[gobolinux-users] Useful things for laptops

[Rohan Nicholls]

I thought of something else.  Automatic wireless network handling, so 
mind your own business and if you are curious you can easily see if 
there are any wireless networks available.  Actually easy wireless 
network driver handling would be great.  A colleague of mine was 
describing the process (find the windows driver, use the wrapper 
program, and then, and then, "Oh, and it can be a bit flaky"), and I ran 
away, but it is very handy, and again will be important for linux on the 
desktop, as more and more the laptop/portable device will be the norm.

Rohan

Rohan Nicholls wrote:
> Yeah, yeah I'll get back to work.  However I thought before I do that I 
> would share a recent experience.
> 
> I have started in the last couple of months working for a large (you 
> have probably heard of them) company.  So you have to use a supplied 
> laptop and on this laptop is windows and you are not allowed to mess 
> with this. :-(
> 
> So I have vmware running on here for development, but having been forced 
> to use windows I have noticed some nice things M$ have managed to get 
> (almost) right.  And yes I know that Apple have managed to get it much 
> "righter" on their laptops, but they won't give me one of those.
> 
> I was thinking that these are things I would like to have just work on a 
> linux laptop, or at least be able to get configured REALLY easily (ie. a 
> good howto). Here is the list, and I am thinking I will experiment with 
> my other laptop to see if I can get this sorted out, and will have 
> questions on how this is done.  On linux I tend to use a pretty bleak, 
> for some, window manager (ratpoison/stumpwm) so maybe some of this is 
> already implemented in KDE, but I don't think so.  Please correct me if 
> I am wrong.
> 
> * Consistently (mostly) if I close the lid of the laptop it suspends.  I 
> think it starts out suspending to ram and then to the hard drive after a 
> certain amount of time.  Open the lid, wait a bit, login and continue 
> where you left off.  Btw. vmware can suspend the virtual machine 
> flawlessly, so this must be possible.
> 
> * If I plug things in they become available automatically.  Mostly this 
> is various usb devices: usbsticks, mice, keyboards.  I am sure there are 
> other things but I cannot think of them at the moment.
> 
> * Multiple displays.  The laptop we have (dell latitude d410) has quite 
> a small screen, and you plug it into a docking station at which point 
> you have access to a 17 inch display.  Yes it is a bit of a pain to have 
> to do it all the time, but at least it is accessible: display options, 
> set the resolutions for the displays, drag the display icons into the 
> placement you want (extend desktop from big screen on left, to laptop 
> display on the right), hit apply and everything is handled on the fly. 
> There is much room for improvement (remember a variety of settings, 
> detect the screen settings on the fly and pick an intelligent default), 
> but it is really handy to have and not having to restart the Xserver to 
> make it happen (losing all your open apps).  This last one is probably 
> mostly my ignorance of X, but having this easily available would be 
> really great.
> 
> I guess that is it.  Linux is way ahead on virtual desktops, and being 
> able to configure your X environment, but these things I have found 
> handy and almost automatically handled for you on windows.
> 
> I think figuring out a way to have this configure itself or have an easy 
> gui to handle it would be one of the biggest wins for linux making 
> progress in the laptop/desktop market (along with the cool xgl stuff I 
> saw in the demo recently), and I have no idea how difficult it would be 
> to figure out.
> 
> Thanks for listening. ;-)
> 
> Rohan
> 
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