Quiet/LowPower Mode for Desktop Linux Distro

From: Kcops (root_at_nowhere.com)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:18:04 -0400

Hi Group,

I have tried Knoppix, Debian, Gnoppix, Suse, Mandrake, RedHat and
maybe a couple of other Linux distributions.

Most if not all the machines I own (except for an old 486) have the
facility in the BIOS to spindown the HDD after a certain time period.
They are only revived when disk access is required and of course they
will spindown again after the required time period has passed.

Under WinDos spindown was possible especially after this feature was
builtin into the OS. For all the shortcomings of FAT32 (and I think
NTFS), and there are many, there is no journalling ie EXT3, Reiser,
etc system to keep the drives spinning forever. While I understand the
value and reason for EXT3, Reiser, etc there are desktop situations
where spinning down the HDD is most welcome if not required. Some of
you might argue that keeping the HDD running forever is easier on the
hardware but that holds true if and only if the drives are being spun
up and down constantly. In my case they might stay off for many hours
at a time which is more energy efficient and wears disk bearings out a
LOT slower (Isn't the "cool" of Linux that I will not have to reboot
for months or years??!! My poor drives not to mention my ears won't
last if I don't shut the system down to save the drives!!). I have
"ancient" 1 gig drives that have many thousands of hours on them
because they have spent a lot of time in the spundown mode (NO, this
is an example, I DO NOT intend to install a distribution of Linux on 1
gig drives!!! ).

I would really like to install a version of Linux to a HDD. The moment
I try that with Debian, RedHat, etc the sound of two HDD spinning
forever is most annoying. I want quiet computing. Knoppix and Gnoppix
(to a lesser extent) work great because of the loopback filesystem as
long as you boot from a CD/Ram (yes you can also boot from HD with a
Knoppix "image" on it). The only thing that seems to work quietly in
Knoppix is to have nothing but FAT32 partitions for everything
including the swapfile. Trying to install any "freshmeat" that require
compiles in Knoppix results in failure for the most part. This limits
installation of new software to Mozilla because everything is included
and can be installed in a user directory anywhere. Before anybody
grills me about what directories and where I should mention that I
find the Knoppix system confusing because there seems to be multiple
etc, sbin directories all over the place. Pull out Midnight Commander
and you will know what I mean!

A month ago and by accident I read about the (in) famous
"laptop_mode". However this seems to only work with version 2.6.XXX of
the kernel. A distribution like Knoppix will not allow major changes
to the kernel without some gymnastics that are still far away from my
level of comfort not to mention time ,effort, and experience. It seems
to be "clear" that installing some distribution of Linux to HDD is a
better proposition, but what distribution will work that keeps my HDD
spundown "out of the box"?

Surely some smart person out there has been down this road and found
the answer that can be digested by a person such as myself?

Thanks

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