Re: Need advice installing Debian on Inspiron 2500
From: "Preben Randhol" <randhol@pvv.org>
> Joseph Fannin <jhf@rivenstone.net> wrote on 01/02/2002 (07:23) :
> > When I say the BIOS is broken, I mean anything involving APM --
> > even reading battery status -- causes a kernel OOPS, which when
> > traced, fails when calling the system BIOS. Apparently things have
> > been this way with every BIOS version greater than A06 -- which isn't
> > available anywhere I could find.
>
> But I don't understand. I thought that it had only ACPI and not APM.
> ACPI is not fully developed like APM on linux, so I guess ACPI should
> work in the future. I see that in Windows XP ACPI is used and not APM.
I agree with Joseph. My i2500 had no Dell partition, either. Dell
certainly doesn't support Linux on the i2500 (I don't think they support it
on anything but the 8000-series). I don't think Joseph is disagreeing with
you over APM vs ACPI. APM is broken - so in effect it _doesn't_ have APM -
but you can't do anything useful with ACPI, and I don't know whether that's
Dell's fault or just that ACPI on linux isn't sufficiently advanced. Given
the discussion so far, I think I'll concentrate on seeing what can be done
with ACPI.
Cyn, I know you were trying to be helpful, but it's clear you don't actually
have a 2500 - this is not some old Windows machine we're trying to convert
to Linux, it's Dell's current low-end laptop. It's new enough that when I
ordered mine in October, I ordered a 2400 and got a 2500. They come with a
minumum 128MB of memory, so a 32MB partitiion couldn't be the suspend
partition.
btw, I did find one thing that you can do with APM. If the apm.o module is
loaded, shutdown actually halts the system. If it isn't, shutdown leaves
you at a "Power Off" prompt :-)
derek
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