When I installed OpenSuSE 12.3 on my VAIO laptop, suspend is not working (not even suspend command). Instead, I have to issue s2ram command in OpenSuSE to suspend my machine. To make it the default sleep module (uswsusp), here are the steps required:

When I install a Linux distro to my VAIO notebook, I found that there is an annoying bug with the lid switch. It does not get updated whenever I suspend on lid close, it means cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state will output state: close. When I close the lid again, it won’t suspend, instead, it will change the state to open. So in order for it to suspend again on lid close after the first suspend, I have to close it, reopen the lid and close it again.

I have tried installing Linux Mint, Fedora, Fuduntu and Xubuntu, but it is not fixed in any of the distros. So, I don’t think it is distro problems. While researching this issues (which I spent two full days), I found that Linux got an amazing feature that enable users to dynamically loading DSDT at boot time, there is no need to update the BIOS. So here’s the instuctions:

DNS settings in Linux are generally stored in /etc/resolv.conf file, you could basically just edit this file to change the DNS settings in any Linux systems. However, the change is not permanent, it will be overwritten by Network Manager when u reconnect or reboot. So, to make the change permanent, there are two methods, Network Manager’s dispatcher script method and the immutable flag method.

The installation process for Fedora 18 is way easier than its previous versions, the process is not that different from other laptops. Even for creating media, all I have to do is to burn it to a DVD (or create bootable USB if you downloaded a Live CD) which, in its previous version require me to tweak it or use reFit/reFind to boot the installer. The only struggle that I had was when I am creating a DVD on my Macbook’s superdrive, for some unknown reasons, it just couldn’t read what it burnt, it means it can’t boot into a newly burnt DVD. I have tried burning it using both Fedora 17 and Mac OSX 10.7, both failed, still can’t read what it burnt. So, my only solution is to go for an external DVD drive, which I had lying around inside my now ancient PC, I connected it using a SATA to USB cable, burn it, booted it, and it works!

So let’s go to the main point of this article, the installation process for Fedora 18 includes downloading media, making media, boot into the media, install and post-installation. You can also refer to Fedora Documentation for a detailed installation process.

When I was enabling the theme features on my Macbook Fedora, I found that there is not much guides on how to enable it on an EFI systems such as Macbook, most of the guides I found are for non-EFI systems. So I think it’s a good idea to create a simple guide for other people who encounter the same problem as me and for myself to refer in the future.

Grub require certain modules to enable/disable some features such as the support for themes. On an EFI systems like Macbook, you are required to create an EFI image with modules that support the feature. The first step of creating an EFI image is to determine the names and features of modules. Some grub shell commands such as linuxefi and initrdefi are crucial to boot Linux, make sure you don’t miss it when creating the image.