HP Linux Laptop Is A Winner

minus_273 writes "MSNBC is currently running a story on the front page reviewing the new HP Linux laptops. In a story titled 'H-P's first Linux laptop a winner', the article provides a brief look at the accomplishments and some of the shortcomings of the nx5000; a new inexpensive HP business laptop that comes with SUSE installed. The author seems extremely happy about how everything just works out of the box and mentions the significance of the product. Could HP+SUSE go the way of Apple+BSD and become an option for those that want friendly non-windows laptop? Releasing an easy to use Linux system is a good first step." We mentioned this laptop a few weeks ago.

Comments

HP and Linux

[brilinux]

I put Gentoo on my HP ze5600, and I have been quite impressed. The winmodem works, the ATI Radeon works, the WiFi works with NDIS Wrapper, and even ACPI hibernate mode seems to work fine. I hope that companies like HP continue to support more variety in their OS options.

Re:Not a negative choice

[GreatDrok]

I bought a Mac (iBook G4 14") because I was sick of the increasingly poor quality of Intel based laptops. My last Toshiba cost me £1500 and it didn't even last 18 month before it was dead. My iBook cost me £1000 and it is already 10 months old and still in great shape having been used just as much as the Toshiba was. By this point the Toshiba case was cracked and chipped, the paint had rubbed off where my palms rest and the screen was starting to flicker. Eventually the battery died and then the screen failed.

I never used Windows on my laptops, I always made sure they could run decently with Linux. The best bit with the Mac is it is Unix and everything works right out of the box.

I think it is good that Intel based laptops are appearing with Linux preinstalled but I still think a Mac is better value. This is my first Mac and it definitely won't be my last.

hibernate

[Janek Kozicki]

hibernation on my toshiba tecra 8100 with kernel 2.6.8.1 works perfectly, with latest kernel patches. I use debian so a line in /etc/apt/sources.list :

deb http://cp.yi.org/apt/hibernate ./

makes sure I have latest hibernate scripts.

I just assigned 'sudo /sbin/hibernate' to "sleep" button in my session manager. I also had set up sleepd to hibernate when battery drops to 5% (which is usually 2 hours).
And, yes - there is a glitch - if I hibernate with blender or glxgears running, then after restore the 3d acceleration gets screwed up, and sooner or later I want to restart Xserver anyway (graphic card is s3 savage).

Try reading a few paragraphs of the article first

[nacs]

It'd probably be too much to ask some people to read the product page for the laptop but the least you can do is read the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph:

Hewlett-Packard is now taking orders for their nx5000 business notebook computers with Novell's SuSE Linux 9.1 installed.

HP is intentionally targetting the enterprise market with this laptop and have stated this multiple times in the past.

Cnet even has a video where an HP representative tells us that HP is targetting enterprises and that they're doing this more as a trial run to work out kinks and see what improvements users request before they put more resources into this segment.

Re:No they won't

[wsapplegate]

> 1) Standard control panel through EVERY distro & desktop environment. Gnome and KDE need to learn how to play nice. Obviously, this will involve some work at lower levels by others. We need everyone to create some STANDARDS here.

You could maybe lend a hand. The source is available, you know. First problem to tackle : write configuration software that will parse *any* configuration file thrown at it. That's not so trivial. Some configuration files have very hairy syntax (*cough* Sendmail *cough*). Next, make sure your software doesn't do a big mess while writing changes, this will irk power users (I did make a clean, commented /etc/fstab, and the stupid Mandrake configuration tool wrote back a mangled thing without comments or indentation. This is not acceptable). I wish you good luck. This ain't a piece of cake, to say the least.

Still, there are efforts in this area. One example would be the GNOME System Tools. Although I won't settle for something less than stellar, this kind of software could satisfy you. As for your demand that everything should be the same from distro to distro, I just can't understand why that would be. The very point of having more than one distro is, we get to choose which one is best suited to our working methods. And, generally, we end up settling on one preferred distro and we don't move anymore (instead, we go trolling on Web forums saying it is the best distro ;-)) For my part, I chose Debian. But I guess it wouldn't please you. That's why you'll be so happy when you'll be able to get Mandrake or SuSE (or Fedora, or Gentoo, or even Slackware, whatever).

> 2) An installer. n00b's don't know what the hell a freakin' tar.gz file is and once they do figure it out, they don't know to where they should extract it. If Linux had a standardized software installer (complete with a dedicated file extension that could be "picked up" from a browser click)

An installer... you mean, like apt-get ? You know, that tool you just tell 'install foobar', and it downloads and installs the program foobar ? Or would you like some graphical thingie like Synaptic, where you just click on the program, then on Install ? Don't tell me you're still building from source without some specific reason on a 2004 distro ? That's SO nineties ;-) Also, I gather you want the files to have specific extensions. I'm not sure why (MIME types are way better metadata to identify files), but be advised the .rpm and .deb extensions are just that. Ain't life cool ?

> 3) Rules for software companies. Right now, there's no problems with this as there are with Windows because Linux hasn't become mainstream. What am I talking about? Software installs run amok. I hate to see Windows programs putting shortcuts *everywhere*

Then, you'll just LOVE Linux : you see, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard specifies very clearly where files go on a Linux distribution : binaries (executables) in /usr/bin, libraries in /usr/lib, data files in /usr/share/{programname}, and so on. The menus also have been unified between KDE and GNOME. Not to mention that package management makes it a lot easier to know what your package has really installed, and you'll be sure to find your configuration and documents in your home directory. No more nightmares finding them in C:\Program Files\Foobar\Obscure\Path\Name\You\Would\Never\Hav e\Thought\Of. Linux makes managing your software a breeze :-)

That's it. I hope I've been helpful, and I wish you good luck in your quest for a better Linux. But remember : diversity and freedom to experiment with your own solutions is what appeals so much to Linux users. A more rigid f

HP compax NX5000 and wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, Linux doesn't support Intel's wireless chip. H-P's WiFi modules work just fine.

Let's just hope nobody tells my wlan nic, otherwise I'll have to resort to fast ethernet.

I am currently at the kde conference in Ludwigsburg, Germany and working on one of these NX5000 notebooks. Hewlett-Packard was nice enough to sell them for about 580 EUR, which is about 700 USD, to kde developers.
However, our laptop models included the intel wireless 2200BG card, otherwise known as the dreaded centrino card. But what surprise, the driver from SourceForge works. Sometimes a bit flakey though, but it works...

Otherwise I am quite happy with the NX5000. The thing looks quite stable, has mostly supported hardware and sports a pair of superb speakers.

All in all, quite a nifty device for a very reasonable price.