About the CF-31 running with Debian 8 (64-bits)

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sroland
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:10 pm

About the CF-31 running with Debian 8 (64-bits)

#1 Post by sroland »

Hi, this is my first post. I recently purchased a 2nd hand CF-31 MK1 in absolutely great condition. I'm an astronomer and i was very exited about this kind of weather resistant equipment (i usually do outdoor night observations and laptop gets some dew and stuff). I installed Debian 8 jessie (amd 64) and i upgraded the laptop with 2x4gb Crucial RAMs and a 256gb SSD and it runs great. I have a couple of questions.

1) The unit shipped with an awesome backlit keyboard and i was wondering if it is possible to physically swap some keys to get the Dvorak layout?. I have done this before with some desktop keyboards but never with a backlit laptop one. I just could put stickers on top of it but it would ruin the whole backlit magic.

2) The unit has a SIM card slot just below the HDMI port but there is no GOBI-or-other-modem-wtahsoever listed in the devices. I opened the bottom hood with the RAM smaller cover, and i see what it seems to be an empty PCI slot. Is there where the GOBI card should be placed?

3) I ended up installing Debian 8 because Debian 9 was causing nasty system crashes (i think somehow related to graphics drivers). Debian 8 with LXDE runs very very stable and i'm more than pleased with it. Is there any issue reported regarding this issue? any known Linux distro running smooth in this laptop? Any custom configuration for running Debian 9?

I attached a pic of the inside when i was looking for the GOBI modem.

Best regards,
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SHEEPMAN!
Posts: 2239
Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2010 1:13 pm
Location: TDR-HQ California

Re: About the CF-31 running with Debian 8 (64-bits)

#2 Post by SHEEPMAN! »

sroland wrote:Hi, this is my first post. I recently purchased a 2nd hand CF-31 MK1 in absolutely great condition. I'm an astronomer and i was very exited about this kind of weather resistant equipment (i usually do outdoor night observations and laptop gets some dew and stuff). I installed Debian 8 jessie (amd 64) and i upgraded the laptop with 2x4gb Crucial RAMs and a 256gb SSD and it runs great. I have a couple of questions.

1) The unit shipped with an awesome backlit keyboard and i was wondering if it is possible to physically swap some keys to get the Dvorak layout?. I have done this before with some desktop keyboards but never with a backlit laptop one. I just could put stickers on top of it but it would ruin the whole backlit magic.Somebody installed those keys. So someone else should be able to do the swap...recalling at all times the aged plastic....micro-surgery. I have swapped keys on regular keyboards. It would behoove you to acquire a practice unit for spare parts.

2) The unit has a SIM card slot just below the HDMI port but there is no GOBI-or-other-modem-wtahsoever listed in the devices. I opened the bottom hood with the RAM smaller cover, and i see what it seems to be an empty PCI slot. Is there where the GOBI card should be placed?That's the place.
Gobi2000 cards required no sim AT LEAST FOR VERIZON. The newer multi-carrier Aircards use the sim.


3) I ended up installing Debian 8 because Debian 9 was causing nasty system crashes (i think somehow related to graphics drivers). Debian 8 with LXDE runs very very stable and i'm more than pleased with it. Is there any issue reported regarding this issue? any known Linux distro running smooth in this laptop? Any custom configuration for running Debian 9? Check out LMDE. I like MX-16.1(2)...experimenting with antiX-17. (not recommended for the faint at heart)

I attached a pic of the inside when i was looking for the GOBI modem.

Best regards,
Short answers in above quote.

LMDE Linux Mint Debian works out of the box. Except for the Gobi 2000 card. systemd and sysctl isues.

Welcome.

Jeff
Fair for you/ Fair for me.
I chose to NOT be organized.

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http://toughbooktalk.com/
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kode-niner
Posts: 700
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2014 7:39 am
Location: Canada

Re: About the CF-31 running with Debian 8 (64-bits)

#3 Post by kode-niner »

Finally another Debian user! :)

I ran into this problem with Debian 9 LXDE on my CF-19 MK4. The screen would sometimes suddenly display total garbage, go black or a combination of both. I worked around it since it was originally dist-upgraded over Debian 8 and still had a few kernel 3's. I just reconfigured grub to load the latest 3.16 instead of kernel 4.x.That seems to have isolated the issue and hasn't crashed since.

I haven't really had time to research the issue and figure out if it is a known bug that is being worked on.

What's the full model number of your CF-31?
Daily drives a CF-31

sroland
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:10 pm

Re: About the CF-31 running with Debian 8 (64-bits)

#4 Post by sroland »

SHEEPMAN! wrote:
sroland wrote:Hi, this is my first post. I recently purchased a 2nd hand CF-31 MK1 in absolutely great condition. I'm an astronomer and i was very exited about this kind of weather resistant equipment (i usually do outdoor night observations and laptop gets some dew and stuff). I installed Debian 8 jessie (amd 64) and i upgraded the laptop with 2x4gb Crucial RAMs and a 256gb SSD and it runs great. I have a couple of questions.

1) The unit shipped with an awesome backlit keyboard and i was wondering if it is possible to physically swap some keys to get the Dvorak layout?. I have done this before with some desktop keyboards but never with a backlit laptop one. I just could put stickers on top of it but it would ruin the whole backlit magic.Somebody installed those keys. So someone else should be able to do the swap...recalling at all times the aged plastic....micro-surgery. I have swapped keys on regular keyboards. It would behoove you to acquire a practice unit for spare parts.

2) The unit has a SIM card slot just below the HDMI port but there is no GOBI-or-other-modem-wtahsoever listed in the devices. I opened the bottom hood with the RAM smaller cover, and i see what it seems to be an empty PCI slot. Is there where the GOBI card should be placed?That's the place.
Gobi2000 cards required no sim AT LEAST FOR VERIZON. The newer multi-carrier Aircards use the sim.


3) I ended up installing Debian 8 because Debian 9 was causing nasty system crashes (i think somehow related to graphics drivers). Debian 8 with LXDE runs very very stable and i'm more than pleased with it. Is there any issue reported regarding this issue? any known Linux distro running smooth in this laptop? Any custom configuration for running Debian 9? Check out LMDE. I like MX-16.1(2)...experimenting with antiX-17. (not recommended for the faint at heart)

I attached a pic of the inside when i was looking for the GOBI modem.

Best regards,
Short answers in above quote.

LMDE Linux Mint Debian works out of the box. Except for the Gobi 2000 card. systemd and sysctl isues.

Welcome.

Jeff
Thanks Jeff!

sroland
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:10 pm

Re: About the CF-31 running with Debian 8 (64-bits)

#5 Post by sroland »

kode-niner wrote:Finally another Debian user! :)

I ran into this problem with Debian 9 LXDE on my CF-19 MK4. The screen would sometimes suddenly display total garbage, go black or a combination of both. I worked around it since it was originally dist-upgraded over Debian 8 and still had a few kernel 3's. I just reconfigured grub to load the latest 3.16 instead of kernel 4.x.That seems to have isolated the issue and hasn't crashed since.

I haven't really had time to research the issue and figure out if it is a known bug that is being worked on.

What's the full model number of your CF-31?
It's a CF-31ACAAX1M, i was very tempted to install Jessie and then dist-upgrade to Stretch keeping the older kernels but now that i have everything working i don't want to break everything until i'm quite sure what the problem is. It's likely to be a kernel firmware/driver for the integrated graphics but i dunno for sure. What you said about the kernel is quite a bit of information and i would add that the issue poups up very fast when messing around with the windows (window manager) in KDE plasma 5. In Debian 8 Jessie i just installed LXDE because KDE plasma 4 does not honor the Dvorak keyboard layout for various applications, LXDE (GTK) does. That issue is solved in plasma 5 but the system crashes would turn the laptop unusable, so, maybe i'll try the thing with the kernel, but i have to digg a bit more because many apps wouldn't be able to build kernel modules, like Virtualbox that i use very often.

I'll post any updates!

I leave you with my Dvorak layout keyboard (with stickers that partially glow in the dark because the backlit underneath)
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