My box updated to Slackware 12.1

 

 

 hello guys… been bz with my work… got the maybank / kwsp4 poc and also a few other projects needs to focus on….

 

 

Few things had happen during the last 2 weeks which occupies me with a lot of tasks. I got hold of a new IBM thinkpad R61i laptop with Windows Vista preloaded in it. Its quite stupid for vista 32bit to have limited memory capabilites. At most, you can get only 3GB of detected RAM in vista.

I’ve planned to install my slackware on my thinkpad because my old dell 610 was sent to uganda for my other cliques. They got a project there. Since the laptop was preloaded with vista, with some thinkpad recovery console, configuring the linux boot might be tedious. Thanks to EasyBCD, vista bcdedit no longer in my way. its a marvelous tool to manage vista bootloader. Grab yourself a copy and try it.

Released bout a month ago, slackware 12.1 has proven to be the best of it releases. The installation is quite straightforward using the good ol’ text mode installer. Slackware 12.1 came with kernel 2.6.24.5-smp, and have a lot of compatibility with my new thinkpad. Most of the stuff just work out of box. No need to hassle with extra configurations. Wifi and wired connections works seamlessly and reliable.( My old Dell machine needs ipw2200 wifi driver, but with kernel 2.6.24.5 and later, the drivers are included.) . While in vista, if the wifi disconnected, reconnecting took me about 15 minutes. For whatever reason, vista just hang and not responding to my input. That really beat the shit out of me! . In slackware, bringing it up back took less than a minute!.

Other than that, the thinkpad_acpi just works. For some advanced tasks, scripting and modifying the configuration to match the thinkpad functions can be found at thinkwiki.org. During the installation, there are some configurations that might not be easy for those who just got their hands on linux. But overtime, they will get use to it. the learning curve is there. it is up to them to proceed or not.

this is the screenshot  of my new box. Still in love with Alizee! 😛

 

 

well a few config on X, i got it running for kdm, touchpad functionalities, the dpi issues. Since my thinkpad has only Intel 965 intergrated chipset, it only produce 1280×800 as the highest screen resolution. This was the minimal setting for running SecondLife on windows. The linux secondlife viewer It doesn’t work well with it. you gotta have at least nVidia card. 

Copying large number files and sizes in vista will potentially hang ur machine. It did that like more than 10 times to me. Within a month of using Vista, it was shitting me with 2 bluescreens already.

XP is still better than vista, even though it gave me numerous bluescreen. But that’s solidly different because i know the main cause, but not this one.. 🙁
but still, nothing beats my slackware..