Fujitsu i-4187 & Slack 8

Audio -- It works!

Sound.. such a trivial thing. With any other PC I've setup with linux, sound was never an issue -- I never had a problem finding the correct module and getting it to work within minutes. This all changed, however, with the i-4187. I've heard there's a sound module available for purchase at OpenSound.com that might work, but I've also seen reports of people praising these ALSA drivers. ALSA stands for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture and is a set of freeware drivers, libs, and utilities that supposedly sounds better than a lot of the sound modules built into the kernel. In fact, I've heard that in the future the ALSA drivers may even replace the default sound drivers that are currently in the kernel.

I managed to get CD-Player sound working just fine with both ALSA 0.5.11 and 0.9.0beta6 drivers right away. I had a few bumps along the way getting mp3s and DVD sound to work (some of which was my fault, some of which are the driver's fault). XMMS would pause for about 30sec the first time I played an mp3, afterwhich songs played without a problem. I could not, for the life of me, figure this one out -- it bugged the heck out of me, to the point I felt like introducing the laptop to a sledge hammer. After hours and hours of reinstalling the drivers, searching the newsgroups and search engines, and one complete reinstall of Slackware, I think what was causing the XMMS pause was the ARTs Sound Server in KDE being auto-started. After turning that off, it seems *knock on wood* that I can finally play mp3s without a problem in KDE. Now, playing mp3s with mpg123 is a different story -- I believe it also pauses, skips some.. and just plain fumbles the mp3s up sometimes. So, in all, things are by no means figured out in the sound department, but they're coming along. If you plan on using ALSA, you might want to compare your /etc/modules.conf to my current modules.conf.

DVDs - Xine, MPlayer, or Ogle?

My first attempt at playing a DVD was very unsuccessful. I tried out XINE (a linux DVD player) and was able to get some DVDs to play and the audio working, but getting them to play without skipping was a different story. On my second attempt things went much better. I tried MPlayer and Ogle. Ogle played the DVDs without any noticeable skipping. It's also the first Linux DVD Player that lets you access the DVD's menus, much like any Windows DVD player software. I am very pleased with the performance with Ogle and that I can finally watch The Matrix and other dvds in Linux.

i-4187, The Final Frontier

Strange as this may sound, I actually enjoy tinkering around for hours trying to setup the i-4187 laptop. Linux has come a long way over the years, and I don't expect every distribution to be laptop friendly, but I'm determined to grab as much functionality out of this laptop as I can. I don't want to have to boot into Windows every time I feel like listening to music or watching a DVD.. I would like to be able to be in Linux 90% of the time, and only boot Windows up for a game or program that absolutely must be run while in Windows (ie, not through WINE). So, I need your help =) Take the dive and install Linux on this laptop if you have it or are interested in purchasing it! The distro you choose really doesn't matter, as long as there is some basis for setting up Linux on this machine that we can all discuss and learn from eachother. Together, through collaboration, we may be able to garner everything possible out of this laptop.. and if you aren't up to the challenge, well then.. I guess I'm on my own. There's just no stopping someone with a bit of determination =)


Comments? Suggestions? Did I fsck something up above? Email me: wayne@techdose.com


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