On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:54:09 +0100
Quentin Garnier <cube@cubidou.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 01:42:18PM +0200, Alexander V. Butenko wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > No so long time ago guys from openbsd team made a great work on
> > acpi implementation. 
> > 
> > Currently now at least features like acpi poweroff, acpi hardware
> > monitoring, and battery status info, acpi dock detection is working
> > now.
> > 
> > Will this features be ported into netbsd tree?
> 
> What makes you think NetBSD doesn't already have support for ACPI?
> 
A better phrase would be "adequate support for ACPI".  

I use it on my desktop and server machines, where I can -- sometimes --
get temperature monitoring and power-off.  I can even associate a
script with the power button, which is very nice.

However...  it's useless to me on laptops.  I can't do suspend/resume
on my Thinkpad T42, for example.  More precisely, I can suspend and
resume, but if I do, I lose my USB ports.  That's completely
unacceptable to me, given how I use my machine -- sufficiently so that
if I had to buy a new Thinkpad today (and I plan to by the end of the
year), I'd have to switch operating systems.  (There's a minor glitch
in that while I can suspend by closing the lid, opening the lid doesn't
resume; I have to hit the Fn key.  That's a slight nuisance but one I
can easily live with.)

The ACPI battery status monitoring is ok but not great; it doesn't
detect battery changes properly.  I haven't tried a docking station --
what does OpenBSD do?  One thing I *really* miss -- the ability to swap
what's in the Ultrabay -- a battery, an optical drive, a second hard
drive, etc.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb