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The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptopsThe Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptopsPosted Jun 6, 2008 17:11 UTC (Fri) by Hawke (subscriber, #6978)Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops
One thing I've always found to be very weak is support for docking stations/port replicators. Most of the time, at least one feature of them won't work to some degree. Problems I've run into: * Port replicator sound doesn't work. Sometimes it doesn't work at all, and the laptop's headphone jack must be used. Sometimes it works, but produces really crappy sound quality (worse than Windows on the same hardware). * Port replicator video doesn't work. Either it doesn't come on at all, or it tries to display at the laptop's native 1280×800 resolution on a 1024×768 display. * Docking doesn't work right. Either it completely hangs the system, or doesn't switch to the docking station video, or doesn't detect a network, USB, or some other peripheral. Sometimes it works if the laptop was booted in docked mode, undocked, and redocked. Sometimes it doesn't. I've encountered these problems on a Dell C610, D500, D620, X200 and X300. Anyway, docking stations might be worth considering in a future review of how well various distros work with laptops.
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The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops Posted Jun 7, 2008 5:01 UTC (Sat) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I've found that docking doesn't work well on Windows XP either - I had a docking station for my Dell D600 using XP, and returned the dock to IT because the laptop kept hanging or failing to resume after a dock or undock operation. I currently don't use a dock - the time it takes me to plug in 3-4 wires (power, USB mouse, VGA and sometimes Ethernet) is quite minimal compared to the time I wasted when the docking process failed. However, docking is very convenient and does work OK for many Windows users, so it's good if Linux supports it.
The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops Posted Jun 9, 2008 2:06 UTC (Mon) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link] We use Thinkpads at my work. A number of my colleagues (all Linux users) use various IBM/Lenovo docking solutions and are quite happy with them. So happy in fact, that they convinced me to order a docking station for myself last week :-).
The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops Posted Jun 11, 2008 13:57 UTC (Wed) by pimlottc (guest, #44833) [Link] I imagine it's simply a result of that fact that the number of people using docking stations is a very small minority.
The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops Posted Jun 11, 2008 17:15 UTC (Wed) by Hawke (subscriber, #6978) [Link] I'm sure that's the reason it doesn't work very well, but I'm also sure (in fact, I know from experience) that there is variability in how well particular systems and particular docking stations work with Linux. (even different systems in the same docking station). I'm sure there is also variability among distros with the same hardware. As such, I think they would be worth considering in a review of how various distros work with laptops.
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