The State of Laptop Linux In 2005 422
jg21 writes "LinuxWorld's senior editor James Turner reports this month on what he calls The State of Laptop Linux in 2005 and says it's a lot better than it was in 2004, but adds - after conducting his own new test to see if any Linux distro is yet really laptop-ready: "What's needed to make things better? Well, the Linux community needs to address the device driver crisis." Turner acknowledges that binary-only drivers are a sore spot with free software purists, but says he'd "rather have a fully functional, if closed, Nvidia driver than a reverse-engineered one that limps along." Overall though he concludes that widespread laptop Linux is much closer now."
Installation woes (Score:2, Interesting)
From the article:
Heh...I could have told him what he did wrong...I had the exact same issue when I tried to install Fedora on my Toshiba. It took me a lot of flopping around (two reinstalls) to identify and fix the issue, but now Fedora works like a charm.
I'm guess I'm not suprised to not see Ubuntu among his tests, although I am definitely disappointed...after reading the release notes on HH, I've decided to go with it on my laptop, but I would have liked to have a guinea p^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsomeon else test it out first...especially on a Toshiba.
Obviously not ready for the laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
Happy with my laptop, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
And I place the blame SQUARELY on the BIOS manufacturers. From what I can see, they're cutting corners left and right because it "works with Windows".
Not to mention the TERRIBLE tech support Avereatec has given me, even with regard to Windows problems. They haven't released drivers for this noteboook yet, claiming their re-install procedure works flawlessly (it doesn't). Right now, Linux runs better on this machine that Windows.
Linspire.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux driver support really is a joke. (Score:1, Interesting)
My biggest issue currently is that linux doesn't support high resolutions well. Running a monitor in 1920 X 2900 just isn't possible. Even running the probe in the xconfigurator blows the system up. Why can't drivers just work on linux?
Re:Obviously not ready for the laptop (Score:2, Interesting)
Everything works just fine. For all intents and purposes it didn't really required anything more than installing on a desktop, nor was it really any more work than a windows install. (But don't ask me to get direct rendering and 3D acceleration to work... *sigh*)
So yeah, I use linux on my laptop everyday. And i love it.
What's the problem again?
"laptop Linux is much closer now" (Score:2, Interesting)
Fedora Core 3 on Dell 600m (Score:2, Interesting)
Gentoo yet again..... (Score:1, Interesting)
System is a 1.7ghz centrino which makes my 3.06ghz ht desktop (running Windows XP) seem like a dinosaur. Installation was very easy emerge this...emerge that... and finally a nice working system. If it weren't for certain applications that don't work under wine, I would move the desktop over to gentoo as well.
I just installed Xandros on a laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
I installed Xandros on the laptop and it was a thing of beauty. I had two PCMCIA wireless cards (a Cisco and an older one that slips my mind - I'm at home posting this before work). I put the Cisco one in first and configured it to connect to our wireless network (through the nice GUI interface). It auto-detected the card upon insertion, grabbed an IP address and we were off and running. Then, just for kicks, while in the middle of a surfing session, I yanked the Cisco card our and popped the other one in. The system chirped upon removal and insertion and my surfing continued unhindered! I couldn't believe it.
It's working so well, that I'm even loaning it to someone from another department (with no Linux background) to take with her on a business trip so she can do some work while she's at her convention. She said she's sick of dealing with all the "problems" her employees have been having with their Windows stations, and if this does everything she needs, she'll switch her department too. Since it's just basic WordProcessing/Spreadsheet, Email and web access they need, I'm sure she'll find this a great alternative.
Re:Happy with my laptop, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
BSDs and binary driver, same (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Windows and Linux is all hard to my grandmother (Score:2, Interesting)
(She's good at email and the web, but she finds updating the virus scanner kind of confusing.. wish I could tell her she didn't need a virus scanner. If it was up to me, I'd install it for her.. but on the other hand, it took her so much effort to learn Windows I don't want to change things on her now.)
OS install isn't the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
And it doesn't help when some of the icons that are set up on install don't work and don't give feedback as to why.
It's not like it's an impossible problem to solve, OSX and Windows software installs are pretty simple for grandma. You run the installer and it puts an icon in the menu/desktop/whatever. Seems like the package control system needs to be integrated with wichever desktop is installed. If the other guys can do it, the distributions should be able to as well.Oh, and fixing up USB keyboard support would be nice too. (was going to try out the new vector 5 soho, but couldn't get past go because of my USB keyboard. Tried VLOS 1.1 instead and was not too impressed.)
Knoppix as Shoppix (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PS/2 mouse and touchpad? I mean, AND! (Score:2, Interesting)
http://lists.svlug.org/pipermail/svlug/2002-Febru
From what I recally, it worked quite well.
Re:PS/2 mouse and touchpad? I mean, AND! (Score:2, Interesting)
It usually combines all mouse input to one stream.
Re:Closed drivers. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which Microsoft realizes as well, I'm sure. I wonder if there is any pressure from Redmond - explicit or otherwise - on manufacturers not to release OSS drivers? Or maybe just extra candy for those that don't? Just speculating, but there's little doubt that they would do just that if they thought they could get away with it legally...
Re:Obviously not ready for the laptop (Score:4, Interesting)
In some cases (like Fedora), it's getting worse (Score:2, Interesting)
I've tried several different Linux distributions on my laptop over the last four years. (Yes, it's been the same laptop, a Presario 1800-series, for that entire time.) Some have worked right out of the box, others haven't worked at all, most are somewhere in between.
One trend I've noticed is that Red Hat / Fedora keeps getting progressively worse. RH7.x worked great. It detected all of the hardware right out of the box -- including the video chipset, at a time when even Windows 2000 didn't have a video driver. RH8 and 9 still worked, but not as well. FC1 found some things not working anymore, FC2 was worse, and with FC3 I had the same experience as the author of TFA: a black screen, with no way to install at all. Should there happen to be an FC4, I doubt I'll even bother trying it.
The best current distro I've found for my laptop is Mepis, with Suse as a close second place, and FreeBSD 5.3 doing admirably as well. I suppose it's worth noting, though, that on my Dell laptop at work, no Linux distro I've tried works at all, but FreeBSD has been great from day 1. Conclusion: your mileage is unconditionally guaranteed to vary based on what laptop you use.
Laptop Experience (Score:2, Interesting)
Fedora: Installer exited with error before it was done.
Suse 9.1: Installed and ran great, but there are/were issues with usb-hotplug and I couldn't compile anything from source either. (terminal exit with error 1?) My lack of patience put that distro to an end.
Debian Sarge: The best by far. I had to do the kernel recompile to get the wireless card to collect stats, but otherwise there have been no surprises. As much as I hear compliants about a lack of a Sarge release, it works much better right now than Suse 9.1 (with updates) without the Suse polish.
I'd rather buy laptops that are Linux ready (Score:1, Interesting)
From EmperorLinux.
They installed Debian on mine. It even came with a well done printed manual to explain how to use the features specific to that laptop.
Definitely ordering from them again.
Re:Power Management (Score:2, Interesting)