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.

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