This week, I got bogged down with trying to get Lubuntu 16.04 to install with Averatec 3250 laptop (AMD Athlon XP-M and KN400 chipset). This laptop appears to have issues with Lubuntu 16.04’s systemd, and most of the time (roughly 80% of the time), it enters standby when booting. It did not do this prior to Canonical fully adopting systemd during boot. Due to a Linux kernel issue or buggy ACPI BIOS issue, at this time, it is impossible to get this computer to come out of standby without itself POSTing after resume (this also happens on Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04). Standby resume works for other KM400 chipset based computers, although they are not laptops (i.e., desktop computers with VGA out only). Standby resume appears to work fine on Windows XP though.

Also, I had to deal with my aging Windows Vista laptop’s hard drive issue. I had to take out the hard drive, and attach it to a different Windows 7 computer just to run chkdsk utility. chkdsk has been running for already 2 days straight. I do still use Microsoft Windows sometimes, but it is mainly to print documents from a Canon laser printer with a USB interface. Other than that, I practically only use Linux based OS (Ubuntu based) nowadays since I actively develop OpenChrome almost everyday. This may sound like a case of humble brag, but it is a lot nicer using OpenChrome graphics based computers these days since I have made tremendous improvements in getting standby resume to work for most computers both legacy OpenChrome DDX’s mode setting code and OpenChrome DRM’s mode setting code. I honestly could not have imagined this computing arrangement (i.e., not using Windows too much) 10 years ago.

I have not put in too many hours into OpenChrome development this week, but I am trying to put in more hours today (Saturday) to make it up. Anyway, I think I should be able to get VIA Technologies VT1632(A) DVI transmitter code for OpenChrome DRM working in the next several days, unless I hit a snag.

If the code works, I hope to get it in the repository in a week or two. I will make sure that standby resume is going to work properly before committing the code.