This weekend they were having this big 25% computer sale at Media Markt, so I went there and decided to splurge on an ASUS X59SL-AP275C for my upcoming birthday.
Although it comes pre-installed with Windows Vista, the first thing I'm going to do is remove it and replace it with the latest version of my favorite operating system.
I'll go for the bleeding edge version FreeBSD 7.1-BETA and recompile the kernel with the new and vastly improved ULE scheduler.
$ cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf $ cp GENERIC LAPTOP vi LAPTOP
There are two things to change in this file then we can move to compiling and installing the new and improved kernel.
ident LAPTOP options SCHED_ULE
That's all there is to it. I certainly hope that it works.
Unfortunately a couple of obstacles have come up, namely that the installation does not recognize my Ethernet card making it impossible to install stuff via FTP, and when I attempt to do the installation with the full set of discs I get the error message that the installation medium appears to be audio rather than data. Gotta figure this out another day.
Gave up with Freebsd and tried Ubuntu 8.04 which unlike Freebsd actually installed. However, it doesn't recognize my si191 gigabit ethernet card nor my Atheros wireless card. This is starting to get frustrating but remains and interesting challenge nonetheless.
Finally I took a dare and gave the Ubuntu 8.10 BETA release a go. Lo and behold, everything on my laptop works like a charm!