[ltp] A21p problems (was: T21 backlight problem)

[Matt Graham]

On Wednesday 29 March 2006 10:13, after a long battle with technology, 
ted frater wrote:
[massive snip]

When you ask a question that's almost completely unrelated to a previous 
question, the right thing to do is to change the Subject: line and 
start a new thread.

> I [have] a thinkpad A21P onto which I put a fresh installation of suse
> 10. I can get everything working except going on line with broadband
> with html. But I can FTP without any problem.

Networking obviously works.  This sounds to me like your ISP is using 
some sort of web proxy, and your proxy settings are incorrect in 
whatever you're using for a browser.  But there isn't nearly enough 
information to make a good diagnosis here.  Check out the useful (if 
snarky) advice at http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html 
for advice on asking good questions in technical forums.

> As this machine is my only pc, [I've] had to use slackware 10.1, which 
> does [everything] perfectly, except play DVDs.

Again, more info is needed before anybody can help you.  Which program 
are you using to play DVDs?  What are the exact error messages or 
symptoms you saw when you tried this program?  Did you install 
libdvdcss?  I've seen some strange problems with a distro-provided 
kernel and DVDs; 2.6.15-gentoo-r5 just didn't get along at all with 
xine and all the commercially produced DVDs I own.  Upgrading the 
kernel to 2.6.15.6-vanilla made xine work perfectly.

> [I can't seem] to find a linux distro that does [everything.] [I] 
> tried Vector linux, that [can't] find the 1600 by 1200 [graphics] 
> chip. Ubuntu had a problem as well.

You sound pretty inexperienced with Linux.  If you expect *any* distro 
to set everything up exactly as you want it, you'll usually be 
disappointed.  You usually have to get in there and fiddle with things 
for a while before everything's exactly right.

You can make this faster by going to http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html 
and looking your specific make and model up if you have a problem 
getting the hardware working properly.  Thing is, the A21p is old 
enough that everything should be detected just fine.  The things that 
you've described sound like software problems, not hardware ones, so 
you will probably get more done by Reading The Fine Manual, Searching 
The Fine Web, and asking good questions about the problems you're 
having.  HTH,

-- 
  Back in my day, all we had were 0's.  We painted them different colors
  to tell them apart.  Once this started bogging the processes down, we
  switched to naming them.  I still miss Bob.  --skritch on a.f.c (1998)
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see