Writing Tux Daemon
- Linux On Mobile Computers - -> Linux Mobile Guide

Noise Reduction

Due to the proliferation of cellular phones and walkmans it's not quite common in our days to take care of a quiet environment. Anyway I want to give some recommendations for the polite ones.

Console (Shell) and X11

The beeping of X11 windows can be configured to a shorter and lower pitched tone or even to a blunt "thump" with xset b ... options (a lower pitched tone is usually less annoying and distracting). Independently of that, most xterm-compatible windows and shells can be configured to make "visual bell" instead of "audio bell". For the console setterm -blength 0 and for X11 xset b off turns the bell off. See also PCMCIA-HOWTO, and much more details in the Visible-Bell-mini-Howto by Alessandro Rubini.

PCMCIA

When starting your laptop with PCMCIA-CS configured correctly, this will be shown by two high beeps. If you want to avoid this put CARDMGR_OPTS="-q" into the PCMCIA configuration file, e.g. /etc/pcmcia.conf for Debian/GNU Linux.

To avoid the dialtones during the modem dialing add

module "serial_cs" opts "do_sound=0"

to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts (from man serial_cs). This will disable speaker output completely, but the AT M command should let you selectively control when the speaker is active.

USB

usbmgr configuration file /etc/usbmgr.conf.

### BEEP
# beep off
# beep on

Fan

For some laptop series there are Linux utilities available to control the fan and other features.

  • Toshutils by Jonathan Buzzard for some Toshiba models.

  • tpctl IBM ThinkPad configuration tools for Linux by Thomas Hood.

  • i8k utils for DELL laptops.

Harddisk

To avoid unneccessary hard disk noise you may use the same techniques as described in the power saving chapter above. Hard disks in most laptops are the primary source of noise.

Miscellaneous Applications

You may configure vi with the flash option, so it will use a flash in case of an error, instead of a bell. So just put this line into your .vimrc or at the vim prompt:

set flash
" or try
set visualbell