1. Heroku (a Ruby on Rails host) uses Git as its deployment mechanism
2. Git supports branches as a more native concept than Subversion

Here’s a few things I’ve noticed about Git:

1. The wording seems off:
   • git checkout <mybranch> is used to change between branches in your working copy. In Subversion, checkout is what you do to get an initial copy of the repository. git switch <mybranch> seems like a more accurate command.
   • By default, Git doesn’t commit the changed files. You need to call git add <my file/path> to add those files to the commit. If you delete a file, you call git rm <my file> to add the removal of the file to the commit. To remove the file from the commit, you call git checkout… it just seems quite confusing. I like the way this prevents files being accidently committed but I think it could have been made clearer. If you want Git to behave like svn, you call git commit -a
   • git branch <my branch> actually creates the branch rather than changes to it.
2. Because Git is a distributed SCM, the branches you create locally are not necessarily present on a remote copy of the repository. Likewise, if you git pull a remote repository, you don’t automatically get the branches. The worst thing is tagging. This is very useful for marking releases but tags are not pushed to a remote repo unless you pass an optional flag. This seems dangerous because if you forget this flag the tag only exists on your computer and not the master repository.
3. Also, it’s worth remembering that Git isn’t during a remote backup of your code until you actually do a push to a remote server
4. Annoyingly, when you switch branches using git checkout, it doesn’t seem to warn of uncommitted files (or, as is Git’s way, it might warn but does it anyway). This has led to some unintended contamination between branches and is just something to watch out for.
5. Unlike Subversion, the cmd-line really is the best way to experience Git. I used the nbGit plugin for Netbeans but found it incredibly slow and clunky. Perhaps better tools will arrive.
6. The main hosting site for Git is Github which is great for open source projects (social forking!) but I’ve chosen Codebase as I can host Git and Subversion projects, along with their associated tickets and milestones. Codebase can also do an automatic push which I might use to ensure each push to the production repository is pushed onto Heroku.
7. Worryingly, I have managed to corrupt my local repo though it might have been due to a power failure

!http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/images/emea/hp-pavilion-dv1000-notebook-pc-series_190x170.jpg! !/notebook/images/21.png!

bq. This article will be updated as and when I discover something new. If there’s something that’s not mentioned, I probably haven’t tried it yet. Please leave questions, advice or comments at the end of this page.

h2. Overview

The “HP dv1265EA”:http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/21675-38187-38191-38191-38191-12153622-38843771.html is a centrino-based, 14″ widescreen laptop with a reasonable combination of power, lightness, media-ability and price. I bought mine from “dabs.com”:http://www.dabs.com.

“SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional”:http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/index.html was released in early 2005 and can be “downloaded free of charge”:http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/downloads/suse_linux/index.html as 5 ISO files. I found that I needed all 5 CDs but that might have been the extra packages (mostly LaTeX-related) that I installed.

*Note*: I use Windows most of the time, through force of habit and generally unsatisfactory experiences with linux on a desktop, but I always like to have a Linux installation on a laptop, just in case Windows throws a hissy-fit. I’m not a *nix expert, but I’ve developed on Solaris, I run my website on Linux and I’ve tried versions of Linux on laptops since Mandrake 8. I initially tried “Ubuntu”:http://ubuntu.com/ 5.04 but I think I’d prefer a fuller-featured distro.

*Note*: My laptop is at home where I only have dial-up access. Therefore I’m not making use of YaST Online Update, at least until I can get the modem working. At some point I might bring it within range of an Ethernet socket or wireless network.

h3. Laptop specifications

p{color:red}. To be added

They can be found “on the HP site”:http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06a/21675-38187-38191-38191-38191-12153622.html.

h2. Installation

The laptop comes with a single c: partitioned as NTFS and a ~200MB partition for the embedded media player (MP3′s and DVD’s). I had already partitioned the laptop into two: c: for programs and e: for content, documents, music etc. YaST (the SUSE installer) was able to resize the NTFS partitions but *not move* them (I wanted to shrink c:, move e:, and install SUSE in the free space). I used “Acronis”:http://www.acronis.com OS Selector 8 (the precursor to “Disk Director Suite 9″:http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/) to do this resize/move maneuver and then reran YaST and installed into the free space.

h2. Hardware

h3. LCD Screen

When prompted by YaST, configure the screen to be a “LCD Screen” (I think), and set the resolution to be 1280×768 (the native resolution). I didn’t set the exact dimensions for the screen but it doesn’t seem to matter. However, they are given in “this manual from HP”:http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00312379.pdf#page=175 as:
|Dimension|cm|in|
|Width|20.83|8.2|
|Height|27.94|11|
|Diagonal|35.56|14|

(although I’m guessing that Height and Width are reversed!)

h3. Synaptics Touchpad

Use the “KSynaptics”:http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=503 utility to configure the touchpad properties. This installs as a “Touchpad” option in the Peripherals section of the Control Center. Specifically, turn off horizontal scrolling (vertical scrolling works fine) and adjust the mouse speed/sensitivity to your preference. Also, I found the when I was double-tapping, Linux was converting this in a middle-click, not a left-click, which was causing very unpredictable tap-to-drag behaviour. Basically, it thought I was tapping with two fingers so just change the “two finger” setting to a left-click. Use the mouse configuration section of SAX2 (under System->Configuration) to test your mouse clicks, and KSynaptics to actually configure them. I also noticed that the pointer had a tendancy to drift to the right if my finger stopped on the right-hand side of the pad. This seems to be fixed if you run the boundary wizard in KSynaptics so the proper dimensions of the pad are recognised. Once this has been configured properly it becomes much easier to use Linux!

h3. Modem

p{color:red}. To be added, pending a little driver searching etc

I’ve tested the demo versions of the “Linuxant drivers”:http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/ and they work fine. Just remember to install the rpm version as the binary installer require internet access! My only problem was that the KInternet tool (?) was set to configure a different device (and I didn’t notice, duh!), and should have been set to /dev/modem.

h3. Multimedia Buttons

p{color:red}. To be added, once I play around with key bindings etc

I found “this FAQ entry”:http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_Multimedia_Keys (for Gentoo) to be very helpful. Basically, you need to run xev to find out the key codes. I’ll post them here when I get the chance. The DVD and Music buttons don’t produce key presses and therefore won’t be able to be used. I’ve been able to bind these buttons to actions in Amarok so I can play, pause, stop, increase/decrease volume etc.

These are the entries

keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop
keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume

h3. Remote Control

The remote controller partially works (probably because it’s just emulating keyboard presses in hardware and appears to Linux like any other keyboard event). The play/stop/forward etc keys aren’t bound to anything useful but emulate the same key presses as the corresponding multimedia buttons (as described above).

h2. Software

h3. Suspend and Hibernate

I haven’t tried suspend-to-ram as I understand this isn’t very stable. I did try hiberate (suspend-to-disk) and it shutdown fine but then wouldn’t let me login again to KDE, although I’m pretty sure this was due to something else I did. I’ll have to try again.

h3. Music (WMA)

p{color:red}. I’d like to make SUSE play WMA files from my Windows music collection and it’s not exactly straight-forward.

I made some progress by installing the “Win32-codecs”:http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=046, “MPlayer”:http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=128, “lame”:http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=017, and “mad”: . At the moment I can make MPlayer and Kaffeine play .wma files but I’m still working on configuring Amarok to play them

h3. DVDs

“libdvdcss”:http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.9/rpm/ needs to be installed.

!http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/images/banner1.gif(Linux On Laptops)!:http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/