Setting up Linux on a Gericom Overdose Per4mance

The installation of Linux on notebooks got a lot easier in the last years, however, sometimes it still takes some time until you have a perfect Linux installation. This is why this page exists. I installed Suse 8.1 and 9.1 on my notebook. The installation was considerably easier with Suse 9.1, for 8.1 only a few details need to be mentioned. All information listedon this webpage comes with no guaranty! Use everything at you risk!

Suse 9.1

The installation didn't make any problems at all. After a few minutes of watching yast you have a running system. However, I haven't tested the modem and infrared yet. In order to be able to use the suspend-to-disk mode you need to install the Suse updates. Suspend-to-ram doesn't work for me.

Suse 8.1

Xfree86:The notebook has a SiS651 chipset. This chipset is not supported by the Xfree version coming with Suse 8.1 . An easy workaround is to use the framebuffer device. Therefore start Sax2 with the command sax2 -m 0=fbdev. Further insert vga=791 in your grub menu file.
If you want to watch videos on your notebook it is probably worth doing a little bit of work:
The first thing you have to do is to install Xfree86 4.3. You can obtain rpm-packages from the Suse server or of course xfree86.org. I recommend that you take the suse ones. After you installed the new version you just have to edit the XF86Config file. Note that the relevant file lies in /etc/X11/. Take for example a look at my file. However, when I rebooted the computer with this configuration the screen would stay black. I assume that that is/was a bug in the driver. Luckily, the author of the sis-driver Thomas Winischhofer , lets you download a precompiled version of the most recent version of his driver. Just download the driver compiled with gcc 3.2 for Xfree 4.3 and copy it over the old one. The driver lies in the directory /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/. Now everything should work fine.

Touchpad:A driver for the Synaptics touchpad exists. You can download it here. Instructions how to install are also on this webpage. You can, however, have a look at my XF86Config if you like.
USB Mouse:USB worked without any problem for me. Thus, You might want to use an usb-mouse on you notebook. In order to do that, you have to modify your XF86Config file a little bit further. Add:
Section "InputDevice"
  Driver      "mouse"
  Identifier  "Mouse[2]"
  Option      "Device"    "/dev/usbmouse0"
  Option      "Protocol"  "ps/2"
EndSection
Futher, you have to add in the ServerLayout section:
 InputDevice  "Mouse[2]"  "SendCoreEvents"
If you own a scroll mouse, you should edit the options accordingly.
Ethernet:No problems here!

Modem:I didn't care to configure the modem yet, but someone said that there might be no chance of getting it to run as it is a winmodem ...

Open Question

I still have to set up "software suspend". This is way to imitate the apm sleep mode.
I look for a way to configure all the special buttons on the keyboard. For example I really would like the volume adjustment keys to work.

Further Comments:

scpm:

scpm is a package that provides the possiblity to configure your notebook for different network environments. All you have to do is to enable scpm by typing scpm enable as superuser. Configure your network settings however you want and type scpm add profile-name to save it. Do this again for the other network environments and you are done. By providing grub or lilo with the right variables you can choose the desired environment at boot up time.
Note:Try to configure everything else on your notebook before you enable scpm, otherwise you have to configure it always n times where n is the number of profiles you have.

aKpi:

This notebook has acpi. If you want to have your notebook's battery status displayed on the screen, the default program klaptopd will not work. As I read on the web, it searches for the wrong folder structure in the /proc/ directory. You can either recompile the program with a patch from the internet or you just use the program aKpi which you can download here. This is probably easier.

mplayer:

Mplayer is a very nice program with which you can watch videos, dvd's, etc. . Although, you can use the mplayer binaries delivered with your Suse distribution I recommend that you download the tarball from www.mplayerhq.hu and compile it yourself. The Suse precompiled version has rather limited capabilities. With a properly compiled and installed version of mplayer you will be much happier!

mozilla firebird plugins

Mozilla Firebird is the standalone browser of the Mozilla websuite. It has a very neat skin and is also fast and easy to handle. In order to have some fun with your browser you have to install some plugins. A nice plugin that combines Mozilla/Mozilla Firebird with Mplayer is mplayerplug-in. The authors wrote a plugin which lets you watch streaming videos on the internet along with mplayer.
In order to get Java running with the newest Mozilla version you have to install a java version which has a plugin that is compiled with gcc 3.2. Take for example this version from Sun. After you installed java, you just have to make a symbolic link from the corresponding plugin to you Mozilla plugin directory.

Yakumo usb-stick/mp3-player

To have a comfortable way to transport some data without my notebook or a floppy disk I recently bought the Yakumo Hypersound 124 usb-stick with integrated mp3-player. When I bought it I assumed I wouldn't have any problems to use it with linux. That assumption was wrong. Although I am able to mount the usb-stick and to read all data saved on it, I am not able to save data by copying data to the corresponding folder where I mounted the usb-stick. An update to a newer kernel would probably help, however, as a workaround you can also use the mtools. In the Suse mtools.conf the usb-stick device /dev/sda1 is already configured as c:. Thus, copying files is very easy and is for example done by typing:

mcopy /data/data c:data

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Edited: 21.6.2004