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What is a Linux laptop?
Recently, Lenovo announced that it would be supporting Linux on one of its
Thinkpad laptop models. This announcement was seen as a big turnaround,
given that the company had said, only a few months ago, that it was no
longer interested in Linux. Since Thinkpads tend to be relatively
nice machines, and since support for Linux among laptop manufacturers tends
to be nonexistent, Lenovo's announcement looks like good news. It is not,
however, as good as many in the community might have hoped.
Your editor had a brief conversation with Lenovo, and was able to confirm the news that came out of LinuxWorld: Lenovo's "Linux-supported" laptop does not, in fact, come with Linux installed. This machine is shipped with a blank disk and a note instructing the purchaser to go buy a copy of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and install it him- or herself. The only real differences with this offering are that (1) the proud owner has some reasonable assurance that the installation will actually work - a valuable thing - and (2) there is no Windows certificate to throw away. The other surprise is that this machine features the ATI "Mobility FireGL V5200" video adapter. This adapter is, by all accounts, a nice piece of hardware, but it lacks a free driver. The associated ThinkWiki page goes into what must be done to get this card working properly on a Linux system; it involves installing ATI's proprietary driver. So people who have bought this "Linux supported" system are not, in the end, running free software. Doubtless there will be customers who are happy with this deal - though Lenovo's pricing does not seem particularly attractive. But this offering raises an important question: what does it really mean for a vendor or a computer to "support Linux"? How can customers for such systems know whether they are getting a truly free system, or, instead, one which forces the use of proprietary software? Somehow, we need to get a handle on the claim of "supporting Linux" and make the distinction between free and proprietary systems clear. Without this transparency, there will be little incentive for manufacturers to create truly free systems. An independent body which could certify 100% free Linux systems would be ideal, but this body does not currently exist and it is not clear who could credibly take on that task. In its absence, all we can do is to insist that systems vendors be clear about just what they are selling. (Log in to post comments)
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 1:23 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] I would not mind at all having vendors sell blank systems, with hardware known to work out of the box with Linux, and say "Linux supported".But they could at least include an Ubuntu CD. It's not like those are hard to burn...
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 6:40 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Just go with a vendor that supports linux properly.
A couple companies I've been looking at.
R-Cubed Technologies. They seem to favor Fedora Core.
They get everything working for you:
Make sure audio works. Makes sure Wireless works. Makes sure Suspsend to disk works. Modifies the kernel to improve battery performance and sleep.
They tweak it out so it works as well as it's ever going to work with current Linux software. Basicly everything that a Linux-savy person would spend a couple days doing and figuring out after they bought a new laptop.
The idea of purchasing one of these laptops to have everything 'just work' is pretty appealing.
The other one that seems cool would be Sytem76
They like to use Ubuntu. And their laptops are very reasonably priced.
A Linux specific desktop. Core Duo. Open Source graphics (unless you get the expensive model). Everything 'just works'.
What more could you want?
And it's not like you have to risk a whole lot. Both companies seem up and up and have had decent reviews in the past. With OEMs like Dell, HP, Apple, and Leveno all buying their laptops from the same ODM manufacturers your getting about the same thing with these companies as you'd get from anybody else. Come with one year warrentees with optional extension for 3 years and all that fun stuff.
My G4 Ibook is pretty nice now (although the 1024x768 lcd display is loosing it's charm pretty quickly), but probably this time next year I'm am going to come back and look at these companies more closely since I'll be wanting something new.
Anybody bought something from these guys?
I am pretty curious about other people's experiances.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:46 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] What more could you want? A Linux running free software? Both companies seemed to sell also computers with ATI and NVIDIA cards that are not supported by free drivers, so it seems they are not going to put "2D and 3D" to work, at least not with free drivers. Also I wouldn't want to install non-free fonts like MS fonts and to become dependent on those. And finally, "multimedia playback and codecs" probably means also the famous w32codecs, which do not work in 64-bit environments, should they sell such computers.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 21:19 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well then don't BUY the computers with nvidia or ATI graphics.
It's not very difficult.
The vast majority of their laptops are using Intel graphics.
LinuxCertified sells Linux laptops Posted Aug 24, 2006 14:51 UTC (Thu) by kevinbsmith (guest, #4778) [Link] I bought my laptop about a year ago from http://linuxcertified.com with Ubuntu pre-installed. They offer machines with nvidia hardware, but I made sure I got one with Intel graphics. It pretty much "just worked", and I have since upgraded to a newer Ubuntu without pain. I think I lost suspend-to-disk when I upgraded, but I don't rely on that feature anyway.
A coworker bought a different machine from them which had the nvidia card. It worked out of the box, but he had some problems trying to upgrade Ubuntu, partly due to the binary drivers. He is now using the free nvidia drivers since he doesn't game on that machine anyway.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 26, 2006 19:31 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] With OEMs like Dell, HP, Apple, and [Lenovo] all buying their laptops from the same ODM manufacturers ... What does this mean?
OEM vs. ODM Posted Aug 26, 2006 23:58 UTC (Sat) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] I'm presuming you're asking what things like OEM and ODM mean. The best bet is to read the Wikipedia article on it (RTFWA?):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_equipment_manufacturer
JimD
OEM, ODM, manufacture of laptops Posted Aug 27, 2006 0:51 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] No, I think I know what OEMs and ODMs are, but I still can't parse the sentence into anything that seems sensible. Who is buying what from whom? Does Lenovo design and/or manufacture the Thinkpad laptops it sells, or what? The comment seems to suggest a Thinkpad and Powerbook are the same thing. Does it? With OEMs like Dell, HP, Apple, and [Lenovo] all buying their laptops from the same ODM manufacturers ...
OEM, ODM, manufacture of laptops Posted Aug 29, 2006 4:17 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] ODM in laptop terms are the actual people that make the laptops.
Apple, Dell, HP, Leveno, etc don't actually manufacturer the laptops they sell.
See:
The biggest manufacture is Quanta. They make laptops for Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Toshiba, Sony, etc etc.
The difficult part is actually figuring out the real relationships. Obviously people like Apple and Lenovo don't want you to know that your buying the same exact laptop you can get at Dell for 2/3's the price, but only in a fancier case. So they hide were they obtained the latpops.
Nowadays the only thing a 'OEM' does nowadays is install the CPU, memory, harddrive, and install the operating system.
Of course some customization happens on the assembly lines. But not as much as you would think given people's brand loyalties and such.
OEM, ODM, manufacture of laptops Posted Aug 31, 2006 13:27 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] I've had quite some (>10) Dell Laptops (business series, not the consumer crap), and I had even more Thinkpad laptops (starting with the butterfly (that still works without flaws and even runs Linux!!) and later mostly A- and T-models). I worked for companies that used thousands of laptops, of several brands.
I don't know what the difference at Quanta is, but there is a real difference in stability and reliability between a Dell and a Thinkpad laptop; there are many more problems with Dells than with Thinkpads. And I don't even need to start about the keyboard and the trackpoint.
So, to say that all laptops are equal, might be correct in theory, but that hypothesis has contradicting empirical evidence.
Joachim
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Jan 10, 2007 21:16 UTC (Wed) by dmoyes (guest, #42682) [Link] My company sells blank systems, or ones with Linux and/or windows installed. Generally, we perfer to install Ubuntu, because it simply works better for laptops-- the Intel WiFi MiniPCI cards we use generally work right out of the box with Ubuntu. Even on 64-bit CPUs we still recommend 32-bit for most users because most web plugins are not yet compiled for 64-bit. Yes.. we hate that too. You can request a custom system from us, just visit us online www.stellimare.com We're based out of Santa Clarita, CA (Los Angeles county), so if you're out side of the California, there's no sales tax. Sorry, we can't ship overseas yet. I'm not saying that we never will, it's just we haven't had a reason to file the export permits yet.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 3:03 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link] If I were to buy a PC laptop right now (as opposed to a Mac, which for various reasons constitutes my preferred portable at this point), I would almost certainly buy from PowerNotebooks.com
Check this one out:
Intel GMA950 graphics, Intel wireless (optional), and by default it comes without Windows! About the only thing missing is the penguin sticker and Ubuntu CD. :)
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 4:31 UTC (Thu) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link] Leonovo have evidently been told by their lawyers that they should not *distribute* Linux. Although not rich enough to buy any iron from IBM, I read that IBM have the same policy, they don't distribute Linux but point the customer to get it from elsewhere. I guess this is to do with worries about risk of liability in the SCOG sense and perhaps a desire not to commit to making source available (which is the distributor's problem to live up to).
Yet obviously Novell and Redhat are not small companies and are happy to "distribute Linux".
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 6:57 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Personally I think it's more likely that they don't want to bother with actually supporting Linux for large numbers of people.
The extreme price (what is it? 3 grand when you can get a new laptop for 500-600 bucks?) due to it's hardware being maxed out and the fact that it doesn't come with a OS by default pushes this thing into 'Elite' territory.
This means that it's targetting a professional were they can probably justify it to their work that they need a laptop this expensive and powerfull for their work they do.
This is the same thing that happens with Dell and dekstops and such. If you want Linux pre-installed you can find them on HP or Dell's website.. but you won't find them in the consumer sections. Your only going to find them on the more expensive unix 'workstation class' machines.
They figure there is probably no real reason to support Linux on low end models because there is no market for it. Also Linux support can be expensive for them. Could you imagine a army of ex-Windows 95 users asking about this 'Vee-eye' thing and what the hell is 'X.org' and why their screen corrupts continuously and turns to black due to the ATI drivers? That would be a tech support nightmare.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:15 UTC (Thu) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link] Could be. Interesting that Leonovo continues the policy of IBM to not distribute Linux[1] now they broke from them wrt Linux distribution.
Another curious aspect to this is the magic Microsoft preferential pricing license for Windows. If the OEM signs up to promise he won't sell his boxes "without an OS" then he gets a better rate[2]. But this seems to violate that and I can't believe Leonovo have given up on the better rate. Maybe MSFT just caved so as not to get a new round of headlines.
[1] See last paragraph of http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/clusters/whitepaper...
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:48 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] What generally people do is install FreeDOS on their systems.
This is what HP or Dell does if you realy want to get a 'No-OS' option.
I would expect that this Leveno has a small fat32 partition on it with Freedos, some README files and maybe a utility or two for hardware id and flashing the bios or something like that. Just a token 'we followed the letter of the MS licensing'.
Previously Microsoft prefered licensing status was given based on they must have Windows installed on all their machines. Of course that ended with the anti-trust lawsuites and such.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 21:34 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] The Lenovo Linux laptops ship with a "DOS Entitlement" -- which appears to be PC-DOS, to which IBM retained some rights and Lenovo seems to have inherited. So even the laptops without Windows still have an OS on them. This is based on a conversation at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 26, 2006 19:57 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Previously Microsoft prefered licensing status was given based on they must have Windows installed on all their machines. Well, not exactly. It was a license to put Windows on every machine sold, and the price of the license was based on how many machines the manufacturer sold, regardless of how many of them had Windows installed. Though it had the effect of forcing every consumer to buy Windows and not a competitive product (and thus was found illegal), that wasn't the fundamental purpose of that licensing scheme. The fundamental purpose was to make consumers pay for their pirated copies of Windows. Before that, if a consumer bought a computer without a Windows license, it was most often because he intended to run a stolen copy of Windows on it. This new pricing scheme could do that too, but it would have to require that the manufacturer pay as much for the installed OS as it would for Windows.
IBM doesn't want to be seen as picking any distro Posted Aug 26, 2006 4:46 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] remember IBM is still a 800 pound gorilla in the tech industry. when they started getting involved with Linux a lot of people were worried that they would try to muscle in and take over.
by not shipping linux, and supporting many different distros of linux they avoid tying themselves to any one distro vendor, and avoid any claims of favoritism and control.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 5:42 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link] This adapter is, by all accounts, a nice piece of hardware, but it lacks a free driver. The associated ThinkWiki page goes into what must be done to get this card working properly on a Linux system; it involves installing ATI's proprietary driver. So people who have bought this "Linux supported" system are not, in the end, running free software. Given the comments so far to the Debian "firmware ?= software" story which leads this issue of LWN, I must conclude that this is not something your readers are likely to wring their hands over. It may be that a consequence -- intended or not -- of Microsoft's aggressive new Windows Activation strategy is that it's driving a wave of refugees to Linux who previously ran Windows because it "just worked" and they could get it for free, as in free beer. With the tedium and risk of Windows Activation, the influx of free beer users is now greater, and many of them care not a whit about exercising authority over their computers in the way to which we, as skilled practitioners of "apt-get source", are accustomed. They don't know a machine register from a check register, and they don't know the value of comments in an assembly listing. I don't demand that every computer user be an expert, but I do lament our failure to promulgate the value of free computing to our new users. In the name of "pragmatism", an honorable school of philosophical thought now reduced to a makeweight for any argument that is short-sighted and antisocial in content, our community now flirts with squandering the successes that have been won over the past 15 years. "Open Source" and "Free Software" are not terminological fairy dust we can sprinkle onto something and thereby make it good. The latter, at least, is a set of principles which have been fought for, and which we must guard jealously if we want to see them preserved. Unless you are one of the fortunate few who is born the purple, the liberties you enjoy were won through struggle. That includes the freedom to modify code and share modifications with your neighbors. That this freedom has seen sacrifice more in terms of livelihoods than spilled blood makes it no less real. I, too, have often been frustrated by a lack of complete hardware support in Linux for any device I can purchase. I compensate for this by attempting to be an informed consumer, not buying hardware by firms that are Linux-hostile, and learning to accept the fact that I can't have everything I want. For me, hardware that doesn't have a free driver just isn't an option. If I end up with some because it's bundled with a motherboard, for example, then I know that when I buy it, and for me it might as well not be present. It's not a "feature" of my purchase. With Free Software I can put my labor towards creating that which I desire. Without Free Software, I am an insignificant supplicant to the whims of big corporations. Free applications, free drivers, free firmware -- these are all cut from the same cloth. All empower you to assert authority over your computer. With the principle of Free Software, you have a tool with which to exercise that power. If you lack the personal expertise to implement a new feature or fix a bug, you can join a community and attempt to arouse interest, or hire anyone with the requisite skill. Without the principle of Free Software, you stand alone before the monopolist, with only your wallet to offer. In whose favor will terms be negotiated?
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:43 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] If you have a problem with the autoloaded firmware, then you should also have with the firmware already stored on the devices.
This is nothing new, and the comments in the other thread has nothing to do with new Linux users.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 29, 2006 13:03 UTC (Tue) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link] If you have a problem with the autoloaded firmware, then you should also have with the firmware already stored on the devices. Hasty conclusion. Mask-programmed ROMs on devices don't shunt support burdens off onto OS vendors. The manufacturer has to get this kind of firmware right before it leaves the production line. Expensive, you say? Can be, sure. But if hardware manufacturers want the community's help in debugging their firmware -- and that's exactly what they demand when they rely upon OS vendors and users to initialize the device at the point of use -- then it is only fair to ask that they properly equip that community to do so, with free-licensed source.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:53 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] Given the comments so far to the Debian "firmware ?= software" story which leads this issue of LWN, I must conclude that this is not something your readers are likely to wring their hands over. Nice post all in all, but I also have to comment that firmware is a different issue from non-free drivers. It's very clear to most everyone (perhaps even the "free-beer" types) that a closed gfx card driver is... closed. Firmware blobs are bad, too, but a bit different thing as it's not running on the host CPU and not "more bad" than all the already closed firmware we have. Waiting for the open hw...
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 29, 2006 13:24 UTC (Tue) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link] Nice post all in all, but I also have to comment that firmware is a different issue from non-free drivers. What, then, is the critical distinction? The Debian Project has been arguing about this for five years, and consistently when someone thinks they have a working definition of "firmware" nailed down, someone else promptly comes up with a counterexample that blows it out of the water.It's very clear to most everyone (perhaps even the "free-beer" types) that a closed gfx card driver is... closed. I don't find the argument from ignorance very persuasive, either. It's similar to Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography ("I know it when I see it"). Bellyfeel ontology like that may be an adequate yardstick for critics of OS distributors, but it's perfectly useless to those actually in the business of having to tell unlike things apart, and make reasoned and defensible policy decisions about what does and does not go into the distribution. Debian is hardly alone on this score; Fedora is having to grapple with issues like this, too, as LWN has recently reported. Firmware blobs are bad, too, but a bit different thing as it's not running on the host CPU and not "more bad" than all the already closed firmware we have. So, as long as we can offload the important work onto cores we deign "not the host CPU", the users have no right to demand any of the four freedoms that the FSF considers crucial? It's okay to repudiate the arguments of the FSF, of course -- but I wish people would do so explicitly instead of tacitly assuming their premises are worthless. This would be a pretty interesting situation if the old Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 16 had a successor still in use today. Interesting thing about that old (c. 1983) piece of iron was that it actually had two host processors -- different machine architectures, even. It had both a Zilog Z-80 (Intel 8080 plus novel innovations like index registers) and a Motorola M68000. These processors weren't even the same endianness, so that was a pretty nifty trick. Anyway, you could boot TRSDOS, running the Z-80 for compatibility with Model II/12 apps, or you could boot XENIX, running a Unix-like system on the M68K core, in which case the Z-80 was basically used as a disk controller. Thus, which processor was the "host CPU" depended on run-time configuration. I find many of the arguments against demanding freedom for user-installable firmware to lack imagination, and to be ignorant of computer history. Waiting for the open hw... If reasonable people will simply mock and ridicule groups like the Debian Project for attempting to take a stand against closed hardware, where do you expect the market for open hardware to come from? If I were an aspiring open peripherals entrepreneur reading your post, I would see armchair sighing over the status quo, but no motivation to spend money on an open device when a closed one is more convenient. I posit that market success -- at least in the computer hardware industry -- is achieved when people's needs are met, not when their idle whist is sated. If you're right, and people don't really need access to the source of the firmware that they or their OS is supposed to stick on the device, then you'll be waiting a very long time for the open hardware you claim to want. Tolerating the status quo is not going to make the difference.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:25 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] It is quite sad that they are using an ATI graphics card. I just ordered a Thinkpad z61t myself (should arrive today) and one of the things I looked for before buying it was that it used Intel graphics. More or less all the hardware in this laptop should be supported by Linux. It does have a webcam that doesn't seem to be supported, but I don't really care about that :)
I look forward to installing Kubuntu on.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 20:01 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] First preliminary report :)
1. IMHO, it's a really nice laptop, I'm certainly not disappointed so far :)
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 7:56 UTC (Thu) by rakoenig (subscriber, #29855) [Link] You're looking at the thing from a wrong point of view. If you say "Without this transparency, there will be little incentive for manufacturers to create truly free systems." then this looks idealistic, but not realistig. My job at a big PC manufacturer is to make sure that Linux is running nicely on our desktop systems. If it comes to the question of "free or proprietary graphic drivers" it is easy to say that the manufacturer doesn't care about this at all, the focus is: We need to get a nice piece of hardware that runs somehow, even with a proprietary driver. The customer side is not much different, if someone has to select between a "free driver" that supports 3D at 10 fps or a proprietary driver that runs at 50 fps then the decision is towards the proprietary driver. If you see the benchmarks and results at spec.org nobody is caring if this result was achieved with a "free" or a "proprietary" driver.
One solution could be as you said a certification authority. Currently there are hardware certification programs from Red Hat and Novell, but in both cases even your ATI-Card will pass the tests because it will be driven by the "vesa" or "fbdev" driver. And the tests are definitely not asking if you get 3D at 50 fps, Red Hat only checks if the X server starts and the Novell Yes test kit checks even less.
Of course hardware certification is something important and so my employer tries to get as much entries in the HCLs of the distributors as possible, because at least you can set a flag "yes, this system runs with Linux". But its not enough. Having an entry in the Novell NBS for SLED10 doesn't mean that the system will work as well when using Debian with 2.6.11 kernel, some systems will fail because of an outdated network or sound driver then.
If you come to the laptop business things get even worse. The average lifecycle of a laptop is very short and manufactures are always going for "brandnew and cheap" devices. That will mean, that at the moment you get the damn WLAN device from vendor A working (e.g. RT2500) the manufacturer will assemble the newer device from vendor B (e.g. the new Broadcom) because it is 50 cent cheaper. And Linux is fooled again, as the customer is because specifications of a machine can change and if you buy "Laptop X" you can't be sure if it comes with the WLAN from vendor A or the not working one from vendor B.
Yes, I would love to have an independent certification authority that I can query with a particular device ID and that gives as a result:
And of course, there should be a standard for hardware certification procedures that is based on real world requirements. At the moment the attribute "certified hardware" might mean something different to a customer than what it really tests.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 12:56 UTC (Thu) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link] If you see the benchmarks and results at spec.org nobody is caring if this result was achieved with a "free" or a "proprietary" driver. I do care.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 13:19 UTC (Thu) by ll (guest, #4404) [Link] You have a hard job and I feel your pain. Here's my "pragmatic" (in a meaningful sense of that term) reason for wanting free (not beer, but libre) drivers.
Though the laptop your company sells me today has a short lifecycle from your perspective, it doesn't from mine. I'll use it for 3+ years, and I'll probably go through 3-5 distribution upgrades in that time. If the laptop has some hardware that works today with a proprietary driver, and the hw mfgr chooses to stop producing drivers that work with newer kernel versions, I'm screwed. I must either stay with an older kernel, or upgrade and lose functionality of that piece of hardware.
In the case of video, my understanding is that Intel produces a chip that has open source drivers and performs OK. I'm not a gamer, so OK beats closed driver, because I know that I'll have Intel drivers during the whole life cycle of my laptop.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 14:16 UTC (Thu) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link] Don't worry, if they have a significant user-base and because of a kernel upgrade, their driver breaks, they will release a new version to avoid pissing-off their customers. Don't they do it for other OSes ?
To me, free/closed drivers are a non issue if the user base is big enough. The market is open, and if I'm not happy with a hardware manufacturer, I can switch fairly easily.
With all the money I saved by not buying software, I can spend a little more on hardware. When manufacturers understand this, they will release good drivers for Linux and you won't have to worry about the future.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Sep 3, 2006 20:09 UTC (Sun) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link] Don't worry, if they have a significant user-base and because of a kernel upgrade, their driver breaks, they will release a new version to avoid pissing-off their customers. Don't they do it for other OSes ?No, they don't. I bought an NE2000 compatible PCI card in 1998. It came with drivers for Windows 95. There is also a free driver in Linux. There is no support for this card in Windows 98 or Windows ME, and the Windows 95 driver does not work with those OSs. The Linux kernel still has drivers for it, and I am still using this card.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 13:12 UTC (Thu) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] Microsoft have a "Designed for Windows XP" label on computers, we might need a "Designed for Linux" one, implying that a free distribution will work out of the box. Thinking about it, we probably need a distribution-specific sticker... Bah, never mind.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 26, 2006 20:21 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Thinking about it, we probably need a distribution-specific sticker... Bah, never mind. Right, and it's much worse than that: You have to say which release, because Linux changes a lot in terms of compatibility. And then you have to say it applies only if the user hasn't modified anything, and then where did your free software ideals go? I was involved in an attempt by IBM to sell something that "works with Linux," in the same way it would sell something that "works with AIX" or "works with Solaris," and ran into this. There are many more Linuxes than there are AIXes, and they change so frequently that any release against which you certify will no longer be in use by the time you ship. The lesson to be learned from that is that you have to support open source products in an open source way: don't guarantee your stuff works with it; give users the tools to fix what's broken (source code, open interfaces, technical support) and distribute their fixes -- frequently -- to everyone else. I.e. the sticker shouldn't say "designed for Linux." It should say "open hardware."
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 15:31 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link] The other surprise is that this machine features the ATI "Mobility FireGL V5200" video adapter. This adapter is, by all accounts, a nice piece of hardware, but it lacks a free driver....Doubtless there will be customers who are happy with this deal - though Lenovo's pricing does not seem particularly attractive.I've done some (not very in-depth) research on cheap, name brand notebooks that (might) run Linux the past couple months, and my executive summary is this: Buy Intel. So far this looks like the best deal: (a really long URL that does impolite things to the page width)
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 25, 2006 23:44 UTC (Fri) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link] Yep - buy Intel is indeed the way forward. It was tricky a year ago, since AMD processors were more desirable, but Intel's Core Duo put them back in the lead, and the Core 2 Duo (Merom) even more so. Basically, it's nice and simple now:* For a fully supported open-driver laptop, choose Centrino [Duo] with Intel graphics
OK, you've also got the IPW3945 binary daemon issue, but that's close to going away as I understand it. I'm sitting here with a Dell Centrino Duo laptop and it has worked beautifully straight out of the box with Linux.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 24, 2006 20:03 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] What I'd like to see is for the computer to come with a Knoppix-derivative CD containing a mainline kernel with drivers for all the hardware, and the configured kernel source used to make the kernel. The manufacturer would only provide this for reference, and not support actually using it for anything other than to demonstrate the hardware is functioning, and how it was made to work. (It would likely have to come with patches for hardware not yet supported in the mainline kernel.)
Really, Linux these days is sufficiently easy to install. There's no real point in having it pre-installed, but it's really useful to know exactly what the hardware is and what drivers support it.
What is a Linux laptop? Posted Aug 25, 2006 2:55 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Most people don't know what a OS is, much less how to install it.
Having to download, burn, and bootup a install from a cdrom is of sufficient difficulty for the vast majority of people that Linux will never be a option.
Look at my previous post with companies that do provide Linux pre-installed on laptops.
Especially with those rcubed folks. They do a lot of work to get the hardware running as perfect as possible.
Look at how people like OS X and Macs because 'everything just works out of the box'. It's freindly, they know what is going on and they know it will work.
It's absolutely possible to do that with Linux. Probably even better..
Most people here are like me, of course. I've always built my own computers and always been able to install my own OS. Nowadays compared to how it used to be just 5 years ago it's much much easier to install linux.
Still though with notebooks your stuck with what you buy. So having a Linux notebook system is much more important to me then some generic Dell desktop.
"Supports Linux" Posted Sep 2, 2006 18:47 UTC (Sat) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] It's right down there at the bottom of the page, folks:
"Linux is a Registered Trademark of Linus Torvalds"
So why doesn't someone assemble a set of guidelines as to what "Linux Supported" actually needs to mean (and, having also read the Debian story, I'm sure *that* will take a while -- Luckily, *Linus* owns the mark, and knows when to be pragmatic) and register the subsidiary mark for people to use. If there's a trademark for potential clients to ask vendors to meet, then the odds some of them will meet it (and you know the second- and third- tier vendors will be all over it like a bad smell) will slowly increase.
Alternatively, Novell could do this for their own Linux, certifying hardware as it comes out (the cost of a new consumer laptop to Novell had *better* be Epsilon), and maintain their own list, as could Red Hat.
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