Slackware on Pangolin Performance

[isantop]

I hacked open the drivers from the System76 restore repositories and I was unable to get the wireless card to be recognized by Slackware. I compiled the modules, installed them and loaded them, but they still did not work on Slackware. I could not get the actual hardware to be seen. I located the driver for the wireless card from Realtek. I will try to compile that module into the kernel for Slackware this evening.

The upshot is the Nvidia driver I installed for Slackware is better than the one from the Ubuntu repositories. I wish they would make the restore files available as regular source as well as that .deb file. Sometimes the Ubuntu repos leave a little to be desired. I know they are good in general, but I always end up doing custom stuff. They never seem to give me exactly what I want.

The source from the System76 Driver Application is written in Python, and you should be able to view it in any distribution by extracting it (As an archive) to a directory. In that, there should be a filesystem structure with only /opt. In that, is all of the python source, specifically in /opt/system76/src/.

If you need, I could probably upload an archive with all of the source files included.

[3Miro]

@pilbender: I know hat you mean about.

This is bad news about the wireless driver. I though system76 came with Intel cards that have FOSS drivers. Good to know in the future, I will have to double-check for my next purchase. As far as Linux drivers go, Ubuntu is the best, due to its size, it provides nicer support for all drivers available or Linux.

Gnome should show you the battery left, if not, something is not setup correctly (or there is a bug).

Someone from System76 should be able to help with the suspend/hibernate under Ubuntu.

Ubuntu alternate install has more options about encryption and installing a minimal system from "scratch" (similar to Arch and Gentoo, but it is not as customizable).

I don't see much difference between Gnome and XFCE, you can easily adjust one UI to look/work like the other, though I understand it, if you don't like Gnome. You can try Xubuntu or Kubuntu for basically replacement of Gnome. Those are almost the same in any way other than the DE (due to the Gnome-centric nature of Ubuntu, there are occasional issues, especially for KDE, but overall those are great options).

There are "unofficial" ppa repositories that you can connect to get newer Nvidia drivers and such for Ubuntu. Also, in terms of easy to install, Ubuntu Software Center is the best in the business (other distros are slacking on that part).

[bill516]

It would be nice if pillbender would do a piece on what it took to get Slackware running once he has it configured. I am curious and I think others would be.

I am running Ubuntu 10.4, Debian Squeeze and Mepis 8.5. Everything works save tht Mepis will suspend but it refuses to come out of hibernation properly. Debian Squeeze is fine.

For Squeeze it might be necessary to download and install firmware for wireless, depending on the chips involved. I did it from the Debian repos with no difficulty at all using the ethernet connection on my Pangolin.

Might be a similar situation for Slackware?

Ubuntu 10.4 will stay on this machine as the "go to, always works" distribution while I fool around with other things. But I have to say that Debian Squeeze is impressively stable and pleasantly quick even in its present "frozen" configuration.

[pilbender]

I can't disagree with some of the sentiment here. To say the Gnome is not a good desktop environment is to say Linux is not a good OS because I can't get it configured correctly. It's totally ridiculous. But I'm a Gnome hater right down to the core because I can't seem to get around the UI very effectively. It has always been unintuitive and frustrating for me

And I am aware of Kubuntu and the other Ubuntu variants. I was not aware of the alternate option for installing to LVM with Luks encryption. Interesting option, but I'm mostly frustrated with the way Ubuntu pidgin holes the user into a certain way of doing things. That's my biggest gripe. While it seems to be the best distribution out of the box (I give it strong props for that), it always gets in my way as I try to change things. I end up wasting vast amounts of time trying to get it to do what want. Not so with a more power user centric type of distro like Slackware.

About the FOSS driver comment. I can't say the drivers are not FOSS, except for the Nvidia driver, which I know is not FOSS. I'm not sure about the wireless. And I can't criticize System 76 for not using drivers that are in the main kernel development tree. They are selling a complete system, and a very good one at that. I'm not a typical user. I've been using Linux for over 15 years so I'm pretty set in my ways. To the extent that I can't follow my own way, I can get pretty frustrated.

I did get wireless working on the Serval Professional. I consider this that last and most important thing. I was able to identify the hardware with my dual boot configuration in Ubuntu. Here is the thread that helped me identify the location of the driver from Realtek:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...laptop-790732/

And here is the direct download of the original driver:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...Downloads=true

The one I chose was the RTL8192SE download. Then I did a make, make install, and reboot as suggested in the readme.txt from said download.

There are still other things to test under Slackware, like suspend, the built in web cam, and the card reader. I will post back my experiences with that if I'm successful on getting those items working. It was said here earlier, but I'll say it again. The Serval Professional is awesome machine and it does work well if you use it the way System 76 ships it. It also has hardware that works under Linux. These are big important things and a few years ago, we had no options like this. So I'm grateful for System 76 and the work they do and I'm more than happy to endorse and support them.

[pilbender]

It would be nice if pillbender would do a piece on what it took to get Slackware running once he has it configured. I am curious and I think others would be.

I intend to do this. I looked all over the internet and did a lot of research before I bought the Serval Professional. I think I made a good decision despite my disappointments with getting certain hardware working. This is how it used to be in Linux and I was hoping to avoid some of it altogether. Not because I mind, but because of time. In fact, I haven't really been able to use the system because I have to get other work done. I currently have 2 development jobs so my days are pretty full.

I was notified, yesterday, that one of my jobs will end at the end of November, so I will lose my corporate issued laptop, that's running Slackware of course So I'm pretty motivated to get my Serval working the way I need it because it is my livelihood.

One of the great things about the Linux landscape now is that hardware companies are making drivers for Linux. So we have a lot of options that we didn't have even a couple of years ago. In general, it looks like I'm going to be able to get things working off the original drivers for the hardware. Right now I've only done this with 2 things: Nvidia and Realtek for the graphics card and wireless respectively.

I think there are a lot of people looking for that good hardware at a decent price with full Linux support. I know I've been waiting over a decade for it.

[3Miro]

Driver support has improved tremendously under Linux, however, there is more to be desired. Also, I am holding the proprietary wireless driver as a point against System 76 (it is still a great company, I am just pointing out one thing that they can improve).

When it comes to video, only Intel video cards have free (as in freedom) drivers and those are messed up sometimes. Intel video falls short of ATI and NVIDIA in all but power consumption, so if one wants great quality video, then one is stuck with prop-driver. (AMD has new FOSS driver for their 5xxx series, but it hasn't made its way to Ubuntu and Sys76 works with Ubuntu only)

On the other hand, there is plenty of good wireless chips that have free drivers.

Reasons why I think System76 should try to ship hardware with free drivers:
1. Prop drivers often break during updates. Drivers that are free get tested along with all the modules in a kernel update, which means that they are far less likely to break, which means less maintenance for Sys76, which means happier customers.
2. For wireless in particular, after reinstall/clean upgrade, one is forced to find a wired connection to get the prop drivers and this can be hard for some people.
3. Those of us that don't use Ubuntu may have hard time setting things up. I think Sys76's choice to support Ubuntu and Ubuntu only is 100% percent correct in the sense that they cannot provide support/packages for every single distro out there, however, with "free" hardware, they can implicitly do that.
4. We already payed money for the hardware, it is ridiculous for manufacturers to put restrictions on the drivers. We should all use our money against them, buy only fully supported hardware and thus force all manufacturers to give FOSS drivers. If Sys76 provides only "free" hardware, then they will support the community in that effort.

I have a Sys76 laptop and it only need the NVIDIA driver. I also have a non-Sys76 laptop and I so wish I had the money and the time to do better research on the wireless. I mean it works, but it is always couple of extra hours of reading/downloading/compiling/setting up.

Argh ... enough ranting. I am glad pilbender got everything working and I am glad that I have to also research Sys76 before my next purchase (cross fingers for Santa).

[pilbender]

I typed up a nice, well thought out update to post here. Then I picked up my laptop and hit some mouse buttons by accident and lost it.

I'll just try and list out what I remember. Things not working:

• Skype microphone, although the microphone itself works. Might just need to roll back to an earlier version of Skype.
• Suspend
• Mouse Scrolling (using the right edge of the touch pad)

Things that are working that I haven't mentioned:

• The SD card reader, pops right up in Dolphin. Works like a dream. This hasn't always been the case for me with other laptops.
• DVD RW
• USB
• Dual Display, Oh yeah baby!
• Sound, which is really good through my Bose headphones External speakers, built-in microphone.
• Web Cam, yep and nothing special had to be done either. It just worked.

Things I don't know and really don't care about:

• Finger print reader. I encrypt my hard disk with Luks AES 256 encryption. I don't need to dink around with a reader that might give me trouble. Plus, my RAM and all my data and configurations are secured no matter where the disk ends up.
• I don't own a firewire device
• I don't have an E-SATA device
• I doubt I'll ever use a modem again based on several years of not even hearing about them let alone needing one. Side note, do you all remember BBS's? I did my time on 1200 baud, believe me.
• Bluetooth, I have a phone I could try and couple with it, but I really don't use Bluetooth. Might buy a Bluetooth mouse now. It'd be cool not to have that sticking out the side anymore.
• HDMI, I don't even know what it is let alone if I need to have it working. I might be a developer by trade, but I really don't try to keep up with the latest consumer electronics. I'm sure it's some handy dandy interface that kicks ***, but think Allegory of the Cave and you'll understand what I mean.

A couple of other things worth mentioning.... I am still on Slackware current as I was trying give myself the best odds of getting the wireless card working. So I'm running Linux kernel version 2.6.35.7. It didn't work so I don't see a need to use current, but it's too much trouble to roll back. Things are stable and I don't want to go back right now.

I also used Alien Bob's multilib setup from 13.1. Again, no problems here... Well maybe that's the problem with Skype because it's 32 bit, who knows? I'll have to look into that some more.

This thing burns through battery like nobody's business. Seriously, it lasts about an hour even when I'm not hammering it. That's okay with me because I bought this laptop to be mobile and have speed, not necessarily to have long battery life. But for those that think it's important, keep that in mind.

I might test Ubuntu to see if it's any better or there's something more I can do to extend the battery. 2 hours would be nice.

I did some nasty partiition hackery to get Ubuntu working. I load it with Lilo (the one true boot loader and put Grub in the root super block for Ubuntu. I had to mount the boot partition for Ubuntu to get Lilo to see it from Slackware. At least now I can reference Ubuntu or apply firmware updates if I need to in the future. Firmware updates always seem to be supplied for Ubuntu and not generically to be used with other distros.

If anyone needs specific help with any of this, I'll be more than happy to assist. I'm not promising a fast response, but I will respond eventually. I'm just warning people ahead of time; I'm pretty busy.

Suspend. I really want that working at some point. When I do figure it out, I'll post that solution as well. I really consider Suspend that last big thing. Once that's working, I'll be totally happy.

[isantop]

Actually, I think Mouse Scrolling might actually work. It's not a synaptics touchpad, and thus, the scrolling is different. In Ubuntu, to scroll up, you touch the upper right corner of the pad, and to scroll down, you touch the lower right corner. You might try this out, as it probably works fine for you.

[pilbender]

Got Skype working. I figured it was a matter of finding the right volume and audio settings. It was a little weird in kmix, but I have it now. Just needed to play around with it some more.

The scrolling sort of works. I tried touching the corner and it doesn't work. I can get to move by dragging up and down on the right edge but it's not right. I'll play with some more settings for this.

Suspend is still not working. I haven't spent much more time on it. Maybe I will this weekend.

scott

[pilbender]

I've spent some time with suspend and it is not looking good. I don't boot Linux too often on any machine and I'm not used to waiting for the kernel to load. It takes a really long time, on both Slackware and Ubuntu. I think the original install had some sort of caching thing going to make if faster. I can't remember for sure. I only booted it a couple of times.

This means I can't go to the coffee shop and just open the lid and go. I have to go through the boot up process. With the short battery life, it really takes away from my convenience. I do a lot of work from the coffee shop. We have meetings at least a couple of times a week at coffee shops. So, not having a working suspend on this system is really quite inconvenient for me and my work flow.

I've been communicating with System76 support and despite my running a non-standard, unsupported configuration, they have been helpful. I've been tinkering with various boot parameters. Here are the 2 that were suggested:

acpi_os_name=Linux
acpi_psi="Linux"

I had some luck with the second one. But I was unable to get the display back. Ended up doing a hard reset. Nvidia might be getting in the way here. I may try switching to the nv driver or that nouveau driver. Then I'll have to check dual display again to see if that works in this configuration. I need to be able to switch the second display on for overhead presentations. Plus I like using 2 displays when I'm coding.

So that's the update. If I'm able to get through the suspend problem, I'll post the solution.