Kingspec SSD and back to OpenSuSE 11.0

OK, I can report that the Kingspec works just fine in the U810 although it does drain a lot more power than the CF card - more like the old Toshiba Mk4009GAL drive. However, it is a LOT faster than the CF and the Tosh - to the extent that most of the stuff I am doing seems to be CPU- rather than I/O-bound. More to the point, suspend-to-disk takes 14 seconds and resume takes 16, of which 6 is the BIOS check. Boot to kdm login prompt is 28s.

So now I'm back to OpenSuSE 11.0 since too many things were bust in 11.1. I do actually use the U810 for work and I need certain things like Bluetooth and external monitors - I know there are fixes but they are liable to be blown away by a kernel update which is not what I want when I need to give a presentation.

However, times have moved on so here is the revised, SSD-friendly install process:

1. Install OpenSuSE, include kernel dev packages and removing all "beagle" related packages
   
2. Set up a 1GB tmpfs at /tmp with /var/tmp and /usr/tmp soft-linked to /tmp
3. Disable CUPS, sshd, postfix, portmap, auditd, java_binfmt in YAST
   
4. Add "pnpbios=off pnpacpi=off" to get wired ethernet working
5. Do a full update - can now set display to 1024x600 in SaX properly, screen size of 12-inches gives a good font size
   
6. Add MadWifi repository and install madwifi to get wireless working, add ath_pci to /etc/pm/config.d/config SUSPEND_MODULES
   
7. Add OpenOffice repository and upgrade to OO 3.1
8. Add Webcam drivers repository and install r5u870 drivers and firmware (image is upside down, problem for later), add r5u870 and uvcvideo to /etc/pm/config.d/config SUSPEND_MODULES
9. Disable Firefox disk and offline caches (in about:config look for browser.cache.xxx.enable and change to false)
10. Enable compiz but go into Workarounds and disable Legacy Fullscreen (stops Firefox and YAST losing window decorations when fullscreen).
    
11. Add S2RAM_OPTS="-f" to /etc/pm/config.d/config so that Suspend to RAM works

...there are some more things to do, which I'll add in due course

Kingspec ZIF SSD

Just ordered a 64GB Kingspec ZIF SSD - we shall see how it performs. I am tempted to go back to OpenSuSE 11.0 when I get it - having discovered that Bluetooth and the external monitor handling are not working in 11.1.

With the SSD in I'll use the 32GB CF card in the slot as additional backup store. I used to use it for mounting CF cards from my camera but in-camera formatted cards don't mount properly (it's a Fuji S9500 with the mysterious V1.3 firmware) so I'm using a USB cable instead. As the CF slot on the U810 is so slow, it's arguably quicker downloading this way anyway.