Laptop Control Panel Home Page

NOTE: kcmlaptop is for KDE version 1.* - if you have KDE 2.0 it's already builtin (check you control center under 'power control' - you may need to install APM etc - see the docs below) - if you don't have KDE 2.0 - you should!

kcmlaptop is a set KDE 1.* control panels that implements laptop computer support functions, it includes a dockable battery status monitor for laptops - in short a little icon in the KDE status bar that shows how much battery time you have left. It also will warn you when power is getting low andallows you to configure power saving options

You must have installed the Linux APM package in your kernel.

NOTE: 0.90 is the last release I will be making in this form - kcmlaptop will be an integral part of the KDE2.0 distribution

A copy of the online documentation is available here. The current version is 0.82 and is available:

LSM kcmlaptop.lsm
RH6.x Intel Binaries kcmlaptop-0.90-1.i386.rpm
RH5.2 Intel Binaries kcmlaptop-0.82-1.i386.rpm
RH5.2 Source (RPM) kcmlaptop-0.82-1.src.rpm
Source (tar/gz) kcmlaptop-0.82.tar.gz

Change History:

	0.90	- minor changes bacause RedHat 6.x put KDE in an odd place
	0.82	- fixed a crash - if you couldn't get it to work before
		  take a copy of this now
	0.80	- added 'critical' warning panel
	0.77	- minor cosmetic changes
		- support for some more APM BIOSes
	0.75	- changed pixmap management to reduce disk traffic
	0.73	- changed the behaviour around suspend so that sometimes
		  it wont suddenly pop back in 
	0.72	- fixed problem with 8-bit displays
		- fixed 2 problems with some APM BIOSes
	0.71    - more BIOS specific changes
	0.70	- first release as kcmlaptop

At this time kcmlaptop seems to be bug free (famous last words hah!) because there seems to be a host of different APM BIOSes outn there (and I only have access to one) I depend on you to report bugs and problems to me - so if it doesn't compile on your machine, or crashes in a flaming heap please drop me a line and let me know it ought to work on all Linux versions with APM and KDE - and if it doesn't I want to fix it.

This release replaces all previous version of the KDE battery widget previously available from this site.

FAQ

There are really only 2 (now 4) frequently asked questions:

Q: How do I get rid of the dialog box every time I log in? A: You don't need to put it in your Autostart folder it's a control panel it will start quietly by itself when you log in.
Q: my battery has 200 minutes in it but the battery monitor reports that it has 3 minutes and 20 seconds left. A: That's 3 hours and 20 minutes reported as "3:20" with a colon just like on a digital clock.
Q: where's the distribution for KDE 2.0? A: it's been integrated into KDE itself - you can take top of tree now - or any release after the 'krash' alpha release
Q: where's the BSD support? A: I can't do this by myself - I've done most of the work to make the APM interfaces portable for KDE 2.0 but I'm hoping for some BSD fan to do the final part of the port - so please get in touch so I can help!

kcmlaptop is written and supported by Paul Campbell - please send me bug reports. The code is based on the KBiff source by Kurt Granroth.