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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."
Linux isn't only ready for the desktop, it's ready for the laptop too!!! And I also have an HP laptop which I'm happy about, where gentoo runs without any trouble on "standard" laptop parts. Only tricky bit was getting the DRI to work with the radeon mobility u1, but even that was easy. Go HP!
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
get one without linux pre installed?
cause I really like that windows stuff! especially solataire
I'd be more impressed with HP's Linux offerings if they'd support the current crop of laptops out there, specifically the ones with Broadcom wireless drivers and media card slots. Sure, I managed to wrestle the wireless drivers into submission and usability, but the media slots have no hope of ever being usable at this state.
Is it really a selling point selling a laptop pre-installed with Linux because it's such a challenge otherwise? What happens when it comes time for my annual reinstall? Not a real bargain if you ask me. You know this unit will be simplified to the point of removing the learning curve for Linux, and so it will be sold to novices who will be in the dumper when it comes time to fix the wear and tear. Just my 2 cents.
lots of people bitch and complain aboout the quality of hp laptops, i think theyre great. personally i would have thought ibm would be the first major laptop maker to embrace linux pre-loaded, oh well hp is going to make a lot of money from this. thanks hp.
Fink said the launch is a test "so that we can see the take up we get for this particular product."
Soooo.... if the "take up" is insufficient, then the test failed? Where is the customer left in that case?
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RTFA... it's Suse.
2nd paragraph "The HP Compaq nx5000 will feature Novell Inc.'s SuSE Linux"
Apple Laptops run Linux with full hardware upport VERY nicely and have over a broad generation of laptops.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
From the looks at it, the price is work it just for having wireless configured. It's a real PITA.
This does look really nice though, and I'm glad to see that they are using Suse, which seems to be the best "User Oriented" distrobution out there. I'm actually a little suprised that they can make a notebook no more expensive than it is with all supported hardware, as I've noticed Linux compatible hardware tends to be a wee bit more expensive than non-supported hardware.
I do have two concerns though, first off is the quality of the notebook. OS aside, if the hardware isn't robust enough to stand up to lots of abuse, then it won't sell well and someone will probably blame that on Linux. The second concern I have is that while Suse Professional is wonderful, the personal edition seems to really lack some important things (like a compiler. I don't care if your not a developer, if your using linux at some point you will want to install software that has to be compiled for your system).
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
And will HP be providing tech support for users who have problems with Linux (yeah yeah, I know there are few problems with Linux/Suse, but you never know...)?
Try to customize this laptop on HP's website and you'll find "Note for SuSE Linux: MultiBay DVD+RW and Intel PRO wireless not supported."
I pretty much got fed up making linux on the laptop work and just sold off my Dell to pick up a iBook. If this had been an option at the time, I may have considered it. As it is, OSX has all the unixy goodness plus none of the hassle.
I would assume so. Apple laptops are highly popular among geeks and their hardware doesn't change much after each release. The drivers stay the same across most of the line. PCs, on the other hand, change with each brand and model making it more difficult to write drivers to fit all of them.
I haven't used SuSE in a while, but I'm happy they chose it over Linspire or those other "distros". Actually, for this purpose, I can't think of a better distro. Mandrake is kind of slow and Fedora is more beta testers tinkering than a distro I'd want to offer to my customers. I'm not trolling there, Red Hat agrees with me :)
SuSE also has a good repuation of GPL'ing their work where as Linspire won't even offer a free download AFAIK.
HP said Tuesday it will be the first major PC maker to ship a business notebook computer pre-installed' with Linux.
Hardly. I owned an IBM T20 which qualifies as a business notebook computer and it shipped with Linux years ago. Here is the coverage from June 19/2000.
Supporting linux on all the hardware they have sold would be expecting way too much from a company. It'd be quite a large step if they make it a point to offer linux as a supported option in their newer models from this point on.
ACPI and to a lesser extent APM are a struggle in Linux. I didn't realize this until I bought my 15" Powerbook. Now I know. The next killer app/functionality for Linux is laptop compatibility/wireless. Show me that sleep/sus[pend will work out of the box and my management will be sold since the release of Evolution/exchange connector.
This guy is way out there
The article points out that there's only a $60 difference between the Linux-equiped laptop and the comparable model from HP running Windows. Am I the only one who thinks that's exactly what HP is paying for their OEM licenses since they buy it bulk? (A Foogle search reveals that there are many web outlets who will gladly sell you an OEM Windows XP Home copy for about $80-$100, provided you also buy a piece of hardware at the same time to keep the transaction within Microsoft's rules.)
Would be reliable suspend/resume to/from disk and memory, with all devices waking up correctly. I've heard that Powerbooks with Linux can do that, but I don't own one (yet)..
No, Linux works alright.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Absolutely true! I have Gentoo running on an iBook and it's a spectacular linux laptop. The only complaint I have is that theres no way to get graphics acceleration because the video card is a radeon mobility M6, for which there are no open source drivers, and the ATI binary drivers dont run on ppc. I believe PowerBooks have or have the option to use, and nVidia card. That would be nice
I don't really think laptops are as much trouble with linux as people make out. At one point they were a big hassle, but in my experience (admittedly, not particularly extensive) the difficulty of installing linux on a laptop over installing it on a regular PC nowadays is negligible. Sure, laptops still tend to come with weirder hardware, but really, most distros have gotten quite good at supporting most of it right out of the box.
I expect this will be successful simply because of how enormously inconvenient it is for Linux users to buy a laptop bundled with WinXP and get a refund, or how expensive that OS is to just pay for and not use. However, if you don't like SuSE, there's always FreeDOS on a Dell and installing the Linux distribution of your choice later. I guess this rules in the convenience stakes - as convenient as buying a WinXP laptop - and that's its selling point.
(Note that this certainly isn't the first popular Linux laptop.)
I presume you mean the SD slot as media card...
The SD consortium folks did not publish enough information for open source drivers. You had to sign various agreements to see the specs, etc.
However, this situation is now changing...
Our dear Redmond friends recently asked them for permission to ship SD drivers in source form; we (HP) said "sure, so long as open source drivers are possible". So this got them off the dime to open up SD implementations (at least the software side; they are keeping the mechanical and electrical specs locked up; they want to ensure interoperability of the hardware, and enforce it as part of the contracts you have to sign to get access to those specs).
So the programming specs are getting opened up; this should have taken place by now. This didn't happen in time for the Nx5000.
There is an SD driver developed independently on the iPAQ handheld for Linux from information that had already leaked out over the last several years; this needs further work for particular SD chip implementations. But it was problematical to distribute, at least by a member of the SD group.
At least it is now possible for do drivers, not possible in the past. I don't know how long it will take to get support done for a particular implementation; if you are interested, go for it!
- Jim
I've seen this happen before. Many times. And as I write this, Microsoft is calling HP to remind them of the terms of their mandate^H^H^H^H^H^H^H contract. And as the conversation progresses, the potential cost increases to HP's Windows licenses might get a mention.
Five seconds until HP fires off a press release stating that they are not really selling a Linux laptop. Four. Three. Two ....
From the product web page: (Note for SuSE Linux: MultiBay DVD+RW and Intel PRO wireless not supported.) And the base price has changed since the article was published.
which is dumb and stupid. I know it's true...but it's lame-ass mass marketing taking a toll on our society.
Stupid business majors.
If you ask me, HP printers have gotten worse then before when they were an "instruments" company instead of a consumer company. I have to wonder how many of the newer monochrome laser printers will serve as long as an old HPLaserJet 4. Just look at their inkjets. Used to be rock solid, now they break every two years. And don't get me started on them shrinking the ink cartridge sizes/capacity on the newer machines...
$cat
I know that I should be "grateful for what I have", but I've got a couple gripes about "linux on laptops". Keep in mind, however, that I own an IBM Thinkpad X30, and I do run single-boot debian sid on it.
:-/ (Anyone know why hostap stuff hasn't been brought into the main kernel tree?)
1) IBM needs to get their act together and offer Linux support, at the very least, for their laptop line. Their hardware is mostly supported already, but it shouldn't be necessary for me to pay the extra amount for a licensed copy of Windows XP, which I'll never use just to get a well-built laptop. What's more, they're advertising linux for enterprise use, and enterprises use laptops. I don't see how moving to linux couldn't be anything but good for them now, overall - or at least moving in and helping linux laptop development, so that it is soon mature enough for IBM to start offering it at a corporate level on laptops.
2) It would be nice to start getting a little bit better kernel and X support for things like suspend and power ACPI. At the very least a listing somewhere on manufacturer's sites saying, "hey, our hardware needs this specific version of software to work properly if you run Linux" - it's often difficult to find definitive information on such topics, and people will often get things working when others are not able to for odd reasons. Personally, hard or soft suspend do not currently work for me w/ kernel 2.6 and X 4.3 running the dri-trunk debs - on current sid - on my X30. Returning from suspend results in X being borked, requiring a reboot to fix. (Anyone that has information as to why this is occuring, or what the fix might be, and I'd appreciate hearing from you...)
3) Wireless support. I'm not talking solely about drivers, as those have improved significantly* and are on the right road, but wireless tools for useland. As far as I know, it's currently fairly difficult (via waproamd, the only thing I've seen to do this) to get a wireless card to 'roam' from network to network as you go from, say, home or work. There needs to be a good userland tool for this.
4) * The wireless drivers in the kernel itself are still pretty shitty and minimal, and wlan-ng sucks horribly. The hostap 2.x drivers are a significant improvement over the other two in every regard (as far as I've seen), but actual support in the kernel really should be improved.
5) power management tools don't seem to work too well. It's quite possible that I'm simply ignorant on the matter, but tools such as cpudyn and cpufreqd do not scale the processor's speed dynamically when losing AC power, or gaining it again. In my experience, the daemons need to be restarted manually.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Well it seems like "Linux Certified" hardware is getting easier and easier to find. I bought a laptop about 2-3 years ago from Sony and it was a pain to get USB to work, I had to user the patch, but with successive kernel releasies it got acctually fixed in the kernel code and it started working straight out of box after kernel 2.4.22 or so.
Now that HP is getting their certified laptops out there I feel that rest of the manufacturers would also start geting their act together. After all people who buy these things and run Linux on them are probably the people who'll recomend these computers to their Joe Sixpack friends. I can't count how many times I recomended a computer or a piece of hardware based on how well it worked with Linux, just so to support the cause and support companies that acctually use standards and are not biased towards a certian OS.
Hmm, my 12 inch powerbook does all of those things. You sure you own a powerbook or a P-P-P-powerbook?
I'm not asking for them to support some funky ISA bus card cage docking station (or worse), I'm asking them to support current hardware that enjoys Windows support. I don't think that's unreasonable to ask for. I'm sure they're not re-inventing their product line by offering a Linux compatible machine (and if they are, perhaps they should make the hardware changes across the board to all of their laptops).
I heard that HP was officially suppoting Gnome (the link is 4 yrs old, and I haven't heard anything different. Please correct me if I'm wrong). So much for that! SuSE's support of Gnome is spotty at best. In fact, in the default install of 9.1 Personal (ISO download version) Gnome isnt installed at all. That's really too bad. I saw the screenshots from the previous slashdot article, Gnome 2.8 is looking pretty damn good!
bash: rtfm: command not found
When is it NOT linux day on slashdot?
Slashdot has for years been open source news and opinions. It's only recently that it became infested with microsoft weenies and apple fanbois.
With the microsoft weenies come the worm reports and with the apple fanbois come the "Steve Jobs coughs" stories.
Buttsex.
Actually, you should go and browse Yellow Dog Linux's site. They provide PowerBooks and iBooks with YDL preinstalled, dual boot with OSX. Even for these experts, not all hardware is supported.
I have installed Gentoo on an iBook with fair results; it works better on my G4 desktop. I've done better on the Dell Inspiron 2150. The best two laptops, in my experience are the Dell Inspiron 7000-7500 (old, yes, but works 100%) and the IBM T41.
I had a linux laptop from Dell (no, HP isn't really the first to do this) once, and it worked decently well, given a few crappy things. One, they had made it impossible to change the desktop background permanently...until you figured out that they'd cut back the rights on the config file (I forget which one) to prevent you from writing to it, even as root. And when I had to reinstall RedHat, suspend didn't work. There was apparently a very specific setting needed to get it working again, which Dell knew about, but it really would have been nice if they'd shared the knowledge they developed in setting the laptops up, so that it didn't revert to the same old problem as any other laptop as soon as a reinstall was needed.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
heh good one...but I just got a new hp ze4545 and an extra 256 MB of ram to make it 512...It;s and VERY nice machine ...they make good notebooks for the money...i payed just a little over a grand and I can play need for speed underground on my laptop with no problem...on low settings of corse...I could not find a better notebook for the money and now that they are doing thise im even more happy i got it...suse 9.1 runs great on it btw :)
Emperor Linux has been offering laptops for a while now. IBM's, Sony Vaio's, Dell's, and Sharp. Preloaded with a custom kernal so that everything works. They also offer custom configured Red Hat workstation or Suse.
Take a look at http://www.emperorlinux.com/
This looks like the best solution to me, and it avoids the HP problem.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
The point is that you can be sure that all the hardware on the laptop is Linux-compatible. It's not a matter of ease-of-configuration. I bought an HP zt3000 because it was the most Linux-friendly laptop I could find which fit my needs, yet I'm still stuck with a modem and an SD reader which won't work in Linux and probably never will.
Next time, I'm leaning toward a nice IBM notebook, mostly because they've been standup guys lately where Linux is concerned, and HP CEO Carly Fiorina has been making a lot of noise about DMCA crap on all HP products. Just how the hell are they going to lock up a Linux notebook with DRM?
I'm glad that HP is shipping a Linux notebook PC, but this isn't some corporate altruism. The only reason for an HP Linux notebook is they see the writing on the wall and don't want to follow the next wave. You know, the big wave, where Linux sweeps over the entire planet?
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Although I agree that the desktop needs some work, your complaints are almost all irrelevant to an HP laptop with Linux preinstalled.
Its clunky to configure irrelevant if it is preinstalled as it is already configured.
has issues with even common hardware (many manufacturers still refuse to ship Linux drivers) hopefully this is not a problem for the preinstalled version, though there have been examples of linux laptops shipped with hardware that just does not work.
comes with an RTFM mentality for support Apparently this comes with HP support.
and requires you to fiddle with initialization scripts again irrelevant for a pre-installed laptop.
What's more open office is a poor replacement for MS Office, and the same is true where there are apps to replace the industry standard. This complaint is the only one of 5 that is legitimate for a preinstalled machine.
Hey,
This is good news, but I was at LinuxWorld today and I was sooo impressed with the guys from Linux Certified that I'll be seriously surprised if my next Linux Laptop doesn't come from them. When you go with a smaller vendor like Linux Certified and you have a problem, the person who answers the phone (there's the first difference, a human will answer the phone) will actually know something about Linux and be able to help you.
I applaud HP, but it's too little too late in my book. Linux Certified closed a sale today with old-fashioned customer service.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
"glad to see that they are using Suse"
I'm disappointed that it isn't Debian. IIRC, HP has a representative on the Debian Desktop project. The worst part of working with Debian is the install and hardware configuration (both of which would be done for you here; just add a recovery disk and a few CDs as a local apt-get repository and off you go).
I would seriously consider a preinstalled basic Debian for a dual boot system with XP Pro. With Suse, I would just get XP Pro and add Suse afterwards...the preinstall isn't as helpful.
Debian is also free beer, which would allow the price to be lower than its MS Windows equivalent.
So that's how they make it "secure." No one knows how the cards work, so they can't steal your data.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
HP have never built their own printers, they're rebadged Canon parts. You're right though, the laserjet 4's and 5's are so much more reliable than the 4100's (or *shudder* the 4050's) or 5100's that it's hard to believe it's the same brand.
I've worked with monochrome HP laser printers since laserjet II, and I would say they peaked around LJ4 or LJ5. The new ones are pretty much crap in comparison.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
They should make this offer in Europe too - it seems the number of people using Linux is even bigger here. I also think it is a shame that self-pronounced Linux supporter IBM still does not do this and still only offers (even "recommends") Microsoft products for their laptops (though I am running various versions of Suse Linux on various IBM Thinkpads now for years). It is really about time that hardware vendors stop forcing us to buy something that at least some will only throw away and replace by something else.
The Zaurus has run Linux with SD for quite some time now, with both Sharp's OS and other 3rd party OS's.
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