Hot Hot Linux

Apologies if this topic has already been discussed to death somewhere else on this forum, and whether this is in fact the correct forum to post to.

Firstly, I am what you might call a Linux newbie. I installed Suse 10 when it was released, but I had difficulty getting the wlan working so I went back to using WinXP.

A few weeks ago, I installed the latest version of Ubuntu (dapper drake), which I like very much. I persisted for a while longer and I finally got my wireless card up and running! Everything was just great – I finally had a usable Linux running on my laptop, and I even convinced my wife to overcome her fear of anything non-windows!

After a few days of very light usage, I accepted that my laptop was running much hotter than it does under XP. I googled the topic to death and ended up with a few suggestions, which I implemented - ensure that cpu scaling was working, which is was, and install a few monitoring apps so that I can check that the fan comes on when it should, disable duplicate services etc…). After following the instructions, I did notice a difference but it was still not perfect - temperature would rise to 60c over a course of 5 minutes, the fan would switch on, and temperature would go down to 48c…this is when the machine is basically idle. If I started browsing the web or, heaven forbid, listen to music, then this cycle period reduces to about 3 minutes. After a while, the touch pad gets uncomfortably hot and if I continue to use the machine I am guaranteed of the OS crashing at some stage.

This is unacceptable for me and I have wiped Ubuntu from my HD and I’m back to using XP, which I can leave running for a whole week without my laptop overheating.

For the record, I am running on an Acer Aspire 3023WLMI, which has an AMD Mobile Sempron 3000+ (25w) processor and an ATI X700 graphics card.

I would really like to ditch Windows but this overheating is a real problem. I would love to install Suse again (now that I know how to get wlan working), but I really don’t want to waste my time only to find that my laptop still overheats.

My question to the forum is: Does Suse include any additional hardware support that might overcome this overheating issue? Is anyone else running Suse on a similar laptop who might share their experience?

Many thanks.

you know, i can't answer your question with any facts but i do have a little experience with your situation. i run ubuntu 5.10 on an old P2 laptop and i have shut off acpi because my laptop would just shut off when the intel processor got hot. and once it reached the heat i could only boot up long enough to shut it down before it would shut down on it's own.

since turning off acpi my laptop runs long and stable. never had a crash yet. i sometimes leave it on all day long and several times for 2-3 days before shutting it down. although the laptop gets a little hot on the bottom it has never been a problem so far. perhaps i'm taking a risk here but again it's an old P2. besides, sipping a cold beer while the laptop is on my lap makes me forget all about the heat.

so to get back to your question. i don't know if suse would be better than ubuntu (opinion) on the laptop but what would it hurt to install it anyway. give it a try...

ubuntu is light and clean. if you want the same experience with suse then do not install a bunch of **** that you'll never use. go with the base gnome install (or kde) and then install what you NEED after that.

For the record, I am running on an Acer Aspire 3023WLMI, which has an AMD Mobile Sempron 3000+ (25w) processor and an ATI X700 graphics card.[/b]

You could look here where a fedora user has the same model laptop.
http://doube.net/3023wlmi.html
I dont' see any comments re: over-heating. You could email the individual who posted that review. From what I have heard from a number of friends at work (who all use Fedora), it is also a pretty good distribution.

Thanks for the replies.

I did disable apmd (instead of acpi) and that definitely improved things, however, I still wasn't very happy with the final results. The laptop still heats up way to quickly for my liking so I'd never feel comfortable leaving it on overnight to download a large file or something - all very essential requirements in my opinion.

After some more googling, I've found a few more references to Mobile AMD Sempron-based laptops overheating under linux, but no concrete solutions.

I think I'll try Suse 10.1 at some stage (when I have a few days to spare), although I won't hold my breath in anticipation. I have a sneaking suspicion that there won't be much of a difference to this issue until AMD release official cool'n'quiet / cpu scaling drivers for linux or until 'powernowd' for linux is improved. Sad but true...

I have a HP laptop which uses the Mobile AMD Sempron 2800 processor. I've run SUSE 10.0 on it since November 2005 and will be upgrading it to SUSE 10.1 sometime within the next few days. I'd say it runs a bit warm, but not unlike any other laptop I've ever had. In fact, it is often left on for days on end, here on my desk. I've never experienced any shutdowns or problems I've associated with overheating.

Cheers,
zenarcher

Apologies if this topic has already been discussed to death somewhere else on this forum, and whether this is in fact the correct forum to post to.

Firstly, I am what you might call a Linux newbie. I installed Suse 10 when it was released, but I had difficulty getting the wlan working so I went back to using WinXP.

A few weeks ago, I installed the latest version of Ubuntu (dapper drake), which I like very much. I persisted for a while longer and I finally got my wireless card up and running! Everything was just great – I finally had a usable Linux running on my laptop, and I even convinced my wife to overcome her fear of anything non-windows!

After a few days of very light usage, I accepted that my laptop was running much hotter than it does under XP. I googled the topic to death and ended up with a few suggestions, which I implemented - ensure that cpu scaling was working, which is was, and install a few monitoring apps so that I can check that the fan comes on when it should, disable duplicate services etc…). After following the instructions, I did notice a difference but it was still not perfect - temperature would rise to 60c over a course of 5 minutes, the fan would switch on, and temperature would go down to 48c…this is when the machine is basically idle. If I started browsing the web or, heaven forbid, listen to music, then this cycle period reduces to about 3 minutes. After a while, the touch pad gets uncomfortably hot and if I continue to use the machine I am guaranteed of the OS crashing at some stage.

This is unacceptable for me and I have wiped Ubuntu from my HD and I’m back to using XP, which I can leave running for a whole week without my laptop overheating.

For the record, I am running on an Acer Aspire 3023WLMI, which has an AMD Mobile Sempron 3000+ (25w) processor and an ATI X700 graphics card.

I would really like to ditch Windows but this overheating is a real problem. I would love to install Suse again (now that I know how to get wlan working), but I really don’t want to waste my time only to find that my laptop still overheats.

My question to the forum is: Does Suse include any additional hardware support that might overcome this overheating issue? Is anyone else running Suse on a similar laptop who might share their experience?

Many thanks.
[/b]

Normally the HLT instruction of the Linux kernel does absolutely nothing on the AMD CPUs. To have this instruction switched on you have to enable some registers in the Northbridge chipset. I wrote an excellent script which supports a lot of chipsets for the AMD platform. When the HLT is switched on
it will reduce the temperature of your CPU to about +/- 20%. If you want to use my script you could send me an e-mail at microchip@chello.be and I'll send it to you.