Got myself a laptop

[Husse]

A HP 530 for a bargain prize
Vista preinstalled?
Took almost two hours before it was ready to use!
So far I have not installed Mint but that's for tomorrow

[Fred]

Congratulations Husse.

I have been wanting a laptop for a long time but never could convince myself to spend the money for one.

Fred

[Zwopper]

So we won't be seeing much of you then , since you'll be hanging around waiting for Vista to reboot and reboot and...
Anyone up for moderator!?
Seriously though, hope it will serve you well and that you'll cure it with a healthy dose of Mint soon!

[GrayWizardLinux]

Congrats Husse - I had desktops many years ago and since then I only own and use laptops. Personally - hate the desktop - Laptops are so nice and Zen and portable. Less invasive to me.

Just curious, why did you NOT install mint over the MS stuff? I did it 2 times on two thinkpads and never had issues. I did a 100% linux mint install and no Windows stuff left on it as such... Why did you have to remove it to get mint on it? couldn't you have done the install overwriting the winoze? like I did? You know a lot more than I do so I am asking. I had no issues to speak of....


the new one I got 3 weeks ago had vista home basic - I downsized it from the more advanced visat so i did not have to pay more $ for something I will never use.

[jokersloose]

Very cool. Have to keep up up to date on the Mint install. I installed 4.0 on my son's HP dv6700 and never could get the headphones to work. So I would really like to know how the install of 5.0 goes for ya.


James

[Dennis99]

Snap! I've had an HP530 since October 07, excellent computer - had no problems whatever.
I left Vista and the recovery partition and tools on it but have hardly used them.
It also has Mint 4.0 and as of yesterday 5.0 as well.

The only problems so far with 5.0 is configuration of the screen/graphics on boot and some other boot issues.

[Fred]

Husse,

I have a suggestion for you. A couple weeks ago I set a friends Laptop up to use data write back instead of the default ordered mode. I also used the noatime mount options.

He was having a lot of disk thrashing before the change.

After changing the ext3 modes, I was amazed at the disk I/O speed up. His disk thrashing was almost completely gone too.

I called him just now and he said he hadn't had any problem with it and he couldn't be happier. His laptop had never run that fast and he felt much better about his drive life expectancy.

If you want to try it, type in a terminal for each ext3 partition:

sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdxx

This is an important step. You must do this before you try to reboot or it might not boot for you.

Change your ext3 fstab entries like the below copies of mine. I am using labels so you can ignore that part if your wish. That is a different issue.


#
# /dev/sda6
# UUID=
LABEL=Root-2 /media/sda6 ext3 noatime,nodiratime,defaults,data=writeback 0 2
#
# /dev/sda7
# UUID=
LABEL=Root-3 / ext3 noatime,nodiratime,defaults,data=writeback,errors=remount-ro 0 1

I have been running my desktop like this for a while now and have had no problems or unintended consequences pop-up. I am getting a little bit of speed-up but not enough to get excited over. I am not sure it would be the best thing to do on a desktop. If you have a power failure you will loose more data because you don't get the 5 sec. journal sync. You would loose whatever hadn't been flushed to disk in a normal flush cycle.

The laptop speed-up, however, was significant. I liked the fact that it reduced the disk thrashing the most though. Power failures aren't much of a problem on a laptop. After all, when was the last time you had a battery fall out, initiating a power failure, on a laptop.

Fred

EDIT: One thing to remember if you decide to do this. You must change the ext3 file system back to the ordered mode, which is the default, in order to make another install. You would use the command:

sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_ordered /dev/sdxx

for each of the ext3 partitions. You would then make the install, fix the fstab to reflect the writeback mode, and then change the filesystem back to writeback with the below command before you reboot with the corrected fstab.

sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdxx

[Husse]

Well, I kept the Vista for fun
Running in Elyssa with working wireless now
@ Fred
Elyssa comes with relatime which speeds up disks.
Kinda like the noatime, but probably a bit safer

[Fred]

Husse,

For a desktop I would agree with you 100%. With a laptop the combination above with data writeback will cut back on the disk thrashing even more. When power failures aren't an issue, there shouldn't be any additional risk with data integrity, You still have the journal.

It was just a suggestion.

Fred

[Husse]

Interesting read about disk options Fred

You would loose whatever hadn't been flushed to disk in a normal flush cycle.

Many (all?) new hard disks have a feature so when a power failure occurs they use the momentum of the spinning disk to make the disk motor a generator. This way they are able to write everything in their cache. But of course all in RAM is lost

[Fred]

Husse,

Hummm... Thanks , I didn't know that. Interesting idea.

Fred

[Husse]

One interesting point
Vista was "preinstalled" - I really think it was not - perhaps half installed
It took two hours or thereabout and the only "extra" I did was to install Avira antivir (used that since the turn of the century)
Mint took less than half an hour including the fix to bcm43xx (skipped language packs though)

[GrayWizardLinux]

I am glad you are getting stuff working. Enjot the laptop - as i said that is all I use. I love them!!!

ENJOY!!!!


p.s. now you can update your picture of you lounging with the laptop on your lap on the louge chair sunning yourself!

[GrayWizardLinux]

Mean to ask in my PM to you.... how are you liking the laptop????

I swear by them personally. As stated, that is all i own or ever would own.

[Husse]

It's a bit "simple" there is no hd lamp....
But the keyboard is fine - except the enter key that only seems to work in the top part
And I always use a mouse - I see touchpads as an emergency solution

[GrayWizardLinux]

the top part of the enter button???? it may be a button connection issue mechanically if I understand you right.

The mouse - i use mice on my 2 mac laptops for many reasons and sometimes i use the trackpad. they are more office machines. the linux is truly my mobile/portable machine and laptop as such so no way to use a mouse on my laptop.


for fine work like weblayout - the mouse is so much nicer I do agree.

For general stuff the trackad is fine.

I am glad you are getting it going. It may grow on you a bit! Takes a while.

[MagnusB]

One interesting point
Vista was "preinstalled" - I really think it was not - perhaps half installed
It took two hours or thereabout and the only "extra" I did was to install Avira antivir (used that since the turn of the century)
Mint took less than half an hour including the fix to bcm43xx (skipped language packs though)

My previous stock HP laptop with Vista preinstalled took me 3 hrs to get running, 1 hr just to go through the first boot sequence another 2 hrs with updates and reboots. Just made me dislike HP even more, the only other issue I have with them is that they render the bios useless by disabling clocking features (had a HP laptop with an AMD processor which was overclocked and thus overheating, with no possibility to clock it down).
Anyway, I found that many HP laptops play nice with Linux, but I still love my Lenovo 3000 V200 with Intel chips and open source drivers

[Husse]

Vista preinstalled took me 3 hrs to get running, 1 hr just to go through the first boot sequence another 2 hrs with updates and reboots.

Something like that for me too - but not an hour to go through the first boot sequence but a really long time

[MagnusB]

I love the updates who require a reboot, Vista handles them just fine
Anyway, congrats on a new laptop.

[MagnusB]

@ Fred,
I just came to thinking, as I have done the writeback thingamajiig earlier on a desktop, and I seem to remember that you have to edit menu.lst as well:

Code: Select all

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

and add on the # defoptions line:

# defoptions=quiet splash rootflags=data=writeback

and same at # altoptions:

# altoptions=(recovery mode) single rootflags=data=writeback

(all I added was rootflags=data=writeback at the end of those lines)
Then you have to update grub:

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub