i've been using linux for a couple of months and i've just noticed a slight annoyance. i'm running RH 7.3 and did a dualboot laptop install with Windows ME on a dell inspiron 8100 with 60GB hdd and 512MB of SDRAM. This question happens to deal with when i'm on batteries. i've drained and recharged the battery, but when i run on batteries in Linux after about 10 minutes, the screen goes black for a few seconds then comes back up dimmer and after that it will continue to blank out and come back up. I don't think the battery is the problem because i get a full 2.5 hours on windows. Any settings or config files i can change to solve this slight annoyance?

Also, this is just a curiosity question. i've noticed when surfing the net, whenever a site uses flash, my browser (all of them) them tend to hang for a long while. In netscape and mozilla there's that circular arrow animation on the tabs of the webpage that freezes, so i know that it's "hung". My hypothesis on this is that it's because a lot of flash animations have migrated to the version 6 player and the plugins for linux browsers for netscape and mozilla (opera just uses the netscape plugins) is at version 5. I guess i'm just asking, is it me or has anyone else noticed this? I've noticed that the flash movies aren't as smooth as they are on browsers in windows. oh well, just a thought.

With the first item... this could be a number of things, APM acting funky, or possibly RH doesn't compile their stock kernel with support for the dell 8000 series Inspirons. Yes, no kidding, there is a seperate kernel option just for your series laptop, something funky about its power management probably. First try rmmod'ing apm or acpi to start with, this will make it impossible to tell how much battery life there is, but hey, if it gets rid of the monitor annoyance...

You could also possibly have X-windows configured incorectly and this is making the monitor freak out. Check out what else people have had to say over at www.linux-laptop.net

Second, you're probably right, I just ignore Flash a lot, but the plug-ins are usually available through Macromedia's site... albeit a little buried. If they haven't built a new one for 6... there's nothing really you can do, aside from of course send them a nastigram.

Cheers,

Finegan

thank you, for your reply Finegan. being new to linux, there's so much to learn. at least in the video area, i'm pretty sure i have that configured right. i had a lot of help from a few people with experience downloading and configuring the nvidia drivers for my kernal version. i want to try what you suggested but i have no idea what you're talking about! LOL. What is rmmod'ing apm or acpi ? and is it reversible if i mess something up? Thank you again for your help.

megaspaz

edit did a man on rmmod and tried it with the command rmmod /dev/apm and it said module not loaded.

oh well it seems that its the standby thing that makes it blank out on battery mode. i just have to hit a key and it pops up again. it's weird cause i have the standy and hibernate set to off in both battery and powered. oh well.