It seems like I’ve spent every evening for the past three weeks tinkering with my laptop, a Toshiba Tecra M9. I’ve been trying different Operating Systems since a scratch on a Windows 7 disc forced me to look for an alternative. I tried going back to the factory Windows Vista Business image and then upgrading to Windows 8. This looked OK for a short while but I guess the new Windows regards the Tecra as too much “legacy” tech as I’ve had innumerable problems with freezes, reboots and general crashing. Given up on that.
Over to Linux then, here is another point in my life when I’m going to give Linux a go as a general day-to-day OS. The point of this post is that it may be useful to anyone trying Linux on a Toshiba Tecra M9 and finding problems when they close the lid. Suspend functionality in Linux seems shakey at best. There are many reports of laptops freezing when the lid is closed, various threads point towards setting “Do Nothing” as the action on lid closing, disabling screensavers, etc. but I’ve had no joy in Ubuntu 12, Fedora 17 or Kubuntu 12. Linux Mint 14 however does appear to work. I’ve still had to set the Power Management action on lid closing to “Do Nothing” but the laptop now returns to where I left it when the lid is opened. Huzzah!