OS for an Acer Travelmate 4000

[hewart]

Hi everybody

As you may have noticed, I am new here and this is my first post

My problem is about my laptop. I've tried many OS: ubuntu, kubuntu, fluxbuntu, suse, fedora, xubuntu (the one which best worked), and pc-bsd

Hardware: Centrino Dothan 1,6GHz, 512Mb ram, ati radeon 9800 64Mb, ipw2200bg wifi.

I like pc-bsd, but it doesn't perform well. KDE has always been problematic on this laptop and pc-bsd looks too heavy for this pc.

I am looking for something similar to pc-bsd, non-KDE if possible, proper for my acer.

Thanks in advance
(and sorry for my english)

[BlackBox]

What problems did you have with Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu?
I have Ubuntu (Gnome) on an HP laptop with 512 MB RAM, and an ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility card, and it runs very nicely.

As for PC-BSD, the version of KDE that's included with 7.1 seems to be quite fast. I would say it's at least as fast as Gnome, maybe even a tick faster (I'm using it with an old computer of mine - 2 x Athlon MP 1500, 1.5 GB RAM, nVidia Ti4200). So based on my experience with Ubuntu (7.10 - 9.04), I think PC-BSD should not have performance problems on your machine.

You can install XFCE and Gnome in PC-BSD and use those Desktop environments, if you prefer them (I don't think you can uninstall KDE though, it's needed by the OS). Updated PBIs for easy installation have been posted recently on http://www.pbidir.com/.

The only BSD that I know of that is similar to PC-BSD in that it aims to be an easy-to-install & configure BSD is DesktopBSD http://www.desktopbsd.net/; however, it also uses KDE as their default desktop.

[hewart]

Kubuntu applications crashed frequently
Ubuntu gave me problems with the processor temperature
Xubuntu worked ok, I had 7.10 version until it lost the community support. I screwed it up when upgrading to 9.04, and thought it was a good chance to try a new OS.
pc-bsd consumed ~350Mb ram without launching a program; xubuntu only 90Mb.

I'll take a look at the ones you mentioned. I use frequently flash, java and openoffice, so I would need them to work nicely.

Thanks!

[BlackBox]

Yes, try the 9.04 versions of K/X/ubuntu, they may have ironed out the problems you experienced with 7.10.

[hewart]

Funny

I installed gnome, it seemed ok but kept on going slow. I took a look at te cpu scaling and ... 75Mhz :shock: It kept varying between 75-150-300-375Mhz. That explains the heat and the slow speed.
Xubuntu had a minimum of 600Mhz, which I think is pretty enough.

Any ideas?

[BlackBox]

Unless slower CPU speed means that the fan isn't being used, the processor should be creating less heat, not more, at 75 - 300 MHz.
You should try to tinker with the power savings settings, maybe switch them off entirely.

[hewart]

The problem of 75Mhz clock speed was that the processor was at 20% all the time without doing anything. XFCE and even GNOME at 600MHz consume ~1% .
Due to the numerous problems I was encountering, I installed Ubuntu 9.04 as you said, with ext4. It's really fast, even on this old laptop, starts in 20 secs, but the heating persists, especially when playing music (audacious, exaile, banshee, rhythmbox... all of them consume too much cpu) and flash videos (that's normal). I'm also surprised of the Sun Java performance, which is excellent.

[BlackBox]

Hm, you may want to search the Ubuntu forums for a solution then, I recall seeing at least one thread about heat problems.
You may also want to check the CPU power saving settings in the BIOS.

But did you try PC-BSD on your box at all? As I said, I believe it would run well.

[hewart]

I just downloaded the image, burnt the DVD and installed it following the steps.
The OS was a bit slow (missed letters when typing fast, slow menus...) and also a bit unstable, with some crashings.