Samsung Series 7 Laptop Fan Constantly Running

[Abundnce10]

Hi,

I'm a Linux newbie - been at it for a couple weeks now, and I love it! However, I just purchased a new laptop with the intention of dual-booting it but the fan constantly runs when I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 and I'm not sure I can withstand the constant high-pitched noise.

So, I've done some research which has led me here but I'm still unsure how to proceed... I have a Samsun Series 7 Chronos laptop [1]. When I run windows I can hit the 'fn + F11' key to turn Silent Mode on and off. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Ubuntu. The wifi (fn + F12) doesn't as well, although the touchpad (fn + F5) does.

I'm wondering which packages I should install for my particular model and situation. I really want to keep this machine, so I look forward to your solutions! Thanks...


[1] http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP ... 469&sr=8-1

[Abundnce10]

I ran these commands:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:voria/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install samsung-tools
$ sudo reboot

And when my computer restarted I was able to control the wifi and CPU fan devices using the corresponding FN keys. Although the wifi key turned on/off the wifi, the CPU fan key produced the message in the little popup below the task bar saying "CPU fan control is not available".

So, is there any other way I can enable the CPU fan key? Are there any other packages I can install?

[Abundnce10]

Lastly, I attempted to install samsung-laptop. This did bring up a pop-up box when I hit the CPU fan button but even running it on 'Silent' the fan still ran constantly. Do you think this has anything to do with the fact that I'm running an i7?

[Joshuaahhh]

The fan is constantly running because the default open source graphics driver is inefficient. Here's how to install the proprietary driver: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI

[tpost001]

Hi. I just bought the Samsung Series 7 laptop, too and have tested several linux OSs. The LinuxMint (LM) 12 Debian Edition (LMDE) probably does not have the drivers. The fan is constantly on and I get less than 2 hours battery time. With LM12 Lisa (Ubuntu derivative), I have never heard the fan on after I installed Jupiter. There are 3 settings for Performance and the program is an applet. It is apparently not compatible with Debian. With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS I also installed Jupiter and the fan never comes on. In both cases, though, I only get about 3 hours on the battery. I get 7 hours using Windows 7. So the drivers (or Jupiter) are not optimized yet.

In LM12 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, there are AMD Catalyst programs for the graphics card. I am sure the defaults are helping to increase the battery life. LMDE does not have it yet.

I cannot get the wired internet connection to work, whether in Linux or Windows. I might have a problem.

In Linux, I can't get any of the Fn keys to work except Fn-F5 (turn of touch pad) and Fn-F4 (switch monitors). So I cannot change the screen display strength, or the backlit keys. I bet they contribute to the shorter battery life. Biggest annouance is that I cannot eject a DVD or CD after I burned it. Brasero won't eject them, and the Fn-Delete key (disk ejector) does not work. Quite sad.

Overall I like this computer. It is bright enough to use outdoors in the sunshine. The graphics are amazing. And its fast. I do very intensive 3D scientific analysis and where I used to have 10s of seconds to minutes on any other computer, it is almost instantaneous on this laptop. I think its biggest drawback is that the battery is not removable, and I worry about the day I realize that my battery is shot. Getting it replaced will surely not be cheap.

[zzed]

Ejecting cdrom

Search for cdrom
ls -la /dev/ | grep cd

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jul 26 19:22 cdrom1 -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jul 26 19:22 cdrw1 -> sr0
brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11, 0 Jul 26 19:22 sr0
crw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 21, 1 Jul 24 16:37 sg1

eject /dev/cdrom1

K3B eject too.

[neboglory]

You need the samsung-tools package for keyboard and screen backlight fn controls as well as a functioning speedstep control. This requires a kernel with support for the module "CONFIG_SAMSUNG_LAPTOP". I found that the samsung-tools util did not do a great job with binding to the fn keys though, so if you have problems, you may need to use xev/dmesg and the keybind method of your choice to configure them.

The back of the laptop opens fairly nicely, and the battery is easy to access once the back panel is off. Any competent shop should not charge more than $40 for labor as it is a 15 minute job. No idea on the cost of the battery though.