Adjustments

to make my HP Pavilion dv2383ea (dv2000 series) laptop run in Ubuntu 7.10:

#1: Get suspend / resume to work.

The problem:
This is a messy problem because it involves the power management (ACPI) and the video driver. As a typical laptop user I like to put the laptop to sleep, move it in my bag to another location, and then open it up and resume working. Often, the laptop would not wake up. Pressing the left-cursor button or holding down the f4 would make the hard drive spin, but the screen would remain resolutely black until I did a hard reboot (by holding down the power button).

The analysis:
The typical "sleep" fuction on a laptop is called suspend-to-RAM; a.k.a. s2ram, STR, or S3 for short (There is another option, called hibernate or suspend-to-disk (S4), which reduces power consumption radically but works very badly on Ubuntu. We will ignore this option). The s2ram function is governed by the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, a.k.a. ACPI. ACPI has been notoriously difficult for Linux developers to work with; often the drivers were propriety and peculiar to each laptop and hardware-set. In this case, open-source drivers for the NVIDIA chipset do not reliably work with Linux's ACPI protocols to bring the screen back up.

The solution:
NVIDIA actually offers a Linux version of its video drivers now. You can install it yourself "by hand", but it is easiest to install via Envy. This set of scripts not only downloads and installs the latest version of the NVIDIA driver, but it also detects your chipset. For the moment (Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy") it will require an uninstall/reinstall for upgrading to the next version (Ubu 8.04 "Hardy"), but it is worth it. Not only does it make the resume function reliable, but it enables you to adjust the screen brightness and identify your hardware. I could not do either of these via any other method.
Here is the hardware for the HP Pavilion dv2383ea:

Screen: Seiko 1280X800 LCD screen, identified as DFP-0 on GPU-0
Graphics processor: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7200
VBIOS version: 05.72.22.43.58
Memory: 128 MB

However, the wifi still does not resume automatically from suspend.

#2: Making a persistent adjustment to the touchpad.

The problem:
I tend to inadvertently tap the touchpad way too often, and I don't like the function. My typing posture is relaxed, so my palm often comes to rest against the touchpad; that makes the cursor jump around and click, starting programs, shifting active windows, and occasionally closing them at random. I just want the trackpad to move the mouse around.

The solution:
This laptop uses a Synaptics touchpad. To enable control of the touchpad, on the command-line enter:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This opens the X server config file in gedit, which is a convenient text editor.
Find the following section:

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Synaptics Touchpad"
   Driver       "synaptics"
   Option       "SendCoreEvents"     "true"
   Option       "Device"    "/dev/psaux"
   Option       "Protocol"     "auto-dev"
   Option       "HorizEdgeScroll"    "0"
EndSection

...and add the following line:

    Option        "SHMConfig"    "on"

...so that the modified section looks like this:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Synaptics Touchpad"
    Driver        "synaptics"
    Option        "SendCoreEvents"    "true"
    Option        "Device"    "/dev/psaux"
    Option        "Protocol"    "auto-dev"
    Option        "HorizEdgeScroll"    "0"
    Option        "SHMConfig"    "on"
EndSection

Save, close, reboot, and you will be able to modify the touchpad settings.

Then create a shell script that disables the tapping function:

#!/bin/sh
# This shuts off the tapping on the trackpad.
synclient MaxTapTime=0

I save this in a fixed location, such as: /home/pietro/Documents/ubu_usage/typstart.sh
and make it executable by entering:

sudo chmod 755 /home/pietro/Documents/ubu_usage/typstart.sh

Note that from the command-line, you can run a shell script simply by typing:

./typstart.sh

...but I want this to run automatically and disable the tap function every time I log in.
Therefore I list it in the startup routines by going to System -> Preferences -> Sessions...
..in the dialog that opens, I type +Add; within the new subdialog, I browse to the shell script and then name this "NoTap" and type in a description of what it does: "Disables tap of trackpad on login."
NOTE: if you ever rename any folder that is part of the pathname to the file, the link will break; so renew the link or figure out a place to put the file that will be stable.

#3: Getting a DVD Player to work.

#4: Enabling Flash in Firefox.
#5: Getting and installing a batch processor for GIMP.
#6: Getting the wifi to start up again automatically after resume-from-suspend.