Laptop friendly Linux distros

[Jamon Camisso]

teddy mills wrote:
> 
> I have no problem with running Linux on desktops because there are few 
> thermal issues.
> I do have a problem with running Linux on laptops, because I do not know 
> what to look for to get the proper thermal support.
> I mean it has to be more than APIC thermal/fan level control?
> 
> Most Linux distros I have seen,  almost never turns on a laptop cpu fan 
> at random times, no matter how hot the laptop is getting
> Can you recommend a distro that I can safely run on a laptop? Thank you 
> in advance!

Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora Core 5, Mandriva, and a few others would be your 
best options (no particular order for those first 4). Thermal & power 
settings are in the kernel, so you should be fine with almost any distro 
sporting a modular or at least intelligently compiled kernel.

Have you tried a distro on your laptop yet? I've found that the converse 
of what you've experienced is true: Linux managed to get my laptop fans 
working exactly the way they were supposed to, on at 50*C, speed 2 @ 
60*C, 3 @ 65 etc. etc. Different laptops different temps, but you get 
the idea. There are also some laptops with fans that can be controlled 
through software applications on Linux too. Dell Inspirons come to mind, 
not sure if they are currently, but the whole 8000 series was I think.

Jamon
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml