Slashdot Mirror
HP Releases Linux-Based Notebook
SteamyMobile writes "As the article says, 'In a sign the Linux operating system may be gaining traction beyond server and other back-room systems, HP said Tuesday it will be the first major PC maker to ship a business notebook computer pre-installed' with Linux. This is great news because, as anyone who has ever tried to run Linux (or even Windows XP) on a laptop knows, laptops come with all kinds of funky hardware, and it's often a mess trying to find and configure the right kernel modules to make things like software suspend work correctly. Having it shipped pre-loaded, and with support, makes it easy for me to decide where I'm getting my next laptop. Linux has been ready for the desktop for a while now, but it is good to see companies like HP acknowledging that."
I do not see where Linux has a learning curve any more difficult than Windows.
Using KDE is at least as easy as Windows.
Getting patches is as simple as clicking on the green button on the toolbar and then entering the root password when it askes for it.
Even installation is as easy as windows.
And Linux installations (with a journaled file system) are much more stable than Windows installations. They do not change randomly over time the way Windows does. Linux boxes require less mainainance.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
It also has been reported to work on Thinkpad T600. It does it well enough so that XMMS will resume playing were it was. I have not tried it yet because the battery is dead.
My general impression is that APM works well ACPI is buggy but fixable. ACPI reminds me of Winmodems. The bugs are in all systems, though you can disable them in Linux and have hardware that works. We shall see if having a vendor in the works makes things better. I bet it does. I've had at least one machine where all sorts of problems vanished with an ACPI bios upgrade.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.