Re: Netbsd 4.0 on IBM Thinkpad T61

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 21:34:25 -0400
"Radhika S" <radhika.sambamurti%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

> Thanks. What exactly is ACPI support ( suspend / resume? )

There are two power management mechanisms for laptops, APM (Advanced
Power Management) and ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power
Interface, I believe).  APM, despite its name, is pretty old at this
point.  Older Thinkpads supported both APM and ACPI; T61s, at least,
have only ACPI.

NetBSD has long supported APM.  ACPI is considerably more complex, and
the support has only recently become complete enough to be usable.
(Thanks, guys!)  If all you're going to do with your laptop is leave it
in one place, and power it down and reboot it if you want to move it,
the absence of ACPI support doesn't matter much.  

Personally, I don't work that way.  Today alone, I will suspend and
resume five times.  To do that on a T61, I need an OS with ACPI
support.  For NetBSD, that means running -current.


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