Other Distros

Puppy related raves and general interest that doesn't fit anywhere else
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sketchman
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Joined: Thu 01 Jun 2006, 17:20
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#821 Post by sketchman »

Colonel Panic wrote:It would be good to be able to boot straight into XFCE though.
Got it. Working on mine, anyway. Just replace your "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" with the modified attached one. Modified "rc.local" looks for "startxfce4" and uses it if found, and if not uses the default "startx" script. Either way should get you from GRUB to desktop in one keystroke.

EDIT: Just noticed a glitch with this. Thunderbird (for example) can't find its config directory and makes a new one in "/". Just a heads up. No big deal really as you can just make a symlink in "/" for your original folder, but if someone knows how to fix that I will and reupload the file.
Attachments
rc.local.gz
Search for and run XFCE4 at boot. For Absolute 14.01
(613 Bytes) Downloaded 424 times
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

nooby
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Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#822 Post by nooby »

jakfish wrote:Been using Lubuntu 12.04 for over a month now, full install from live cd onto 6gb partition of 120GB SSD that also boots Windows 7, and can also boot Android 4.0 from sd card and Dpup Exprimo 5.15 from USB.

For the netvertible Lenovo S10-3t, Lubuntu 12.04 is the definitive Linux in terms of speed, cpu temperature control, and battery life. Fastest boot I've found and with a four-second shutdown.

Obviously, Lubuntu has the maddening root issues along with the other documented annoyances in this thread.

But this post:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerMan ... vingTweaks

and specifically, the Aggressive Link Power Management drops cpu temp 5-10 degrees C, and the battery life is the best I've found for the S10-3t, even better than Lenovo's own Win7 power management.

Of course, I use Puppy on my other laptops either b/c puppeee has good temp control or (with some machines) I don't need great battery life.

But ALPM is something definitely worth exploring if folks are interested in staying away from the a/c adapter.

Jake
Such is very interesting. To get the OS to use less power
is what I want too.

My Netbook makes the Fan run like mad and sooner or later
it whould fail and get over heated. So if one could keep it below
the temp it set in that would be cool :)
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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greengeek
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Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#823 Post by greengeek »

jakfish wrote:this post:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerMan ... vingTweaks
and specifically, the Aggressive Link Power Management drops cpu temp 5-10 degrees C, and the battery life is the best I've found for the S10-3t, even better than Lenovo's own Win7 power management.
Interesting point they make about dark colours consuming more power than light colours, on an LCD screen.

jakfish
Posts: 762
Joined: Fri 18 Jul 2008, 19:09

#824 Post by jakfish »

This also seems to help:


In Terminal: gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub
In GRUB:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

replace with:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi.power_nocheck=1"

Save, update GRUB using

sudo update-grub

REBOOT, then open the Terminal again and type:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

And replace the 2nd to last line with:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_osi=\"Linux\""

from:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... emperature

I can't tell if this GRUB-editing is the equivalent puppy command "acpi=force" command in syslinux.cfg

Jake

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rcrsn51
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#825 Post by rcrsn51 »

greengeek wrote:Interesting point they make about dark colours consuming more power than light colours, on an LCD screen.
This makes sense. Consider the display on an LCD calculator. The digits become visible because they are darker than the background. An applied voltage causes the crystals to line up and form a polarizing filter that blocks the light.

So it takes more power to create more dark regions on the display.

So I guess that the default wallpaper in Precise is actually a good idea? :wink:

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greengeek
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#826 Post by greengeek »

rcrsn51 wrote:So it takes more power to create more dark regions on the display.
I guess that means that every black pixel has fully lighted pixels hiding behind it? What if a particular pixel was "almost black? Are there "halfway states" of the polarised filtration? I wonder what colour would be the lowest overall power consumption for a desktop/background. And whats the difference between a traditional LCD screen and the newer LED LCD screens? - I'm guessing that the older LCD screens must keep the light (fluoro) on all the time and black out pixels as required, but I wonder if the LED ones have a single white LED at each pixel location - allowing dimming to be controlled on a "per pixel" level?

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rcrsn51
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#827 Post by rcrsn51 »

greengeek wrote: I'm guessing that the older LCD screens must keep the light (fluoro) on all the time and black out pixels as required, but I wonder if the LED ones have a single white LED at each pixel location - allowing dimming to be controlled on a "per pixel" level?
LED monitors are still LCD displays. But they use LED lights instead of cold cathode fluorescent tubes to create the backlighting. So they are more energy-efficient.

If you want to see an interesting effect, hold a pair of anti-glare sunglasses in front of your LCD monitor and slowly rotate them.

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greengeek
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#828 Post by greengeek »

Ahh, yes. The greater the rotation, the greater the attenuation of light. Is that how each pixel intensity is controlled?

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rcrsn51
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#829 Post by rcrsn51 »

Here's an interesting question with LCD monitors. If you go into the monitor's control panel and decrease the brightness, what are you actually doing?

Are you lowering the intensity of the backlighting, thereby saving energy?

Or are you just raising the base amount of filtering, thereby using more energy?

Since LED lights are basically either on or off, I wonder if it's the latter?

nooby
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#830 Post by nooby »

Re other Distros.

I read about this one Redo and downloaded it
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=07574

Redo Backup & Recovery 1.0.4 has been released.
Redo is an Ubuntu-based live CD featuring backup, restore,
and disaster recovery software, with an easy-to-use graphical program
for running bare-metal backup and recovery of hard disk partitions.
What's new in this release? "Base upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ...
Here is how I boot this Ubuntu variant

Code: Select all

 title redo frugal iso boot 
 find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /redo/casper/initrd.lz
kernel /redo/casper/vmlinuz rw boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/redo.iso ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram  noeject noprompt 
initrd /redo/casper/initrd.lz


One drag casper directory out of the iso using puppy
I am writing from Redo now using the built in Chrome browser.
It can access my NTFS hd but I failed to get it opening html files
due to being root something.
Last edited by nooby on Tue 27 Nov 2012, 17:18, edited 2 times in total.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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sketchman
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#831 Post by sketchman »

rcrsn51 wrote: Since LED lights are basically either on or off, I wonder if it's the latter?
That's not really true though. You can use a POT or resistors to vary the brightness of a plain old LED just fine. I know because I did some automotive gauge cluster lighting, and turned down the brightness of some LED backlighting with resistors so it didn't blind me at night. I would imagine you're controlling the backlight brightness with either setup.
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

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rcrsn51
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#832 Post by rcrsn51 »

Thanks. This article seems to confirm that.

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nubc
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#833 Post by nubc »

For best image, I set CONTRAST at 90 to 95% (which usually gives a good black, depending on raster), and then adjust BRIGHTNESS to 50% or less, depending on ambient light. If there is color flare, like in red or orange, I will tweak the CONTRAST down until flare disappears, and then readjust BRIGHTNESS if necessary.

Is this opposite to recommended adjustment procedure? And, does setting CONTRAST so high shorten the life of the monitor?
Last edited by nubc on Tue 27 Nov 2012, 18:12, edited 3 times in total.

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sketchman
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#834 Post by sketchman »

You guys got me thinking and playing around with my monitor settings. Mine has separate adjustments for backlight level and brightness, so now I'm thoroughly confused. I just use the lowest brightness and backlight setting I can get away with and still be viewable so as not to burn my eyes out. The stock setting kills me. Still don't know the technical difference, but apparently it does adjust something to do with the color producing parts as well as the backlight. So if you have a monitor that has just one setting, who knows which one you're adjusting? Maybe a mix of both?

My computer and monitor are hooked up to a UPS that shows power consumption. I may check it out with full on brightness and backlighting and compare it to full dark and as low as the light will go to see the real difference.
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

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sketchman
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#835 Post by sketchman »

Number time.

Keep in mind these figures are purely for giggles. The extreme ends of the spectrum are unusable, so you're getting info on an amount of backlighting that I'm confident no human eyes could stand for long, as well as brightness that is so washed out it's unusable. It's just for reference.

At my personal setting: BL 22, Bright 43, Con 50
PC and 26" 1920x1080 LED lit: 96 watts total with the PC idling on the desktop with a nice balance of darks, lights, and plenty of contrast needed to show the details.

Cranking the BL up to max: BL 100, Bright 43, Con 50 -- 116 watts total
More Bright: BL 100, Bright 100, Con 50 -- 116 watts total
"No" BL: BL 0, Bright 100, Con 50 -- 80 watts total

As you can see, whatever the Brightness control is adjusting seems to do pretty much nothing to power consumption on my setup, while the backlight seems to be drawing around 36 watts nearly all on its own when set to max. :shock: I believe it too. It's CRAZY bright.

I guess the thread is thoroughly derailed now. :roll:
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

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greengeek
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#836 Post by greengeek »

sketchman wrote:I guess the thread is thoroughly derailed now. :roll:
Interesting though. I have a passion for low energy devices as some of my gear is run in a workshop that has no mains power - only solar. I think it would be great to have a topic that discussed low power computing. There are so many neat devices coming on stream now. One of my projects is a eeepc that is charged/run by solar panels. (It is VERY economical after sundown - it draws no power at all!)

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Colonel Panic
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#837 Post by Colonel Panic »

greengeek wrote:
sketchman wrote:I guess the thread is thoroughly derailed now. :roll:
Interesting though. I have a passion for low energy devices as some of my gear is run in a workshop that has no mains power - only solar. I think it would be great to have a topic that discussed low power computing. There are so many neat devices coming on stream now. One of my projects is a eeepc that is charged/run by solar panels. (It is VERY economical after sundown - it draws no power at all!)
Yeah, it'd be a good topic for this forum now that so many people are trying to save energy for environmental as well as financial reasons.

I installed OpenSUSE Edu-life yesterday, and something went wrong with the configuration so that when I boot up I get a root terminal instead of a desktop / window manager. I have to enter at the terminal which of KDE or Gnome I want before I can get a desktop session. Once you get past that though, it's pretty good.
Last edited by Colonel Panic on Thu 29 Nov 2012, 15:55, edited 1 time in total.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

nooby
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#838 Post by nooby »

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/postin ... t&p=667447
Redo Linux that I write about above reminded me of Xpud
in that both are based on Ubuntu and both very small.

But xpud has much more functionality if one download the appications
that he prepared for it.

Sadly he is now unto other challenges so it is not updated anymore.

Any other here that liked xpud?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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puppy_apprentice
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#839 Post by puppy_apprentice »

you can try to install new apps in Redo Linux via apt-get

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sketchman
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#840 Post by sketchman »

puppy_apprentice wrote:you can try to install new apps in Redo Linux via apt-get
It doesn't have Synaptic or Software Center? If not, Synaptic would be my first installed app. Sky's the limit from there.
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

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