Slashdot Mirror

You need to check out the respective entries on http://www.linux-on-laptops.co... before you buy. The problem are mostly with the vendors, not with Linux, hence you need to avoid bad vendors. With this approach, I have zero problems so far, except for one fingerprint-reader, which I do not care about anyways (they are far to easily tricked to qualify as security-mechanism).

When "new" entries are submitted against Ubuntu 11.10, and this month is 15.09, it makes me think the site is four years out of date.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried installing a generic copy of Windows on generic hardware? I have. It's not a pleasant experience.

you must have put a lot of work to find PC hardware that didn't support windows.

If you want proper hardware support, either make sure the machine you buy supports Linux

which are essentially non-existent. i went through the exercise of trying to find a laptop that would work well with linux, and i gave up. the web is full of misinformation and outdated workaround for problems. try googling for "gateway linux laptop", you get this page,

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/gateway.html

straight out of 1995. i clicked on two links. one was a 404 and the other brought me to an ad portal.

A list of mini-laptops with comparisons:
http://www.mbnet.fi/tuoteseuranta/index.aspx?rrid=1

Availability was scarce in verkkokauppa:
http://www.verkkokauppa.com/?page=http://www.verkkokauppa.com/main.php?path=tietokoneet%2Fkannettavat&title=Tietokoneet+/+Kannettavat&search=1&cat1=Tietokoneet&cat2=Kannettavat&cat3=Linux

Some sell Acer aspire one: http://hintaseuranta.fi/tuote.aspx/171402

Here's Asus:
http://hintaseuranta.fi/tuote.aspx/164709

Lenovo T61 is pricier:
http://hintaseuranta.fi/tuote.aspx/81991

MSI wind:
http://hintaseuranta.fi/tuote.aspx/79914

You can check driver availability to about any laptop, even if it doesn't have linux preinstalled:
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

My personal choice would be Asus Eee PC 901. Enough CPU and SSD-drives which are more tolerant to shaking and movement, in addition of being fast.
To play DVDs, an external drive would be needed:
http://www.verkkokauppa.com/popups/prodinfo.php?id=2585 ..commenting in the order that the device is supposed to work with Linux.

DVD-drive compatibility chart:
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/search_res.php?pattern=dvd

the best approach is to scope out the laptop on the Ubuntu Wiki first

while that is a good resource, i always recommend people check out linux on laptops first, and if they can't find their laptop model and/or linux flavor, to then move onto another list like the ubuntu wiki.

It would be nice if HP also comitted to getting Linux on their laptops as well. I noticed that there is no trouble getting Windows running on my laptop, but It's always hit and miss whether or not Linux runs.

Of the three laptops I've had over the years, It's only the latest one (an HP dv6000 from Canadia) that's not playing nice.

While this is indeed trolling, I wonder if Microsoft encourages HP (et al) to make it difficult to get Linux running on their machines (ie wierdness for screen / network / etc firmware or modules).

Thank goodness for sites like http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ (even though there's nothing for the dv6000 yet)

And just how useful would your Toshiba be when you can't keep it away from dust and rain, and when you only have access to electricity every other week? There's a hell of a lot of design (and therefore cost) that had to go into these things that simply doesn't apply to a normal laptop. In fact, the appropriate thing to compare these with would be a rugged laptop like the Panasonic Toughbook, which would probably run about $2000 for the same specs as the Toshiba you mention!

Mine's a compaq v5000 laptop - same problems. This is why Apple is winning the hearts and minds of people looking for unixy hardware - the stuff just works.

The biggest hurdle linux will face in the next couple years (and is facing now) is laptop support. You *can't* just go swap out your network or video card for one that is 'linux compatible', and trying to look for 'linux compatible' hardware when you're buying requires more effort than most people can go through. Sites http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ are a nice idea, but hopelessly out of date. Probably a full 95% of the hardware listed on that site is not available in retails stores, relegating you to ebay and other used hardware sources.

What mandriva, ubuntu, redhat and others need to do is put a bit of money in to testing/verifying their software, setup and detection systems with new hardware. Given the potentially high adoption rate of RHEL (for example) if people could get basic stuff like wireless working easily, it would be cost-justified for Redhat to send people to best buy and pick up 1-2 laptops a month and test/fix/patch their stuff to work with the latest hardware, then contribute that back. Or ubuntu - they're touted as having money to 'invest' in linux.

Making sure ubuntu works with a 4 year old abandoned network card isn't going to get as many people to switch/adopt a distro as making sure it'll run on current hardware.

After the tests, representatives of Fedora, Linspire and Novell told me that Sony Vaios are known to have compatibility problems with Linux.

The Linux systems could make sense for users who just want to send and receive email and surf the Web without the need for multimedia programs, or to perform home-office tasks without a lot of interaction with Microsoft systems.

Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.

My wifes Thinkpad's going to get OpenSuse as soon as I can get from her.

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/forum/showthread.p hp?p=310

I like the 2.6 kernel over the 2.4 kernel because I can play MP3s and Oggs without skips every time I refocus the window.

I have very good reasons to believe that MP3/Ogg skips are not a kernel problem, but a set up problem.

On the down side, I'm running Ubuntu 5.04 on a Sony S270 laptop. I use the 2.6.11 when I want sound to work at all and 2.6.10 when I want my touch pad to work right. I've tried a couple of custom compiles of 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 but haven't gotten either to work right yet.

I have a Sony VGN-FS215B with Ubuntu 5.04 running 2.6.12. I use the ALSA driver (Intel HDA) for my sound card, works ok. For making the touchpad work right I had to change xorg.conf to use the correct event device (/dev/input/event3 instead of /dev/psaux). 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices' should give you a clue for which is the right device for your touchpad (You need to enable CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV). For much more information on this have a look at http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/ and for every other possible issues http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/sony.html.

And yes, most empires come to an end. So will Microsoft. But if it goes with a bang or a whimper, I cannot say. There are about 40 billion reasons in favour of the long, drawn-out whimper theory, though. Then again the Cascadias might intervene.

Does any of the stuff like ACPI work with Linux yet? Can Linux sleep and resume? Does it still eat batteries?
God help me.

ACPI is something that is alive and well in the Kernel, reasonably reliably throughout 2.6. Kernel 2.4 had some features but people found it difficult to configure and use. Work still needs to go into each distribution to make the ACPI and APM features a standard part of the Linux experience.

The pages I've read about using Linux on Laptops (er... http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ and others) is that battery life is comparable and sleep/resume is there.

While they are far from mainstream, there are many pages supporting equipment on Tablet PCs.

Other than the pen device and the attached button, it's essentially just another laptop, so the standard tricks can work.

Don't forget to check:
http://www.linuxslate.org/
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

It doesn't cost 400 quid to put together an LCD picture frame. PopSci is taking a different route from GNAA/Linux Toys [amazon.com], which starts with a $50 laptop from eBay. This has also been reviewed [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. While I like PopSci's mini ATX method, the GNAA/Linux Toys laptop method is usually cheaper, if you shop eBay carefully, and refer to GNAA/Linux On Laptops [linux-on-laptops.com] to make sure it'll work. pfn

It doesn't cost 400 quid to put together an LCD picture frame. PopSci is taking a different route from GNAA/Linux Toys [amazon.com], which starts with a $50 laptop from eBay. This has also been reviewed [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. While I like PopSci's mini ATX method, the GNAA/Linux Toys laptop method is usually cheaper, if you shop eBay carefully, and refer to GNAA/Linux On Laptops [linux-on-laptops.com] to make sure it'll work. tbr

For the money, I think the Sharp Actius MM20 is a better machine. Same 1GHZ Efficeon processor, but 512mb of RAM, built in ethernet, wifi, pc card slot, and 2 usb ports, and the screen is 10.1" instead of the tiny 7". It still only weighs 2 lbs, and costs quite a bit less. By itself it's $1500; there's an optional external USB DVD/CDRW drive for $99, and for an addtional $200 you get a long run battery which gives up to 9 hours of runtime.

Best of all, everything works in Linux -- Emperor Linux sells this as the Meteor, although IMO they tack on too much of a premium. But you can find do it yourself Linux install instructions for several distros at Linux on Laptops.

If you consider to run Linux on your new laptop, you may check Linux-On-Laptops or TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, PDAs and mobile phones first. If you can not get the appropriate information there, you may take a Knoppix Linux CD to check the Linux compatibility. Just ask the salesman whether you may boot from the CD before buying.

It doesn't cost 400 quid to put together an LCD picture frame. PopSci is taking a different route from Linux Toys, which starts with a $50 laptop from eBay. This has also been reviewed on Slashdot. While I like PopSci's mini ATX method, the Linux Toys laptop method is usually cheaper, if you shop eBay carefully, and refer to Linux On Laptops to make sure it'll work.

But because FreeDOS, like MSDOS, uses the BIOS, it *can* read files off floppies, so I created a zip file of a minimal Debian installer plus pkunzip, loadlin and a kernel, used split(1) to break it into floppy-sized chunks, and copied it across like that. Ahhhh, swapping disks 20-odd times! That brings back memories!

Anyway, once all the data was on there and on a little DOS partition, I used loadlin to boot a kernel, load a root disk from a disk image, and then pointed the installer at the files I'd extracted from the recombined zip file.

A (slightly) more detailed account should show up on Linux On Laptops soon.

For more information about Linux on laptops, go to the web page about Linux on laptops; help can be found in the Usenet newsgroups comp.os.linux.misc or comp.os.linux.hardware

- Sam

Also check out linux-on-laptops.com for what looks like a very thorough listing.

You can always run linux on it:
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/sony.html

But wish I could buy it with linux preinstalled...
I hate to pay for what I don't use(eg, a Windows license :))

\\Uriel