Gavin R. Putland,  BE PhD

Saturday, September 29, 2012

(Comment)

Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2 and Sabayon Linux 10 on Dell Vostro 360

[Note: This post was originally written for Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal” Alpha 2 on July 4, 2012. It was updated for Quantal Beta 1 and Sabayon 10 on Sep.18, and for Quantal Beta 2 on Sep.29.]

If I add the boot parameters

acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor

then Ubuntu 12.10 (“Quantal Quetzal”) Beta 2 and Sabayon Linux 10 give a fully working full-HD desktop on the Dell Vostro 360 all-in-one PC.*  Both distributions use kernel 3.5. In contrast to distributions based on kernels 3.2 to 3.4, the parameter drm_kms_helper.poll=0 is no longer needed, the machine recovers from a suspend, and the screen never goes permanently blank when I check the display settings, detect displays or lock the screen.

As far as I noticed, the only adverse consequence of not adding the two “acpi” parameters is that the screen brightness cannot be adjusted via the hardware buttons or System Settings.

Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 2 was, to my knowledge, the first Linux distribution to give a full-HD desktop on the Dell Vostro 360 without tweaking the boot parameters. But Alpha 2 still needed the two “acpi” parameters to enable recovery from a suspend. Even then I needed to press a brightness button manually in order to turn the display back on after a suspend. Alpha 3 overcame those limitations, but introduced a minor regression, namely that the screensaver was bright white. Beta 1 fixed the regression. Beta 2 has updates for GNOME, Unity and the kernel (3.5.0-15.23 Ubuntu, based on 3.5.4 upstream), but behaves like Beta 1 with respect to the display.

Fans of GNOME 2.x should note that Sabayon 10 offers a choice of four default desktops, including MATE — the one that I tested. However, because I have little experience with Gentoo-based distributions, I am not in the best position to write a full Sabayon review.

__________

---

Tweet

Return to Contents

comments powered by Disqus