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- Linux On Mobile Computers - -> Linux Mobile Guide |
Due to the proliferation of cellular phones and walkmans it's not quite common in our days to take care of a quiet environment. Anyway I want to give some recommendations for the polite ones. The beeping of X11 windows can be configured to a shorter and lower pitched tone or even to a blunt "thump" with xset b ... options (a lower pitched tone is usually less annoying and distracting). Independently of that, most xterm-compatible windows and shells can be configured to make "visual bell" instead of "audio bell". For the console setterm -blength 0 and for X11 xset b off turns the bell off. See also PCMCIA-HOWTO, and much more details in the Visible-Bell-mini-Howto by Alessandro Rubini. When starting your laptop with PCMCIA-CS configured correctly, this will be shown by two high beeps. If you want to avoid this put CARDMGR_OPTS="-q" into the PCMCIA configuration file, e.g. /etc/pcmcia.conf for Debian/GNU Linux. To avoid the dialtones during the modem dialing add
module "serial_cs" opts "do_sound=0"
to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts (from man serial_cs). This will disable speaker output completely, but the AT M command should let you selectively control when the speaker is active. WarningPlease make sure what you are doing, when configuring the fan. You laptop may overheat and die, in case you have done something wrong. For some laptop series there are Linux utilities available to control the fan and other features.
With some laptops the fan is always on or at least very often. Here are some remedies. In some cases the fan is always on because the CPU is working with highest frequency. You may use either cpufreqd or cpudyn to cure this. Sometimes the parport causes the fan to be always on. You may edit the /etc/modules.conf to cure this: alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc options parport_pc io=378 irq=7 The IO address and the IRQ number depend on the hardware settings or the BIOS configuration. Often the IRQ does not need to be given. The problem and its solution was discussed in the SuSE Laptop Mailing List. To avoid unneccessary hard disk noise you may use the same techniques as described in the power saving chapter above. Hard disks in most laptops are the primary source of noise. |