Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG
Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG is a 14-inch laptop that packs in an Intel Core i5-430M processor and dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics, making it a powerful 14-inch laptop. ArchLinux works mostly works out of box, but there are few tweaks required to make the hardware fully compatible with ArchLinux.
Contents
Hardware
[root@arp arp]# lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 12) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev ff) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 12) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Redwood [Radeon HD 5600 Series] (rev ff) 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Redwood HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5600 Series] (rev ff) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8151 v1.0 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0) 03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n (rev 01) 7f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) 7f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) 7f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) 7f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) 7f:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) 7f:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
Make sure that you have BIOS_Acer_1.25_A_A.zip installed.
PowerSmart / Battery Optimization
Switchable Graphics
This laptop contains inbuilt Intel HD & Radeon 5650 graphics adapters. The Intel HD graphics adapter is optimized for low power consumption which Radeon 5650 consumes high power.
To use Linux kernel's "Laptop Hybrid Graphics - GPU switching support" add following to /etc/fstab
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs defaults 0 0
This will enable /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
[root@arp arp]# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch 0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0 1:DIS: :Pwr:0000:01:00.0
IDN - denotes integrated Intel graphics. DIS - denotes discrete Radeon graphics.
To switch-off Radeon, do following -
[root@arp arp]# echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch [root@arp arp]# echo "OFF" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
[root@arp arp]# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch 0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0 1:DIS: :Off:0000:01:00.0
To switch-on both graphics chips, do following -
[root@arp arp]# echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch [root@arp arp]# echo "DDIS" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
Init script for switching off the Radeon card -
[root@arp arp]# cat /etc/rc.d/radeon_off #!/bin/bash . /etc/rc.conf . /etc/rc.d/functions case "$1" in start) echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch echo "OFF" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch ;; stop) echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch echo "DDIS" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch ;; restart) stat_busy "Restarting radeon_off ..." $0 stop $0 start stat_done ;; *) echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}" esac [root@arp arp]# chmod +x /etc/rc.d/radeon_off
Switch the Radeon off while booting. Update /etc/rc.local
/etc/rc.d/radeon_off start
Enable CPU Frequency Scaling
To enable CPU Frequency Scaling, install -
pacman -S cpufrequtils
Load cpufreq utils automatically while booting. Update /etc/rc.conf
MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq-ondemand cpufreq-powersave acpi_call)
Enable ACPI. Update /etc/rc.conf
DAEMONS=(hal)
laptop-mode
Install laptop-mode tools
pacman -S laptop-mode-tools
Activate laptop-mode while booting. Update /etc/rc.conf
DAEMONS=(laptop-mode)
Power Usage
The power rating before tweak -
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 24.1W (2.8 hours)
The power rating after "switching off the radeon graphics" and "enabling laptop-mode tools".
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 11.1W (6.5 hours)
Synaptics Touchpad
The Synaptics driver is available from xf86-input-synaptics package [extra] repository
# pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics
The default configuration is available at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass" Identifier "touchpad catchall" Driver "synaptics" MatchIsTouchpad "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Option "TapButton1" "1" Option "TapButton2" "2" Option "TapButton3" "3" Option "SHMConfig" "true" EndSection
For more information check Touchpad_Synaptics