Linux on the Compaq Evo N610c

Redhat Enterprise Linux 3

With the right settings, RHEL3 WS U3 supports most of the Evo N610c.

W200 Wireless Network Card

• The "integrated" Compaq W200 requires the orinoco_usb driver to work. This may be installed using the RPM I built that is attached to this page. Please note that the rpm requires a functional and active network connection to install. After installation, it is easiest to:
  • add alias wlan0 orinoco_usb to /etc/modules.conf
  • put the attached ifcfg-wlan0 in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
  • configure the wired eth0 interface to not start automatically at boot

Power Management

• APM can be tricky to get going. Fortunately, it usually works pretty well if you disable 3d acceleration in your XF86Config file
  • remove Load "dri" from /etc/X11/XF86Config
• With this configuration, you can usually suspend the laptop by pushing the blue power button. The blue power button also wakes it back up. However, occasionally the W200 Wireless card will not wake up with the laptop. When this happens, reloading the ehci-hcd module usually brings it back. The simple w200recover script (attached to this topic) does this for you if you're lazy =)
• The "power switch" in the upper right corner of your keyboard immediately shuts down the laptop; it is not advisable to use this unless necessary.
• Closing the laptop lid will only power off the display; it will not put the computer to sleep.
• Even when sleeping, the laptop drains a fair amount of battery power.

General Use

• The external display works well for mirroring your main display. However, most projectors work at 1024x768 (and the N610c can go up to 1400x1050!). To change the resolution on the fly, use xrandr -q to view a list of possible resolutions. xrandr -s num (where num corresponds to your desired resolution) will switch to this resolution. After typing xrandr -s 0 or logging out, your display will revert to its highest setting.

The following utilities give you a quick view of your system. After adding each to your panel, you can configure them to your preference by right-clicking on their icons and selecting Preferences.

• The Battery Charge Monitor is handy for viewing the status of your battery. To add this to your gnome panel;
  • right-click on the gnome-panel
  • select Add to Panel, Utility, and choose Battery Charge Monitor
• The Wireless Link Monitor is useful for viewing the status of your wireless connection. Again, for gnome:
  • right-click on the gnome-panel
  • select Add to Panel, Internet, and choose Wireless Link Monitor
• I personally like running the System Monitor. For gnome:
  • right-click on the gnome-panel
  • select Add to Panel, Utility, and choose System Monitor.

-- DevinBougie - 30 Sep 2004

Insert Movies Into Your Presentations

The issue at hand is a simple one - you happen to have a useful animation that you want to include into your OpenOffice Impress presentation to make your talk both more informative and plain impressive. It will not be too long before you discover that

• RedHat distribution by default does not include any software to enable you to play video files that require codecs (MPEG-1/2, AVI, WMA, MOV, WMV, etc.).
• if you try to select from Impress menu Insert->Object->Video it will be grayed out.

It turns out that in order to enable OpenOffice (version 1.1.0 as of writing) to include video objects, one needs to install patched version of Mplayer and have Mplayer plug-in installed for Mozilla. A short-cut solution, albeit not as complete, is to install a regular version of Mplayer and associate some object in your presentation to run the animation on mouse click.

• to compile Mplayer follow these (very detailed) directions http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mplayer-fedora.shtml
• once Mplayer is installed, in Impress right-click on an object, choose Interactions... and for Action at mouse click choose Run program and point it to a script that contains something like

mplayer -fs your.movie.file

The options indicate that the video file will be played in full screen mode. You may need to put absolute path to both the binary and your animation file. After Mplayer is done, or when you press ESC, you will be back to your presentation.

-- IvanBazarov - 07 Oct 2004