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."

Comments

Re:works on thinkpad.

[gabbarbhai]

With 2.6.8-rc2 and Debian Sid, I've been pseudo successful in suspending to disk (swap partition) on an IBM R40. Pseudo success 'cause it worked before I totally f***'d up my XFS root partition (under very shameful circumstances which I won't confess to) and had to reinstall. Should have saved the .config, because now I can't re-create the same kernel :-( One of these days, though.. With ACPI, btw.

Re:The acid test for linux on any laptop

[phliar]

I have a Thinkpad 600e (2645-CP2) running RedHat 9 with kernel 2.4.26. PCMCIA -- Linksys wireless and wired ethernet -- sound, USB, hibernate (suspend to disk) -- everything works. I had to install tpctl and the thinkpad modules for hibernate; everything else was auto-detected on install.

The 2.6 kernel (and Fedora Core 2) is a different matter, though -- I couldn't get ALSA working in spite of a lot of updating kernels, modules, BIOS settings etc. The newer hardware (like Centrino) is even worse where free software is concerned. It really sucks when an upgrade is a step back.

Re:The acid test for linux on any laptop

[Jadrano]

I use SuSE Linux 9.0 on a IBM Thinkpad R32, and suspend/resume works well (with APM, not ACPI).