PM Utils, acpi, what’s the deal?

It seems we have a plethora of power management tools; yet judging by the Ubuntuforums, none of them seem to really do what we all want. By default one gets acpi-support, gnome-power-manager, acpid. All of these live in some unholy trinity on a laptop I would gather. Yet it seems that Gutsy has problems with most portable systems with waking up. Not suspending. Suspending here works really good. My T40 and T43 suspend each and every time. Its the waking up part.

So, I am always interested in finding new things. Enter this debian package called pm-utils. Of course, I have to give it a go. With this package, you depend on HAL to do the right thing and I gather that g-p-m and acpi don’t really like each other too much either. So, I removed acpi-support with all those strange scripts and decided to give it a go. So far, the suspends and wakeups seem okay but the laptop does not wake up when the lid is re-opened. You have to plonk the power button. I bet I can write a hook or something to make it do that.

But here is the thing in a nutshell… Power management has just got to work on portable systems. People want to use Linux on laptops. Its nice on laptops overall; but this whole thing about acpi, suspending, resuming, hibernating, and then troubleshooting things is a bit much.

I’m gonna give pm-utils a try and also figure out what it does with lid suspends and opens. Perhaps a simple little scriptlet or hook will take care of it. If not, I’m sure that another package will make its way out or I’ll just live with a solution which works some percentage of the time.

Other News Fit to Blog…

I just noticed that Technorati got a facelift. I think I’ve ventured beyond what it provides or perhaps I’ve simplified. When I first look at it, it seems that the “blog monster” has been released and there is a glut of information on the pages and it seems dressed up in windows and borders and pretty things. My question is more basic. Is it still relevant? Do we need enterprising startup services and institutions around blogging? Is blogging a social institution comprised of millions and millions of “hubs” of editing in some strange order?

Sociology would say that our institutions arise to meet needs. But why? Why do they? What is it about blogging that we believe needs an institution? My take is that blogging extends and enhances and unpacks my terribly cluttered mind sometimes. Facts, lies, half truths, even some evil can come out. But are we held to a higher order? I doubt it. I also don’t really know anymore what Technorati’s core value is. The site is confusing and I don’t get what its trying to tell me. But, I have to give full disclosure. I am a terrible judge of websites for the most part. I don’t know what works and why with a website. My judgements are on whether it does some to me or for me. Unfortunately, technorati does neither. I think perhaps they should take the word of the bard and “simplify”. Make it easier to find the information and remove the clutter.

In the end I’d ask what its core value is and what it intends on delivering. What are bloggers wanting their service providers to do these days? Search and report? Not sure. I don’t write for those reasons. I gave up the idea of getting reasonable links to and from awhile ago. I figure if someone types in a URL the wrong way and ends up here, they may read yet another blog ™ and then travel on. There are better bloggers to read out there like Doc and others. I’m just a weed that kicks up in the wind or a piece of flotsam that may travel a literary tidal pool. But I ain’t in search of readership or linkership. Not anymore. Its the mere act of doing it.

Its also why I could never maintain multiple weblogs each with its own little cast of characters; yet I applaud those like Dan York that seem able to. I have enough silliness and pedantry for just one and sometimes this one suffers and I can feel it boiling it up inside me. Then it comes doodling out with chicken scratches on virtual papers. I say congrats to Dan because he is prolific and can maintain it. To Technorati, I say sorry. I know you are trying to tell me something; but I don’t know what it is any longer. Perhaps its my fault.

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