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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.
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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Novices don't fix the wear and tear. They pay people to do it, buy new computers, or simply deal with - and complain about - the fact that their computer is slow, spy/adware ridden, and broken.
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...)?
What happens when it comes time for my annual reinstall?
If HP is smart, they'll do what they do for their windows products... Include a backup partition or a restore CD/DVD that you can restore everything too. I mean seriously, novices are in the dumper anyway when fixing wear and tear on their Windows boxes. I ought to know, about half my income from my consulting business is repairing windows machines for home users.
There is no reason at all that HP couldn't have a default restore utility that works exactly like their windows restore. Just wipes the drive, and puts everything back the way it was when they got it on day one. That is hardly unfeasible. I could write a perl script...
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
What annual reinstall? The only reason you have to reinstall Windows once a year or more often is that the Registry, .ini files and other system files gradually get corrupted because any program can alter them in whatever way they want. Linux doesn't have that problem because programs can only alter their own .configure files, not the basic system ones.
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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 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.
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.)
What happens when it comes time for my annual reinstall?
You put in the 'rescue' disk and click on "Yes".
There, not so hard, is it?
Not that I've ever had to do a reinstall of Linux for maintenance purposes. It doesn't fragment, crud up or slow down and BonziBuddy doesn't run on it.
KFG
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)..
Hmm, I think you've got it wrong. It actually goes something like this:
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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.
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.
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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'll buy one as soon as it's available over here.
Why.
Becuase is linux is already installed on the beast by the vendor, all the hardware will just work(tm).
I can buy it and get on with being productive with it, rather than spending a lot of time getting it all configured, installing kernel modules etc only to discover that some vendor has claimed to ship a particular piece of hardware, but has in fact shipped something else which they have renamed. Eg Dell shipped me a SoundBlaster Live! in a desktop that had been butchered so it wouldn't work with Linux. Waste of money, or if I send it back a waste of time & hastle, (which is also money.)
If it works out of the box, there's a good chance that upgrades will work.
I'd be happy with a Laptop with no OS installed that the vendor assures contains linux supported hardware. Having an OS installed is just a really great statement to re-inforce the fact that "this is Linux compatible and no we aren't kidding."
Loving HP's work on this.
Anyone got a link to the online store? Seriously.
>> .....and BonziBuddy doesn't run on it.
>>
>Not Yet!
Ya ever hear people complaining that it can be difficult to install some new software on Linux, what with permissions, dependencies and every distro arranging things differently and all?
As it turns out, there's also an upside to that.
KFG
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.
So that's how they make it "secure." No one knows how the cards work, so they can't steal your data.
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