Laptop

Laptop Special Interest Group

Mission

Goal: To improve the Fedora Laptop experience and make more stable, flexible and usable over time.

Members

• Jonathan Blandford
• Florian Festi
• Richard Hughes
• Peter Jones
• Phil Knirsch
• Florian La Roche
• David Zeuthen
• Marek Mahut
• Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

Important Links

• /HotKey sub-page
• http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/
• T60 would only suspend with kernel option "acpi_sleep=s3_bios"
• Fedora 8 Laptop Improvements

Tasks

• General:
• Summarize the hard/software items that are already know to work
• Make a FAQ with info on how to fix some common problems or how to get

some hardware to work with workarounds

• Possible to autodetect timezone (probably not)
• Improve documentation for the various user level parts (g-p-m etc.)
• Tool to gather information what kind of suspend/hibernate methods work

for a given model and be able to submit that easily to bugzilla

• Make Fedora LiveCD work nicely on laptops, too
• Custom DSDT support
• "Airplane" support: Be able to enable/disable radio/tv recivers via a UI

• Storage:
• Removable:
• Support all kinds of removable storage
• Make the behaviour of the various storages consistent and similar to

what we can do on servers.

• Filesystems:
• Encrypted filesystems (in case laptops get stolen etc)
• (Enable NTFS read support (check legal for that))

• Backup:
• Support or do something similar to iDisk

• Network:
• Configuration:
• Add a checkbox for each device if "automated services" should be

allowed to use this device (e.g. updates over GPRS isn't a real good idea ;).

• Allow more secure setup for WiFi networks (if anything is missing)
• Possible automatic detection of network printers and http proxies
• Bring back the idea of profiles (based on available interfaces etc)

• WiFi:
• Automatic detection of new networks
• In UI sort by radar strength
• Have checkbox to filter out any networks (pw protected ones etc)
• Remove multiple SSID's by ALT selection and delete

• Drivers:
• Improve Wireless drivers support, add more Open Source drivers

http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/bcm43xx-yum-livna/

• Improve AC97 modem support

• Bluetooth:
• Automate bluetooth setup as much as possible
• Make it easier to configure bluetooth and have a default config which

just works with mobile phones

• Automatic device discovery and setup (especially phones)

• GPRS:
• Automated setup for GPRS/3G cards (typically USB or USB/serial cards)
• Easy configuration for internet
• Dialer scripts
• Know magic gprs numbers
• Add SyncE projec? http://synce.sourceforge.net/synce/howto.php

• Services:
• Proper selection of services for laptops, combined with power

savings and disableing of certain services.

• Proper restart, depending on network connectivity after resume
• Make sure service (re)starts don't hang when there is no network

connectivity (e.g. sendmail up to 1 minutes, other 10-15s)

• DNS:
• Automatically use cachine DNS server locally?

• LDAP:
• Integration with stored/cached password when offline

• Graphics:
• Monitor:
• Support dual monitor/head mode
• Allow runtime switch from single to dual head and general display

switches

• Fix problem when booting with closed lid (not configured properly)
• Fix problem of laptop starting up after doing a suspend and then

closing the lid (Some FS laptops)

• Make native resolutions selectable on several laptops (Dell etc.)
• Detect plugin/plugout of monitors properly and react properly

• X11:
• Fix problem with network changes while X11 is running

• Drivers:
• Make display switching more stable
• Sync problems on some FS laptops on external displays
• Autodetection of video and s-video outputs (where possible)

• Sound:
• Drivers:
• Better driver support for some models (Dell)

• Power:
• UI:
• ACPID configuration tool
• UI to select cpuspeed strategies
• Easy to switch profiles for power saving in general
• Add configurable suspend/hibernate actions for for lid close
• Allow max power saving to be used when running low on battery
• Finer grained control via UI to enable/disable certain aspects of

power saving things

• Saving:
• Choice of different strategies for cpuspeed daemon
• Make more services and demons "power" aware (HAL, prelink, cron etc)
• Look into the acpi-sbs project and whats worth integrating
• Support suspend2 http://www.suspend2.net/
• Configurable shutdown of unused devices/peripherals
• Include s2ram? http://en.opensuse.org/S2ram

• ACPI:
• ACPI support for more devices (e.g. harddisks)

• Docking:
• Dock/undock:
• Make sure no reboots are needed for all common services
• On some laptops during plugin/plugout of the laptops devices won't get

initialized/deinitalized properly

• Mouse:
• Touchpad:
• Improve behaviour of some drivers (Compaq 2209, IBM T42, Synaptics)
• Being able to turn on/off the touchpad

• Keyboard:
• Keys:
• Support special keys and suspend/resume keys that don't generate

the proper ACPI events depending on manufactor/model - see /HotKeys

• External:
• Fix bug with numlock and plugging in/out the external keyboard on

some laptops

• Software:
• Installation:
• Allow installation and booting from external USB/Firewire drives.

• Packages:
• Know about hardware specific packages and possibly installed them

during install time (or make the accessible later easier with pirut or firstboot)

• Trim memory use on laptops as they tend to have less memory than

desktop machines

• During install either have a specific Laptop group or at the start

a laptop install which contains the typical laptop packages

• Include laptop_mode tools? http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsamwel/laptop_mode/

• Groupware:
• Calender tool with typical groupware functionality (groups,

invitations, synchronication, offline mode etc)

• Mail:
• Improve offline support for email clients:
• Schedule creation of new folders offline
• Sync emails before going offline

• Updates:
• Have a notify icon if updates are available

• Repo management
• List of packages from repos (yumex or pirut)

• Data:
• Make it easier to keep data in sync between a laptop and a home

machine (keywords: rsync or similar)

• Allow signaling apps to save modified work (e.g. for remote reboots)

FAQ

Q: I'm having problems with suspend/hibernate on my laptop. What can i do?

A: We're currently looking into makeing this more realiable for a larger range of laptops. Also we hope to provide a test tool soon with which you can run some tests on your laptop to figure out how to do proper suspend/hibernate on your specific machine.

Q: I have a laptop with Dritek hotkeys, how can i make them work?

A: For several laptops who use those there is a package available here which might help: http://www.haxxed.com/code/dritek-tool-0.1.tar.bz2

Status

• 06/13/2006: Start of the SIG page.
• 06/14/2006: Start collecting ideas/features.
• 06/21/2006: First update of tasks, still in the process of filtering out

Mailinglist

Feel free to join our mailinglist at http://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/laptop