Acer Timeline 3810T

[muckst3r]

Hello All,

I've just gotten started with Ubuntu and a new 3810t this weekend and feel I haven't had nearly as much as success as everyone here. In particular, things run brilliantly for hours but then I inevitably get file system corruption on EXT3 as well as some random segfaults. It's quite bad actually - I generally have to reinstall afterward as fsck.ext3 can't repair the file system adequately. No, I haven't yet ruled out some hardware problems (although memtest86 tests fine). And yes, I've put the HD in IDE mode.

My first question: are you using the 64-bit version of Jaunty / 9.04 or are you sticking with the 32-bit version? Perhaps I've just tried to be too bleeding-edge.

regards,

/m

[serxxx]

(Reposted from the Launchpad group)

Here's another 4810 experience:

I replaced the internal harddrive with a 30GB OCZ SSD that I had
already formatted via USB on another Linux box, to ensure that the
block sizes were "optimal"
(http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/...se-block-size/).

I installed from a Kubuntu 8.10 CD and did a dist upgrade to 9.04.
Everything went fine, except upon reboot the BIOS hung (didn't even
get to GRUB) and then rebooted; when it came up, I went into the BIOS
and changed the interface from AHCI (or whatever it was) to IDE; that
fixed it. It booted without problems directly into KDM.

1. The driver was correctly identified, and the screen resolution
was correctly set. Compiz was enabled by default, and the eye
candy worked (mostly) fine. There were some artifacts
(background windows obscured by pop-up alerts were often not
refreshed correctly when the alerts were dismissed).
Considering how insanely buggy KDE 4.2 is, I'm inclined to blame
KDE.
2. Wireless networking started out beautifully, but at least once
the connection would drop and KDE would refuse to reconnect.
Again, at the moment I'm blaming KDE (see below).
3. I haven't tried bluetooth yet.
4. USB is *mostly* fine; an RF mouse with dongle worked as expected.
5. KDE wouldn't recognize a USB memory stick (again, definitely a
KDE bug -- see below)
6. Within a couple of hours, the KDE panel crashed. Not a laptop
issue.
7. Suspend/resume worked with no problems. In fact, it's got the
*fastest* resume of any laptop I've seen -- it is incredible.
8. Haven't tried hibernate yet.
9. The "toggle the touchpad button" works, but it is a one-way
trip. Once you turn it on, it won't turn off. However, I've
discovered that turning it off, suspending, and resuming causes
it to come back on again. In fact, turning the touchpad off,
suspend, and resuming causes it to come back on again -- even if
the button is lit, saying that the touchpad is off. I think
this is a Ubuntu problem.
10. The SD/MMC/etc. slot works perfectly.
11. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the machine.
The screen is beautiful, and bright. The battery life seems
about on par with the advertised time (haven't done any
strenuous testing, but my wife had it on battery for most of the
day, so 8 hours wouldn't have been far off the mark).
12. The sleep button doesn't seem to be recognized by the default
Ubuntu set-up.
13. The brightness keys are recognized, but don't seem to have any
actual effect.
14. The audio keys are also recognized, but I haven't tested them yet
15. The "blank screen" function works beautifully -- why don't all
laptops have this??

KDE was so twitchy that I installed ubuntu-destop and re-logged in to
Gnome.

1. I haven't seen any artifacts related to alerts, so #1 seems
fixed by this. Hence, it seems to be a KDE problem.
2. I haven't had any problems with wireless, so #2 seems to be a
KDE problem, too.
3. Gnome correctly recognized the USB stick, and would let me mount
it; #5 is definitely a KDE problem.
4. The battery life *seems* a little less robust under Gnome, but
I'll do some timings next week-end.

So, though I hate Gnome because of it's insistence on moving the order
of "Ok/Cancel" buttons, it is definitely less buggy than KDE 4.2, and
the laptop works much better under it. <rant>The button swap was a
horrible user-interface decision. Many people are forced to use
Windows at work, and the order of Ok/Cancel buttons has been a
de-facto standard in UIs for years. The decision to change this order
causes confusion for people having to use multiple desktop
environments, and was entirely arbitrary, or based on vague,
poorly-supported guesses on usability benefits. It should rank as one
of history's worst UI decisions.</rant>

In summary, the laptop works well under Linux. The "disable touchpad"
button is a god-send under Windows, and if anybody figures out how to
get it working correctly under Linux, please post about it. This
touchpad is extremely sensitive, and being able to disable it is
critically important -- and while that part works, being unable to
re-enable it (easily) means that an external mouse is really a
requirement for this laptop under Linux.

[klawlf]

hi serxxx, reactivating the touchpad works fine out of the box here with Mandriva 2009.1

[muckst3r]

hi serxxx, reactivating the touchpad works fine out of the box here with Mandriva 2009.1

That feature works flawlessly here too, straight out of the box.

--
Acer 3810t
u9400
64-bit Ubuntu 9.04

[BooToo]

Can you please confirm if the Ethernet driver also works with the 64 bits 9.4 Ubuntu version?
Many thanks,
BooToo

[muckst3r]

Can you please confirm if the Ethernet driver also works with the 64 bits 9.4 Ubuntu version?
Many thanks,
BooToo

I don't know - it's a struggle for me to find a wired network much anymore! I'll give it a go at work tomorrow and see how it goes.

[bududu]

You are correct, the timer for the battery life never says more than 4 hours but I believe this to be a loose approximation because it also say that the battery life is unknown as well. I have not actually tried to run out the battery in Linux and time it. You might be able to change the brightness of the screen to save some more.

Have anybody tried to run out battery and measure real battery life of 3810T with Ubuntu?
Battery life is one of the most important points for me..

[bududu]

And what about multitouch touchpad? Does it work well under Ubuntu?

Thanks!

[avilella]

Hi bududu,

I think the multitouch options can be turned on by editing the xorg.conf file. For example, adding options like this:

Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "120"# Option "AlwaysCore"

And what about multitouch touchpad? Does it work well under Ubuntu?

Thanks!

[realitygaps]

Hi guys, thanks again for all the info on this thread

Suspend/resume still isnt working for me, with bios 1.04 and kernels 2.6.28 and 2.6.30 on both jaunty and karmic (32bit and 64bit). Suspending works fine but resuming powers off the computer.

Is anyone else still having suspend/resume problems or is it just me?

anyone have any ideas?

Thanks