1. Fedora 7 on Sharp MM20

There really isn’t that much to installing Fedora 7 on the Sharp MM20 laptop. It pretty much just works. Below are a few of the things I did, just to tweak the performance some. Suspend to ram works about 98% of the time. The only issue I have is that some features like screen brightness control and the mode select button don’t seem to really work until after you have put the machine to sleep and awoken at least once. I’m still looking into this, but not a rush since it’s a very minor issue.

So on with the tweaks:

Improve graphics performance:

1. Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, notice the options in the Device section, these seem to help:

Section “ServerLayout”

Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen 0 “Screen0” 0 0
InputDevice “Keyboard0” “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice “Synaptics” “CorePointer”

EndSection

Section “InputDevice”

Identifier “Keyboard0”
Driver “kbd”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105”
Option “XkbLayout” “us”

EndSection

Section “InputDevice”

Identifier “Synaptics”
Driver “synaptics”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Protocol” “auto-dev”
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “yes”

EndSection

Section “Device”

Identifier “Videocard0”
Driver “radeon”
Option “AGPMode” “4”
Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps” “true”
Option “RenderAccel” “true”

EndSection

Section “Screen”

Identifier “Screen0”
Device “Videocard0”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”

Viewport 0 0
Depth 24

EndSubSection

EndSection

2. Change the /etc/drirc file to this:

<driconf>
<device screen=”0″ driver=”radeon”>
<application name=”all”>
<!– Always synchronize with vertical refresh to avoid tearing –>
<option name=”vblank_mode” value=”3″/>
<option name=”hyperz” value=”true” />
<option name=”allow_large_textures” value=”2″ />
</application>
<application name=”glxgears” executable=”glxgears”>
<!– glxgears should not synchronize with vertical refresh, show full fps –>
<option name=”vblank_mode” value=”0″/>
</application>
<application name=”tuxracer” executable=”tuxracer”>
<!– Tuxrace has some artifacts with hardware TCL –>
<option name=”tcl_mode” value=”0″/>
</application>
</device>
</driconf>

Change boot resolution to improve resume from suspend performance:

This was primarily done to better preserve console access after a restore from ram, plus it makes it look nice. I change the values passed to the boot loader kernel line to make the consoles default to 1024×768 resolution which matches the Xorg resolution. I added “video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr vga=0x318 quiet” to the end of the line starting with “kernel” to accomplish this.

Enabling compiz or “Desktop Effects”

Ok, I really didn’t expect this to work to well given how little processing power this laptop has in the CPU and GPU department, but surprise it works surprising well! Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not super smooth like it would be on a beefier system, but it’s very workable and provides a great benefit. Using “Desktop Effects” I can now do expose type effects like tile open applications which really does make the small display on this laptop much more affective. This is pretty easy to get working, while logged in to desktop, just go to “System” then “Preferences” then “Look and Feel” then select “Desktop Effects”. Just enable desktop effects and choose your options. I’ve got both enabled. So now if I move my mouse to the top right corner all application windows get live tiled to the screen for easy selection. If I move my cursor to the top right corner, press ctrl-alt and then left click I can drag the cube desktop around. Also little things like wobble windows and stretch motions work reasonably well. If for some reason you don’t have desktop effects you may need to do “yum install compiz” to get the necessary software.

Disable Firefox mouse gestures

For some reason by default the synaptics mouse and firefox by default have mouse gestures so that if you move your mouse left or right at certain areas on the trackpad your browser will go back and forward in the page history. This was HIGHLY annoying to me so I found a way to disable it. Launch Firefox and type “about:config” into the url bar. Hit enter in there and then do a filter on “mousewheel”. Find the following and make the changes:

mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action value=0
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines value=true

That disables that action and makes using the browser so much easier.

Beyond that I did a few things that can be found here

http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/f7-tips.php

Good coverage of how to get some fundamentals up and running. Also check out this site:

http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f7.html

Covers a lot of the same, but also check out adding TrueType fonts.

Enable NetworkManagement

For some reason I believe by default NetworkManagement wasn’t enabled by my default install. I had to go enable and start the following two services:

(as root run)
chkconfig –level 345 NetworkManager on
chkconfig –level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on
service NetworkManagerDispatcher start
service NetworkManager start

That should give you the nice little network icon in your notification area to allow you to more easily manage network connections like wireless and wired.

One think I don’t know is if they finally have WPA working for the internal wireless cards that come with these laptops. Over a year ago I purchased an intel based card to replace mine which I know would work. So if you have the original card still in yours and can confirm that WPA does indeed work now let me know, I wouldn’t mind swapping the original card back in.

I think that covers it. If I think of something I forgot I’ll add it later. Hope that helps.

One Response to 1. Fedora 7 on Sharp MM20

  1. Pingback: Cafaro’s Ramblings » Fedora 7 Linux on Sharp MM20 laptop install guide

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