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What Subnotebooks Work Best w/ Linux?
elliotj asks: "With the widespread adoption of WIFI, I'm finding more and more places where I'd like to use the Internet on the road. All I really need is a linux command line to run SSH, links, and a few other things. What I'm looking for is a very lightweight subnotebook with a long battery life, quick sleep/wake times, that can run Linux and WIFI. I've looked at the Sony picturebook line and the Toshiba Librettos. Both are sweet machines, but have more features and are more expensive than I really need. Are there any cost effective options out there?"
i know the Zaurus isnt really a subnotebook, but it falls between the subnote book and the pda category. It already runs linux, is easy to develop for, and is easy to port existing linux applications to. If you know QT, its also easy to integrate existing apps with the GUI that comes preinstalled. Best of all, there are open source projects to replace the OS of the Zaurus with an open source version. Also, sharp's technical support is very good, and the staff very friendly, and they usually hang out on #zaurus on irc.freenet.net
I gots a friend who has a fujitsu lifebook. He runs Debian, and it is mad crazy.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Get yourself an apple ibook... it has a very efficient battery. OSX is BSD based... if you don't like that then run over to yellowdoglinux.com and pick up a copy.
OZ 3.2 just came out, and has a slew of features that rock vs. the standard ones, such as:
variable RAM vs. storage allotment
writeable flash
new SSH installed by default
ability to sync to anywhere, not just your local USB
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Can be had on Ebay for $100-200. This is the solution that I went with for a WiFi subnote to test our network.
Well, its not out now, but its definately worth waiting for... sometime in the second half of this year the OQO Corp (www.oqo.com)will be releasing their first product. It is basically a full PC the size of an average PDA. I been fighting with myself not to buy others that are on the market since I found out about these... Check em out. They start at less than $1,000 for the base model which will have a 10 GB HD, 256 megs DDR DRAM, 802.11b AND Bluetooth to name just a bit...
"Sex is a very natural and wholsome thing, but only if it isn't done right." Welcome To Paradox
I run Familiar on my Compaq (now HP) iPaq handheld. Very sweet. Get a PCMCIA sleeve, a wireless card, and you're all set. For those of you doing wireless security work, Kismet runs beautifully. There's also a GTK or Qt base available for you developers.
probably people need two more criteria. What is the budget in terms of $$, top end, and do you need a real keyboard integrated?
Without knowing those things, I think that any notebook or subnotebook (really no industry cutoff point there I think, it's a matter of taste) used that has a known track record of running and installing linux easily will narrow it down, then look at that list for best battery life. Virtually all decent used notebooks nowadays accept pcmcia cards, so wireless is just a matter of putting the appropriate card in.
Also, you have to ask yourself, is one or two lbs difference really a deal breaker? You might be able to get a pretty decent machine if you are willing to lug around 2 more lbs in gross weight. It seems like every pound subtracted from a "normal" laptop costs another 500 bucks or something like that and makes it harder to see and use. Me, I'd just as soon hump the extra weight and have a bigger screen and bigger battery, etc, for cheaper cost. For your needs, the older and slightly heavier used laptop would be cheaper to buy, then you could spend the savings on more ram, the wireless card, etc. Anything 200 mghz or larger runs linux in graphics mode just fine with enough ram, so text mode should be a piece of cake.
Check out the Sharp Actius MM10. It's basically a 10.5" screen and keyboard with integrated wi-fi. Just over 0.5" thick, 2.1 lbs and fanless. I saw it at Fry's for about $1300, but if you just want a machine that is basically a wi-fi terminal, this is the one for you.
This baby has been selling at Best Buy for $550 after rebates, which means that a lot of those items would be popping up on eBay brand new and sealed. It's a subnotebook from Sotec, a good Japanese brand, that's apparently trying to wage a price war on the US market.
I was able to boot up Knoppix CD with no problems, brought networking up and was capable of playing MP3 and MPEG video files. Have not tried installing Linux on it, but the assumption is it would go fine, since everything worked in bootable-CD version of Knoppix.
I have one of these little babies, and it weighs in at just over 3 lbs. In order to acheive the light weight, you sacrifice onboard floppy and cd-rom, and are stuck with 800x600. And it's a PIII 400MHz, so it won't be the zippiest thing around. But, it's tiny, easy to carry, durable, and runs Mandrake and Red Hat without a problem.
Get a low-end iBook. It's more fully-featured, but the price and weight are very nice, along with them being well-nigh industructible. It runs Linux, can boot OS X as well if you need non-ported apps and gets the job done.
I have collected a list of vendors and some other information on the subject. Unfortunately this information is rather difficult to find. If you know of other vendors not on my list, please reply!
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
12" screen, 6G disk, docks into a base that has a CD or floppy and lots of ports. It's more a micro-notebook than a subnotebook, but it's thin, reasonably fast, and I got mine for free. Runs Linux just fine; make sure your firmware is updated.
is exactly the Lindows MobilePC. It's a sub 3-pound laptop with loads of battery life. It has all the features you need after a small investment in a pcmcia WLAN-card. The notebook costs only $799, which is quite a bargain.
You can dump lindows, as it doesent serve any purpose and install something useful. =)
Emperor Linux
nuff said
There's a small but active community that works on NetBSD support for those `Palm PCs' of yore, built to run WinCE, with small screen and keyboard. I myself have an IBM WorkPad Z50: ThinkPad keyboard, 8.4" LCD, CF and PCMCIA (not cardbus).
The battery life on these things is phenomenal -- the extended capacity battery goes for about 11-12 hours. The common package for it includes a battery bay that lets you run the thing off of a bunch of AA's. Wireless networking has worked for years. It has no hard drive, so you generally end up using the CF slot for storage and the PCMCIA for wireless network card.
If you want it, and have the space for it, the thing also supports X and sound; I don't bother (space is a premium).
The same group does a lot of work on various models of the MobilePro, reporting good success (the keyboard's not as nice as the workpad z50, but the workpad z50 is discontinued, so...).
I have one of these and its pretty nice for Linux. The base config is 233 mghz 32 ram 4 gig HD. 2.5 video RAM. The thing weighs about 2.9 pounds and I am constantly asked how much it costs because it looks expensive. Has 2 PCMCIA slots for wirelress/network cards. Here's a current action and here's a past one. This thing is cheap and will definitely run your ssh, etc. I am running Slack 9 on it and its very nice. APM is supported so sleep/wake is almost instantenous. You can do some graphic stuff too, fvwm2 and opera and gaim run great on it for web browsing/emailing/IMing.
As for the software, OS X is not Linux; there is far less UNIX software available for OS X than for Linux and porting software to it can be a pain. PPC Linux works surprisingly well, but it still is second rate compared to the x86 versions of Linux.
Buy an iBook if you like OS X and want to run OS X applications. For anybody looking for a Linux laptop, there are better choices out there.
If you have unearthed credible reports of Linux installations on the MM10, please share them with the rest of us. Until then, the MM10 should probably be considered a "Windows-only" machine.
Another interesting question about the machine that has, so far, been unanswered, is whether its use as a dockable disk-drive is OS dependent. That is, is the USB mass storage implemented by hardware that is separate from the main processor, or is it implemented in the BIOS, or is it implemented by some piece of code running under Windows?
Some of the Sharp laptops (though not the ultra-small MM10) and the Sony PictureBook seem to be alternatives and have also been reported to run Linux.
I've had SuSE, Debian and Red Hat distros running on my Picturebook C1-VE. Very nice and very little fiddling to get them working with the wide screen. Never did get the video camera working but then I didn't care enough to try very hard and people on the PB mailing list have reported success.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I don't have a Zaurus, but I had a iPAQ and even with the full size keyboard it was very difficult to develop programs on. I think you would be better off with a sub notebook of some sort, because of keyboard difficulty.
After seeing Ted Ts'o use a couple of different ones and saying that he had no problems, I bought a dozen for work to run Linux. They're small and work well with Linux. The only small problems are that all of the smaller Vaio's have 800x600 screens, but that isn't really a problem since we don't use X-Windows and I know most Linux users don't either. The text screen are very readable, even with the small screens, at 100x44 (I think that's what we're using). The other problem is the battery life. While we get 20 to 30 minutes worth of battery life out of our new Dell's and Toshiba's, the Vaio's will never make it past 20 minutes. The extra batteries are $125, so having enough batteries to last a 3 hour flight costs over $1,000, and it's annoying to carry nine batteries. We compromised on buying five extra batteries for each Vaio.
Kind of slow, old and hard to find.
But its small, has a somewhat usable keyboard, its small and it runs linux. Did i mention how small it is ? :)
take a look here:
http://www.wins.hrl.com/people/ygz/pc110/
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