novice questions about installation troubleshooting

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Christianity
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Iscritto: 10/09/2012

Hey guys, idiot here. I am very much a novice user, and have used windows most of my life and have just recently been reading up on free software and liked the philosophy and wanted to try to make the big switch to this one. I understand windows is looked down upon but I'm dual booting right now to have something I'm familiar with around while I learn.

Anyway, I have version 5.0 installed right now, and about 50% of the time it won't boot, either just hangs at the loading screen or if it hung last time it may go blank before giving an error about improper shutdown or something. Because it takes about ten seconds to go from reboot to the loading screen, it's not a huge nuisance at all, but I'd like to ask about a fix.

The reason I don't have 5.5 installed is that when I tried it it would hang at a blank screen after boot every time, but after reading this page:
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/installation-troubleshooting
I'm pretty sure that's because I needed the "acpi=off" option to load the installer.

So my main question is, could someone explain to a computer-illiterate person the significance of "acpi=off", and also elaborate on the instructions:
"If the boot parameter options worked for you, you will need to make changes to a text file /boot/grub/menu.lst after the installation has completed."
That file is not in 5.0, so if I want to install 5.5, will it be there or will I have to create it, and how do I go about editing it properly?

Thanks to everyone in advance for reading, I admit probably won't be able to contribute much other than questions to this board.

Christianity
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Iscritto: 10/09/2012

Okay, after some searching I've found that page was a little outdated. I edited /etc/default/grub and changed the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi=off" and now it boots 5.0 flawlessly, unfortunately it now hangs at shutdown... restart however works fine interestingly enough.

Magic Banana

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Iscritto: 07/24/2010

The choice of Trisquel 5.0 is kind of weird: its support stops this week! That means security issues will not be fixed! Why haven't you chosen Trisquel 5.5 (or, if you are a little adventurous, the "soon-to-be-released" Trisquel 6.0 Long Term Support)? Because they use a more recent version of the Linux-libre kernel, your ACPI problems may be solved. The so-called "update manager" should already suggest you the update to 5.5. You only need to accept it (no need to reinstall from an ISO).

Otherwise (but you should first try to update to 5.5 first), you can try the latest versions version of the Linux-libre kernel. It is not hard thanks to Jason Self, a Trisquel user, who maintains an APT repository. Just follow the instructions on this page.

Christianity
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Iscritto: 10/09/2012

I'm actually trying to do that upgrade right now, but the reason I was using 5.0 was that 5.5 would not boot at all, and I had to reinstall 5.0 after I tried upgrading. Now that I've realized the problem was the acpi, I'm trying to upgrade again, but my connection is being very slow once again.

Thank you very much for your response though. What exactly is acpi, or more importantly what are the consequences of disabling it?

Magic Banana

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I am a translator!

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Iscritto: 07/24/2010

Sorry I read your post too fast. Wikipedia is your friend:
In computing, the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification provides an open standard for device configuration and power management by the operating system.

By deactivating it you may lose features such as the automatic power-off after shut-down.

Chris

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Iscritto: 04/23/2011

This isn't helpful now although will be in the future. The design of GNU/Linux is very different than that of Microsoft Windows. Particularly for hardware.

While I'd do things differently if I put out a distribution I'm not. What I do do is concentrate on the business end of things and support. The way things are my company has gone abut solving the support problem a different way.

GNU/Linux's design has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is everything worth buying hardware wise is maintained and supported by the community. One isn't reliant on the manufacturers for new drivers. As a result devices that worked yesterday remaining working today. That is only true though of freedom friendly hardware. Most non-free software dependent hardware (that which works with Ubuntu and not Trisquel) you are likely to run into an issue with. So what that means for you is buy the right hardware!

The downside to this is that that because of the way distributions like Trisquel, Ubuntu, and others release the software there are devices which may not be supported until your next upgrade. In many cases there may be no hardware readily available on the market because manufacturers do release new hardware just after a new version of GNU/Linux comes out. HP released a new line of printers for example just after Canonical released Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. As a result of HP's replacement of its printer line with new versions unsupported by Ubuntu 12.04LTS there are no well supported freedom friendly printers readily available on the market today. HP is the only company that provides good documentation and support (free drivers) for GNU/Linux.

My solution (I'm the CEO of libre.thinkpenguin.com) was to setup a store which supports libre software users (freedom). We do this through various ways. One of them is by making sure we stock up on product so that users don't have to worry about being able to find hardware that is well supported by GNU/Linux. We still have hardware that supports Ubuntu's 10.04 LTS release believe it or not.

The better solution from a distribution angle would be if Trisquel and others would focus on a long term support releases and then update particular driver packages and other critical software (firefox). The kernel, hplip (printers), etc. I believe that with free software supported hardware this solution would work better than releasing a new version every six months for the majority of users. Especially less technical users. It makes documentations (books) easy and non-technical users switching can follow a guide 2 years after a release with a book printed much earlier. The way it is not users are forced into a newer short term release where no books exist in order to get hardware support (except from us that is).

This would be breaking new ground though and how well it would work is up for debate. I think my experience though is probably that most expert of anyones here and possibly anyones anywhere. I work with end-users, have development experience (working on putting out a distribution pre-Ubuntu although for all intensive purposes was Ubuntu- even worked with some of the same developers that are working on it today), and work on the hardware side of things. I've seen how non-free software negatively impacts users. I saw it when I worked for a company that included non-free software/drivers in its distribution and I still see it today selling freedom friendly hardware.

Christianity
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Iscritto: 10/09/2012

So what are the advantages to the current method of many short-term-support releases? Is it easier on the developers?

Chris

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Iscritto: 04/23/2011

For derived distributions I'd say it is mainly better for users to have a consistent user interface. The developers for Trisquel may not gain much though and might even end up with more work. However I think the benefits outweigh the costs.

Christianity
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Iscritto: 10/09/2012

That would explain it, thank you. I did find that article but it seemed a bit over my head. I appreciate the help, hopefully this upgrade will work okay now.

lembas
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Iscritto: 05/13/2010

And if you feel like tinkering, there are other parameters to try including

acpi=noirq
acpi=strict
acpi=rsdt
acpi=copy_dsdt

and (alone or in addition to one of above)

pci=noacpi

Christianity
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Iscritto: 10/09/2012

Got it working perfectly for now, thanks to all for the help, but I'll hold off on the tinkering for a little while.