DIYEFI.org Forum

I have to say, I am most impressed with that kernel. I've had it in for nearly a month now, and this is the first kernel (BSD and Linux, 2.4 and 2.6) that can boot my laptop without a special patch. My laptop comes with a buggy bios compiled with a M$ tool that does not function per the ACPI specification. It is possible to ignore the bios and fix the DSDT and pass it to the kernel at boot using a special patch, but with that version, I don't need to! The broken USB-means-boot-fails issue is still present, and the DSDT can fix that, but the kernel handles the rest without crashing quite happily with no extra attention. This is good news for owners of bad hardware like myself.

I do have to wonder though whether the source has been corrupted to accommodate the bad ACPI DSDT code or whether there is a clean work around built in?

Lesson to be learned from this :

DO NOT PURCHASE hardware that people report issues with under Linux. As it will give you trouble. Hardware designers have a lot to answer for IMO. There are a lot of bad blacklisted chipsets out there that can't do certain things properly (northbridges that can't do ATA100 without data loss etc). Buying it supports those bad designers. Do your homework and learn from my mistake. I certainly won't buy without seeing Linux working properly OOTB first again!

The laptop is an A6KM Asustek Turion 64 single core. Other than the ACPI headaches, it's been great. Customer service is excellent. BUT, what does it matter if your OS doesn't run without excess work? Not much!

Fred.

It's worth noting that 2.6.25-1 is available too now, but I haven't tried it. Also, this is from the Debian unstable repository, although, I believe the kernels are done properly for all sections of Debian as they are somewhat critical.

Fred.

When I bought my XPS M1330, one of the selling points was that it was that it was availible pre-loaded with Linux and that Windows XP drivers were built for it still. Nothing pains me more than hardware that doesn't work seamlessly with whatever I throw at it.

But Alas I'm still on the default Vista install. Only because I bought enough hardware to make it run decent. I figure when I jump to Linux or back to XP, I should feel like I have a super computer!!!

I've moved this, but it needs an update too :

• 2.6.25 was no good for some acpi and keyboard reasons
• 2.6.26 was also crap for the same reasons
• 2.6.28 still has the keyboard issues but I'll be looking to get this solved ASAP as I'm using this now and in all other respects it seems good. That said, this box doesn't have a lot of ACPI stuff, so perhaps it's just not getting in my way.

Fred.