SuSE Linux 7.2 Personal on a Pico Consul Laptop
Updated August 2001
The Pico Consul is a badge-engineered budget laptop from Pico Direct.
I also got an external three-button serial mouse and a PCMCIA card modem.
Installation
Installing SuSE Linux 7.2 was very easy.
The graphical installer YAST2 recognised the hardware, including the sound card,
modem and trackpad without problem.
I have a 13" monitor so I selected a VESA monitor driver 1024x768@75Hz,
with a 24 bit colour depth.
External Mouse
After installing SuSE Linux 7.2, the external mouse didn't work.
This was remedied by adding the following to the /etc/X11/XF86Config file:
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "mouse"
Identifier "Mouse[2]"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "Protocol" "microsoft"
EndSection
(the values were established by running "sysp --scan mouse" as root)
and editing the ServerLayout section:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout[all]"
InputDevice "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse[2]" "SendCoreEvents"
Option "Clone" "off"
Option "Xinerama" "off"
Screen "Screen[0]"
EndSection
(new line shown in bold)
Here is the complete config file: XF86Config
One lump or two
While trying to solve the above problem, I used YAST/SAX (now known as SAX1/YAST1).
This inadvertently set my system to use XFree version 3, using a control file
in /etc. This was easily remedied, however, by running SAX2 (described as "Screen configuration
for XFree version 4" on the SuSE menu), and following the option to upgrade.
APM
Using the suspend apm option causes my laptop to be inoperable after waking.
Using the standby option works, however.
Internet
I was unable to get the SuSE KInternet program to connect to my chosen ISP, UKLinux.
However, I had no difficulty using KPPP to connect.
I had to touch /etc/resolv.conf as root, and then used the dialog setup with
automatic DNS option.
History
I got the Pico Consul in February 1999, and installed SuSE 6.0 on it.
The graphics worked, but I never got the modem, trackpad or sound-card to work.
I saw SuSE Linux 7.1 Live CD on the front cover of Linux Format magazine,
and after this recognised my hardware I bought 7.2 from the Linux Emporium soon after.
Conclusion
SuSE Linux 7.2 Personal is an excellent desktop/laptop operating environment, with
much desktop software to use.
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