I've recently installed RH9 on my Dell Latitude laptop. For the most part, it is ok once it boots up. Therein lies the issue:

The bootup sequence for Linux is a bit too long. It first brings up the daemons and gets it up to speed to bring up the XDM login screen. That may take a minute or so. Once you've entered your username and password, it will take another minute to boot up to the UI (KDE).

This is a bit impractical for daily use of a laptop where constant shutdowns and bootups happen. How does one cope with this?

I have a Compaq with Mandrake 9.1. Once mine is up, I leave it up. My laptop ran for almost 3 months solid this summer while I was in school with no problems.

kramer--

out of curiousity, how did you manage battery life during that time? i've given up on getting standby to work on my inspiron 8200. also, did mandrake flip out on you after closing and reopening the lid?

crashx--

mandrake 9.1 takes a while to boot up on my laptop, too. it's definitely slower than xp.

Well, I've actually taken a moe scientific approach, based on a bet. My friend bet my that Xp doesn't load quicker than linux, and I bet him it did. We timed it 6 times, 3 on AC, 3 on Batt. (It took about 10 seconds longer on bat.) I was shocked and amazed to find out that Mandrake 9.1 only takes 3 seconds (on average) to boot than XP pro. It sure doesn't feel like that.

Now, I will comment that my laptop's pretty speedy, and I run alot of things under Xo at start up, and the average boot time of either os was about 2min 30sec. That feels like forever though when a professor's giving notes, and you're still not to a point where u can do anything but listen, and wish u're machine would finish quicker.

I'd suggest you guys actually time the difference. I think u'll be surprized, or maybe I've got some special configuration that somehow boots quicker than normal. I dunno.

As a side note, Hibernate (suspend 2 disk) would eb the perfect answer..... if it worked..... or if we knew how to make it work....

2 minutes to boot up is a pretty good time, if you really want to speed it up you could prevent kudzu from running at boot up and also stop it from querying the network card - those are the 2 things that slow down my boot up.

On the downside, you'd have to manually start your connection via ethernet.

I never ran it on the battery. My APM nor ACPI works, so Im sure the battery would last all of about 15 minutes or so. Mine doesnt do anything when I close the lid, and I think the standby feature is specific to the ACPI control, which is somewhat hit or miss. I always lock my screen before I shut the lid anyway, for security reasons.

kramer--

thanks for the reply. so does that mean that you weren't transporting it to and from different places? i was picturing you leaving it on and just closing the lid when taking it from place to place.

No, it stayed in my dorm room all the time, connected to our network. I always shut the lid whenever I left or didnt want to be distracted, and it naver had any problems there. As far as carrying it place to place (like class, should I choose to attend ) if I could get the ACPI working I would, but until then, I seriously doubt it would last more than 15-20 minutes on battery alone.

swsuspend may be the solution for laptop on battery
i'll have to try it see :

Oh, well, here's an FYI for Compaq, and HP laptops running Mandrake 9.1:

To get ACPI working:

1) Install ACPI, and ACPID through the packages configuration.
2) Reboot
3) edit /etc/lilo.conf, and under your linux boot options, you will see the "append" line. In there will be "acpi=off" Change that to "acpi=on"

Also, I've found that some laptops require you to put in disk one, and starts it with "apm=off acpi-on" plus whatever other boot options you run, like "noauto". Just an FYI... and it's worked on 2 compaq and 1 HP machines I've tried it on. Also worked on my desktop :-p

Tried that already, and the acpi=on value causes it to freeze at boot, right after the Lilo screen. any other suggestions?

The long boot-up is related to what services you have running.
This applies to the kernel and to the desktop. For true speedy delivery everything has to match. Otherwise, you are sitting through everything "timing out".

[There is also the option of linear as opposed to standard set-up for boot. The setting puts the files one after another, cylinder-by cylinder. But that, I believe, is a choice during the installation. It is supposed to make a significant difference on slower machines.]

From the gui in RH: "The red hat start button"->System setting->Server settings>Services (configuration editor).

[I don't have Mandrake, but I am sure you have the same type of tool--it is a variation on the old sysV configuration editor.] There will be an init # and a list of services. Look them up before you turn them off.--you run the same risk of hosing everything as you do with Win2000 or XP pro.

Edit the services you are running. Set up alternate boot-ups by passing the init number to the lilo/ grub command line. less /etc/inittab for information.

Also, something I haven't tried yet, lookup information on the different desktops and window managers.

Frankly, you should be able to b*tchslap XP on boot-up time--if you're not running networking or kudzu.

Oh, BTW, once you get the hang of this linux thing, you may want to boot initially to the command-line to do stuff like this.

Something I have been too lazy to do-yet--is to make up a little script to initialize and turn on networking if it is off on boot. I have an old laptop I haven't loaded with linux, but that is something I would definitely do with it. Scripts with a memorable name take the place of the regular command-line set of commands. Two scripts can give you two completely different setting and address schemes. [That old laptop, is old enough that APM/ACPI is known-bad. Not yours, mine.]

P.S. You may also look into what the hard drive parameters are. During install they might have defaulted to safe (Read that as really slow) settings. That can make a significant difference in boot up. It is the equivalent to having hampsters in there. Get familiar with the command hdparm. You will be someone's hero for that.

[Sorry about the wrong entry for finding the sysV type editor in RH9-on the KDE Desktop. My bad.]

I am truly lost with the power management stuff. Sorry.

mine boots to the login screen in about 1 min 20 secs from power off
thats on a PIII 680 Mhz, 384 MB sdram running mandrake 9.1

is your dma enabled? Im running mandrake 9.1 on my Tecra S1 and i have similar slow bootup times to yours due to
not able to enable DMA.