Recently in ESS Allegro/Maestro3 Category

Here's the deal: I've been fighting with Debian Lenny for months on The $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), where I have everything running great except for my persistent problem with screen refresh in X. I've replaced the Intel i810 driver with the plain Intel driver, I've tweaked everything that can be tweaked in xorg.conf.

I can't really get work done while my display is slowly disintegrating during the course of a computing session.

I'm already running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS as the main distro on this system, and I've been thinking about what to do for the second distro. I'd go back to Debian Etch, but I had problems with the speed of the USB-connected mouse vs. the Alps touchpad, plus problems controlling the touchpad on its own.

In Lenny, the problems I've dealt with (and mostly solved) over the past six or more months have included suddenly disappearing sound (fixed with manually installed ESS Allegro modules), and an Epiphany browser that would always start in offline mode (fixed with a modification to Gconf2, if I have the name of the app right).

Nothing major — and nothing that couldn't be fixed with some help from either the bug reports themselves or other helpful people on the Web.

But this screen-refresh problem persists. I keep hoping that a routine software upgrade will take care of it, but that hasn't happened in countless xorg, driver and kernel updates. I don't think it's going to happen, either.

If you're running something that's very popular that catches the attention of developers (like the Asus Eee PC), chances are good that issues will be resolved. But I can't imagine any developers anywhere are paying any attention whatsoever to my 2002-era Gateway laptop. I'm no C hacker, so there's nothing much I can do, either.

I love Debian. I'm running two newish Etch installs right now (one PowerPC, one i386), and I could very well add a third with my $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), or even more to a couple of testing desktops I have waiting in the wings. Whenever Lenny goes Stable, Etch will have another year's worth of patches as Old Stable before it reaches its end of life.

Etch has been great, and Lenny has made dozens of improvements. But this one regression has made it very hard to keep my favorite distro on my main laptop.

So I have been thinking for months about what to do, all the while hoping that I could fix the X problem in Lenny.

First of all, I need to rewire the power supply plug. I think that is what is responsible for my intermittent freezes in Ubuntu (which don't seem to happen in Lenny, for reasons unknown). When I have the laptop on a desk, it never freezes, but when it's on my actual lap, as it was when I was trying to work on last-minute election programming yesterday morning, those freezes can really throw me off. I moved over to Debian, but I needed the Java runtime, didn't have it installed and didn't have the time to do that.

And then there's the video issue.

So I've been thinking, what should I install in place of Debian Lenny? I'm a big fan of long-term support releases, especially for older hardware, so I strongly considered CentOS 5, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. But the relative lack of consumer-oriented software had me worried. I could add the Dag Wieers repositories to deal with that issue, but even that repository doesn't cover everything I need.

Mandriva is also on the table, as is one of my favorite distros, Wolvix. The Slackware 11-based Wolvix is due for a new version soon. While its package mix addresses most of my issues, there are a few things that I can't easily find for it. And I worry in Wolvix's case (as well as Slackware's in general) about how long the kernel goes without getting patched.

I almost never see new kernels for older Slackware releases. I don't know if that's because they are unnecessary, but with patched kernels rolling into Debian and Ubuntu fairly regularly, I wonder why Slackware does things differently.

I'd run "regular" Slackware, but I had quite a bit of trouble getting X configured, and I'd rather use GNOME than KDE. I know there are GNOME projects for Slackware, but what I'm trying to do is install something that works well, comes together easily and has lots of available packages.

Given all the Mandriva fans on LXer, I considered it. I've used the Mandriva-derived PCLinuxOS and thought highly of it — and I may in fact go that way. The 2.6.18 kernel in PCLinuxOS 2007 (Debian Etch is also built on that kernel) is perhaps the best ever for the Gateway in that it controls the CPU fan with no intervention. The intervention needed in other kernels is slight (a single line in /etc/rc.local usually does it), but it's nice to have it done automatically.

Again, I'm not a huge fan of KDE, and I find that distros that are either KDE- or GNOME-centric tend to treat the other desktop environment as something of a second-class citizen.

I've had Fedora in the back of my mind for a while. Seeing all the packages available is very encouraging. And the Fedora community looks like a very good resource in terms of getting things working. I imagine that quite a bit of RHEL information would apply to Fedora as well, giving the distro an even deeper bench.

I'm not crazy about the length of support for a given Fedora release, which looks to be 12 to 13 months. I'd feel better with the 18 months that Ubuntu's non-LTS releases get, or even a full 2 years. Compromising on length of support is something I'm willing to do at this time for something that potentially gives me all the packages I want and that runs well besides.

As far as the availability of packages goes, Fedora acquits itself well. I have run it from the live CD before, and it seemed to do well on the Gateway.

In a slightly related matter, my install of Fedora 9 on my Power Mac G4/466 didn't go so well. The X configuration was horrible, and the distro ran much slower than Debian Etch on the same hardware. And Debian did a perfect X configuration for the internal graphics card and huge LaCie electron22blue monitor. Sure I could've used the information from the xorg.conf in Debian to properly modify the same config file in Fedora, but with such a performance hit, it didn't seem worth it.

Since the 1.3 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM in the Gateway offers much more power than the 466 MHz and 384 MB in the G4, Fedora seems to run fine on the faster machine.

And now that I have the Ubuntu LTS as my main distro (and hopefully a trouble-free one once I replace that shaky power plug), it's time to try something else.

First I need to keep copies of the xorg.conf, my CPU-fan script and rc.local from Debian Lenny in case I do a reinstall. Then I need to back up the /home files and consider adding a separate /home partition for the secondary distro (Ubuntu already has a separate /home partition).

Again, I'm not happy about the 13-month life cycle of any given Fedora release, and I really don't need a cutting-edge kernel for my not-cutting-edge hardware (unless, of course, it makes a cheap wireless adapter work), but with /home on its own partition, and Fedora installing GRUB on the root partition instead of the master boot record, with the GRUB on the MBR chainloading to the Fedora partition, it shouldn't be hard to roll Fedora out and something else in.

I could change my mind ... or not.

Update: OpenSUSE offers about two years of support per release, and that is enough to get me interested.

I'm downloading new OpenSUSE 11 and Fedora 9 ISOs now, and I'll burn them in the morning.

Things are happening in Debian Lenny, and not just in my installation.

OK, mostly in my installation.

For one thing, something — I have no idea what — made the GNOME Network Admin package disappear. I couldn't change my network settings from the System--Preferences menu or the icon I have in the panel for that very purpose.

I went into Synaptic and reinstalled it. Now it works.

I'm still having the "work offline" problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox) 3. Whenever I start the browser, I'm automatically in "work offline" mode, regardless of whether I'm actually online or not.

I also still have the "ghosting" on the upper GNOME panel.

Right now I'm doing a software update. Among the new packages is a kernel update. Will this solve my problems? And will I have to reinstall the ALSA sound modules for my ESS Allegro/Maestro3 chip in the $0 Laptop?

After the update: The Debian Lenny updates included a 2.6.25 Linux kernel, but boot code for the new kernel didn't get written into the menu.lst that controls the Ubuntu-installed GRUB, which controls the master boot record for this dual-boot system.

It turns out that Debian only updated its own /boot/grub/menu.lst, so I copied the new entries over to Ubuntu's /boot/grub/menu.lst to try the new kernel.

This appears to be the SECOND 2.6.25 kernel in Lenny, but it's the first I've seen of it, and without Ubuntu's menu.lst being updated automatically, a new Lenny kernel is easy to miss.

I understand that dual-booting can pose a problem, but I thought that Debian pretty much knew to look for multiple GRUB configurations and update them all. I guess not this time.

In Lenny with the 2.6.25-2 kernel: Sound still works in the new kernel. (After manually jump-starting sound in 2.6.24, I didn't expect it, but thankfully it does.) Either the Debian developers decided to re-support my sound chip, or my manual installation of ALSA drivers stuck.

Iceweasel 3 still defaults to "work offline" status whenever it's launched. The same problem still (again, thankfully) doesn't affect Epiphany.

The upper panel in GNOME still suffers from the same "ghosting" problem.

Looking at the bug reports, which I did in a very recent post, tells me that the Iceweasel problem is not so much with Iceweasel as with NetworkManager. I can pretty much confirm this, since mousing over the NetworkManager icon in the upper GNOME panel says that there is "No network connection," where there indeed there is. I probably should be looking at bug reports for NetworkManager and not Iceweasel.

I couldn't find anything in Debian's bug reports, and nothing leaped right out of this large page of GNOME bug reports.

I've been waiting ... and waiting ... for Debian to come to its senses and re-add the sound chip — the ESS 1988 Allegro — in my Gateway Solo 1450 back into the Lenny kernel.

Sound had been fine in Debian Etch (Stable) and in the first two kernels in Debian Lenny (Testing), but once the 2.6.24 kernel was added, I lost sound on the $0 Laptop.

Reverting back to the 2.6.22 kernel restored my sound, and I eventually hunted down the bug report, which — in grand Debian tradition — didn't solve the bug but instead provided a work-around.

Presumably the Debian team didn't like the fact that the ALSA sound module for this chip came in the form of a binary blob, which is non-source, undocumented code, and instead of providing any other way to use sound with these chips, elected to silence the PCs of those using Debian Lenny with this verboten sound chip.

Now if this were the only binary blob traveling in Debian's wagon train, I'd understand. But I'm fairly sure it's not. We're not talking OpenBSD-style religion here.

At least the system could somehow tell me that Debian removed sound support for my chipset and perhaps ask me if I'm OK with using a non-open blob to get the sound working.

No such luck. I suppose I should be so offended at my laptop's use of hardware for which the manufacturers decline to provide open-source drivers that I should soldier on without sound — and like it.

I don't like it. But the reality is that many if not most hardware manufacturers haven't seen the ever-lovin' light and don't know that open-source software in general, and Linux in particular just might take over the world, or at least the geeky portion of it.

Never mind that sound works on this laptop in any number of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Puppy, Slackware, CentOS/Red Hat ... as well as FreeBSD and NetBSD.

But Debian decided to get all high, mighty and just strip sound out of the kernel for what must be a whole lot of potential users who either don't know, don't want to know or don't care to track down the instructions for restoring audio on their machines.

I imagine there are a lot of ESS/Allegro chips out there. In Linux, as in OpenBSD and any number of other projects, a lot of really smart developers are very busy writing open drivers for the proprietary hardware we're stuck with. Sometimes they get cooperation from the manufacturers. Often times they reverse-engineer the whole damn thing. Still, there are a lot of "binary blobs" out there.

If the choice is between binary blob and open-source alternative, there's no question — take the code you can see, modify and distribute freely.

But if the choice is between a blog and ... nothing, it's nice to have the opportunity to take the blob. A project can — and should — let the user have a say in what they'll run on their machines.

I've stuck with Debian for awhile now on this laptop, even though I've been using Ubuntu more (blame it on Ubuntu's working suspend/resume ... and other stuff that just works better).

So far, here are the Debian Lenny problems I've had to solve to get things working:

• Change Gconf configuration so Epiphany browser doesn't default to "working offline" mode
• Download and install driver from the Foo2zjs Project to use HP Laserjet 1020 printer (to be fair, this is also an issue with Ubuntu)
• Tweak xorg.conf so Alps Touchpad's tap-to-click function can be managed (can't quite remember how I did this ...)
• Restore sound for ESS 1988 Allegro with firmware from the ALSA Project

It could've been worse, and in almost all of these instances I got the hacks from the Debian Bug Tracking System. But I'd prefer that at least some of these bugs actually get fixed rather that shuffled aside, with users left searching for the hackish fixes that will make their machines usable with a given distribution.

What most of us know is that users pretty much gravitate toward operating systems that work best with their hardware and the software they wish to use.

So if Ubuntu uses the same Linux kernel but supports my sound chip, properly configures my touchpad, doesn't think I'm working offline when I'm not, properly suspends and resumes, and offers a bit more in terms of functionality and polish (like the GNOME menu editor actually, say, working), I'm inclined to use it.

I still have Debian Lenny on the Gateway, although I might devote its partition to CentOS 5.2 for testing purposes.

Debian is still faster than Ubuntu. Many of the packages I use are better put-together in Debian, especially the educational games my daughter uses.

And I like the setup that Debian defaults to when installed. The fact that I can and have fixed most of the problems I had is a plus.

In Lenny, I'm having a few graphical quirks with GNOME. The top of the screen gets a little funky at times — and I'd love to figure out the suspend/resume problem, but otherwise Debian runs quite well. And as far as compatibility with this specific pile of hardware goes, Lenny has quite an edge over Debian Etch, the project's current stable distribution.

And since Lenny is still in the Testing stage, patches are coming through at a quick pace, and things are bound to improve on the distribution's road to "Stable" status.

I only wish I could know for sure if the things I fixed manually are being fixed automatically for present and future Lenny users.

Next: How exactly to restore sound for ESS Allegro-equipped PCs in Debian Lenny

I don't know why I'm compelled to continually report on how well Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is running on the $0 Laptop, but I keep doing it.

From the graphical polish to Suspend/Resume, Alps touchpad control and everything else I've done with it, this is the most impressive Linux distribution I've run thus far.

For use on this laptop -- a Gateway Solo 1450 -- it's better than Debian Lenny, my other go-to OS.

Today I tried a live CD of Fedora 9, since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 supposedly has beefed up its support of Suspend/Resume on laptops, I figured that maybe, just maybe, that functionality was present in Fedora 9.

It very well might be, but in the Fedora 9 live environment, Suspend/Resume doesn't work on this laptop.

Moving on to Debian, in the Lenny updates I installed today, there was a new kernel among them. I booted into it after the update, and the new 2.6.24 kernel still doesn't support the ESS 1988 Allegro sound chip on the Gateway.

In order to have working sound, I'm still using the original Lenny 2.6.22 kernel, which does support the chip. I do understand that I can manually add the module I need to support sound in the new kernel, but I'm waiting to see if and when Debian decides that it would like a certain number of its users to enjoy sound. Until then, I'll stick with 2.6.22.

In case you were wondering, and I know you were, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS supports sound just fine on the laptop, even with a 2.6.24 kernel. Score another one for Ubuntu. If the binary blob in the kernel for the ESS 1988 Allegro sound chip were the only such blob left in the kernel as configured by Debian, then I'd understand its sudden exclusion from the distribution, but I have a very good feeling that this is not the case.

I will consider adding the sound modules myself, as detailed in one of the relevant bug reports, but I'll more than likely turn to Ubuntu for the simple reason that it just runs better. And this is coming from a person who has championed Debian quite a bit. (As an aside, I love bug reports that give you a fix for the problem that often works but leaves the bug intact to a) annoy some users and b) drive others away.)

I've thought about it quite a bit. If you're running a standard desktop computer, it's easy to make just about any Linux distribution work well, if it will work at all. You're not often worrying about unsupported touchpads, uncontrolled CPU fans, flaky or nonexistant Suspend/Resume, other power-management issues and the like. I can run Debian Etch with carefree abandon on some of my desktop systems, but getting Etch to work well with an Alps Touchpad is just not in the cards ... or maybe it is, since I found some new suggestions for configuring xorg.conf to make the Alps perform better. But since I've made the move to Lenny, I'm probably not going back to Etch on that system, even though the sound-chip issue continues to piss me off.