Laptop Special Interest Group

Mission

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

Members

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://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-laptop-list

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