Idea to help notebook users

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 09:27:53AM -0300, Adilson Oliveira wrote:
> Following Henrik Ommas's suggestion, I'm re-posting this here.
> 
> I've thinking about an idea that have probably a ton of legal
> implications but would help a lot mainly, but not only, notebook users.
> You all know that notebooks are usually a complicated arena for Linux
> and there is one simple think that can help a lot: having the correct
> DSDT. DSDT is an acronym for Differentiated System Description Table
> which basically describes your base system and resides into the BIOS.
> The most common problem related to a wrong DSDT is the incorrect
> generation of ACPI events.
> The process to have a correct DSDT is basically:
> 1) dump from the machine.
> 2) decompile.
> 3) fix.
> 4) compile.
> 5) make the os load the correct DSDT table (there's several ways, being
> via initrd the simplest to us).
> "But the DSDT table should not be right from the start?" Yes but the
> BIOS writers make it like many people make websites: they test with IE
> whatever-they-have-installed only, do a bit of tweaking, seems to work,
> done.
> For instance, in my Asus G1, the function key to increase the LCD
> brightness don't work because it does not generate the correct event.
> Anyway, the idea would be have an application that could read the
> machine ID, download the fixed DSDT table from somewhere (there's quite
> a few here[1] already) and, automatically, make the kernel use it.
> As I said, I don't know the legal implications that would have but would
> be an interesting and simple way to fix a lot of known problems.
> Let me know if it makes any sense or if I need to go to bed earlier  :)

There are some questions about whether modified DSDTs are redistributable.
It would depend on the terms under which the DSDT is licensed by the
copyright holder, and whether those terms are specific to you as the end
user.

If the DSDTs are available from elsewhere, it should be feasible to fetch
them as a convenience to the user.

-- 
 - mdz