since the
kernel S4 via swap partition has become a *lot* more stable since then.

Now, I'm in the exact opposite position: S4 works and S3 won't. There
are times when the fast resume from S3 would be nice, but I don't have
that option currently. (Mine suspends fine, but the graphics chip won't
come back after resume.)

> > That's like saying that a human can fly without wings: Yeah, you can
> > travel thru the air, but landing is a real problem.
>
> It really wasn't _anything_ like that. It would be a pretty week analogy
> even if I _had_ said it was unable to resume.

Actually, no, I happen to think it's a perfectly fine analogy for what I
was talking about. The point being that, yes, in theory you could do
this, but the current consequences of the action make the action
effectively un-doable.

> > FWIW, I've heard a lot of reports like this. Which is the reason why I
> > made my blanket statement.
>
> Then you started making blanket statements about other people's
> experience...

(Raises eyebrow.) Um, excuse me, but the OP was asking people's
opinions on whether they would be able to get Linux/Debian working on
thier laptop. I expressed an opinion that they likely would not be able
to get S3 to work, but would be able to get S4 to work. I have since
gotten one report of S3 working on different hardware than I described
-- which I am personally glad to hear, since it means that at some point
S3 may work for the two of us, as well. (Which would be a nice state of
affairs.)

However, the OP wanted to know if they would be able to get thier laptop
working *now*, and not in some (possibly) distant future. I was trying
to present an honest opinion based on what I see as the current state of
things, and not pulling any punches. I was not doing this to be
offensive -- which /seems/ to be your take on it, based on your response
-- but to be honest. In order for us to progress, we need to be honest
about where we stand today.

-Ian



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Ian Greenhoe wrote:

> On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 09:18 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
>> No. It works just fine. I didn't say it was unable to resume.
>> Unfortunately, once resumed, it immediately starts the shut down sequence
>> because Dell uses the power button to resume. I should have been more
>> precise. I already knew what happened, I just see no reason to use
>> suspend over hibernate - so I haven't modified the acpi config to prevent
>> the power
>> button doing a shutdown on resume. iirc, the way to prevent this is to
>> turn off acpid during shutdown, then turn it on during resume, then it
>> doesn't queue the power button press, but as I say I haven't
>> experimented.
>
> No. This is still not working. You have a belief that you can get it
> to work; you see that with some (possibly minimal effort) you could get
> it to work; but you do not actually have real evidence that it works.

It suspends, it resumes, I get to watch the whole process, then I get to see
it respond to a shutdown request. When it comes back up, the disk is in a
consistent state without any journal recovery. This is a valid proof of
"working". I won't argue any further.
--
derek


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On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 14:15 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> It suspends, it resumes, I get to watch the whole process, then I get to see
> it respond to a shutdown request. When it comes back up, the disk is in a
> consistent state without any journal recovery.

Hrm. As I think you mentioned before, a debouncer would probably solve
the issue.

Maybe a new interface in /sys/power/* to enable|disable S2|S3|S4|S5
requests? Disable it by default on starting or restarting, and have
scripts like "hibernate" try to enable it when finished cleaning up from
restart (or on initial start).

BTW, I've seen a simular issue on my laptop when waking up from S4 where
it occasionally (maybe 2% of the time?) immediately goes back into S4
after waking up. I'm able to wake it up again, and it's fine. It seems
to happen mainly when I have restarted it less than five minutes after
shutting it down. Annoying, but still only just annoying.

> This is a valid proof of
> "working".

Ya know, I think we should agree to disagree on this point. It seems to
me that, for you, works == this part of the functionality is there.
This is in contrast to me, where works == usable in a practical sense on
a particular machine.

> I won't argue any further.

Glad to hear it. Objections to carrying on a discussion?

-Ian



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