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The State of Laptop Linux In 2005
jg21 writes "LinuxWorld's senior editor James Turner reports this month on what he calls The State of Laptop Linux in 2005 and says it's a lot better than it was in 2004, but adds - after conducting his own new test to see if any Linux distro is yet really laptop-ready: "What's needed to make things better? Well, the Linux community needs to address the device driver crisis." Turner acknowledges that binary-only drivers are a sore spot with free software purists, but says he'd "rather have a fully functional, if closed, Nvidia driver than a reverse-engineered one that limps along." Overall though he concludes that widespread laptop Linux is much closer now."
The vendors currently see enough profit in binary-only drivers; thus, when you buy for that manufacture then you are supporting that plan.
How would you like to participate in a kind of wiki open architecture development where you can tweak the plans for hardware? When the plans are in a good enough state you could then send it to a vendor to manufacture one for you - don't think it is crazy because this is similar to how apple started. When enough people start buying into this than the scales of economy would be realized. I say that the EE community has to step up and support an open architecture just as the SE community.
Until that time, vendors will see no reason to give you more details about *their* hardware.
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Linux on Laptops is a great resource for how-tos on getting your specific model of laptop working, there are some other sites as well (linux.org), and while they aren't the best updated they helped me at least get linuxs working on my D600 very well. Also its a good spot to check to see if you particular laptop model is generally supported.
I think the whole point of Linux/Fedora Core 3 not being 'laptop ready' is that he did nothing wrong :)
If it's laptop ready, it should work. If it doesn't work, then it isn't ready.
GPL Deconstructed
Also from TFA: Finally, I downloaded SuSE Linux 9.1, both the Live Boot and the full install. What a pleasant surprise. Everything in both versions worked right out-of-the-box, sound and WiFi included. As a bonus, the 9.1 distro is a 2.6 kernel, so I wasn't sacrificing the latest kernel features to get hardware compatibility. SuSE also had the smoothest, slickest install procedure.
So, use that one. What's the problem?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
The Linux community would address the driver crisis...if it were legal to do so or the hardware specs were available! Blame your freakin' manufacturer. Not developers that would gladly write drivers if they had the information to do so!
Binary drivers aren't a solution no matter how badly he thinks they are. They're of questionable legality considering the nature of the GPL, and no developer will help you with them given that they're a black box at best.
I may not agree with the prohibition of binary drivers but I understand why the Linux team won't deal with them...
...is working flawlessly. It sees all the hardware, it installed quickly, and everything I need is running beautifully. I've got VMware installed with the work image in it, so I can use it for everything I need. There wasn't anything special that I had to do outside the normal Gentoo installation - it worked like a charm!
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
More than anything else, even more than Microsoft, closed drivers will be the downfall of Linux and open source. First they lock you in and then they rip the rug from under you.
Drivers are too low level and critical to the entire OS. Drivers aren't like some accounting app that you can get by without. When the ATI and nVidia say, we can't be bothered with writing Linux drivers anymore, but we still won't open the source, what are you going to do?
See Bitkeeper...
My last remaining sore spot is sleep. I've tried everthing I can figure to get suspend-to-ram (aka sleep) working. It never wakes up correctly.
And I place the blame SQUARELY on the BIOS manufacturers. From what I can see, they're cutting corners left and right because it "works with Windows".
Not to mention the TERRIBLE tech support Avereatec has given me, even with regard to Windows problems. They haven't released drivers for this noteboook yet, claiming their re-install procedure works flawlessly (it doesn't). Right now, Linux runs better on this machine that Windows.
Turner acknowledges that binary-only drivers are a sore spot with free software purists, but says he'd "rather have a fully functional, if closed, Nvidia driver than a reverse-engineered one that limps along."
I would have to agree with this - at least as far as my own systems are concerned. I appreciate the idea (and ideals) of F/OSS but do not pursue that single idea doggedly enough to ignore functionality. No single ideology can encompass all possible situations; open source can - and must, in many cases - co-exist peacefully next to closed source and commercial software.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Has full laptop support.
Dashboard Widgets
Finally! I was getting tired of every year since 1998 being the year of 'Linux on the desktop'
Not sure about you, but I don't really have the time to try every single distribution available in the hope that one of them will work with everything on my laptop.
He also makes a good point about closed source drivers. As much as it pains people here to hear it, I (as a user) don't really care how the driver was developed if it turns into a simple difference between having a laptop with something working or not working.
I'll pick the latter any day.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Talking about video drivers shows how much Linus is not ready for the Laptop. If this is a problem, how much are audio, USB, FireWire, and WLAN are going to be a problem?
Extrapolation is bad. There's a known problem with video support for the latest 3d accelerated video cards (2d support is there), but that does not imply that other hardware is not supported.
Having just bought a new laptop and installed Linux on it (to replace an old laptop with Linux on it) I can tell you that audio, USB, and FireWire aren't a problem. There are only so many mobile chipsets and only so many integrated audio/USB/FireWire solutions which go with those. WLAN is a problem, most likely due to the lack of availability of hardware specs (as with video).
Uh, maybe I like Fedora more? Or Ubunto? Or generic Debian? Or even slackware? Maybe I like to keep my machines consistent from my desktop to my laptop, from administration to application concurrency. I've run multiple distros and found it a hassle. I'd rather pick ONE distro and use it exclusively.
Or, I could just use OS X or FreeBSD.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If binary drivers are OK, why would a company bother releasing source? If one company can release binary only, why not the other? Under the current attitude, companies stand to gain a lot more than they would with binary only.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
"The state of Linux on my Toshiba, 2005"
Come on, even for slashdot generalizing from a single datapoint is a little underwhelming.
Unless something dramatic happens, I don't see linux ever having anything close to universal wireless support, or support for the umpteen million other specialty hardwares in a laptop.
First, Windows doesn't support wireless. The wireless manufacturer supports Windows. If they treated MS users like they treat Linux users, Windows would have the exact same issues
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If laptop manufacturers would make more laptops with LESS built into it, I think people would have a much better time with Linux. Build me a laptop without an integrated modem, ethernet, and wireless network and just give me a bunch of usb and PCMCIA slots so I can choose my own accessories, much like I do with my desktop. That way I can spend less on a laptop because it doesn't "come with everything" and I can expand it with exactly the hardware I want.
I have an old Digital HiNote VP 700 with no built in modem or ethernet card. I poked around online to see what PCMCIA devices are supported by my favorite flavor of Linux, and I bought those items. Machine runs slow as shit with a 133 mhz processor and Red Hat 9, but at least all my hardware works because I found the modem, ethernet, and wireless cards that work well with what I want to run. I am also happy using generic video drivers as long as I get the resolution I want.
To compare, I have a Toshiba Tecra with built in Ethernet, Modem, and Wireless. First off, Fedora Core 3 locks up on bootup, so I put RH9 on this one too. Wouldn't ya know it, the modem doesn't work, the 10/100 ethernet adaptor is detected but doesn't work, and I haven't even attempted the built in wireless. But I still have these cards I know work cause I researched them and picked them out myself, so I just shove em in and I'm good to go. Although RH9 was able to correctly determine my video and audio chipsets, I would be just as happy using generic video/audio drivers if I had to.
Sell me a laptop without everything built in so I can expand it myself...that's the way to make a Linux compatiable laptop.
Linux frowns on binary-only, closed-source drivers for a reason: they decrease the overall kernel quality if nobody else can help debug them. Nvidia's closed-source driver is fine, until its doesn't fucking work. Then what?
And this is kernel space we're talking about, so this means that your machine keeps crashing, hard, when it fucks up. And nobody can fix it, except the vendor, who "updates them as frequently as they update the Windows drivers", which means about twice a year, no more than four times total over the life of the product.
This is NOT good enough. The Linux kernel changes much more frequently and drastically than Windows, and driver maintainers are expected to keep up with the kernel or have their code cut out.
Torvalds and the kernel maintainers are driving a very particular type of bus, here. People who want to release binary-only drivers are just unwilling to get on the bus.
I downloaded the newly released Ubuntu 5.04 this morning. Installation took about 30 minutes, and here's what I have:
Boots off CD and installs like it should? Check.
Detects all hardware devices during the installation, even the wireless card? Check.
Sound works? Check.
Video works? Check minus (see below).
Power management works, meaning sleep and suspend to disk (hibernate) work flawlessly and CPU speed throttles correctly? Check.
Modem works? Who cares!
Bluetooth works? Probably, but I don't have any BT devices to check it with.
IBM's Active Protection System works to protect the hard drive? Nope.
All function buttons for sleep, suspend, brightness, volume, etc. work? Yup.
So, I'm sitting here with a notebook that by current standards is running pretty darn good under Ubuntu, with a very small amount of manual configuration necessary to get this far. What's holding Linux back from running as nicely as Windows on the ThinkPad?
The video is the biggest problem. Ubuntu installs DRI drivers by default, which work pretty well, but lack 3D acceleration support. I can install the ATI binary drivers with a few simple commands, but they break suspend/resume functionality, which is arguably more important for most notebook users. I also won't be able to use the nifty ThinkVantage features on my expensive ThinkPad, like the Active Protection system.
So notebook users have a dilemma: do the Right Thing and handicap your system by installing Linux, or stick with the factory installation of Windows where everything Just Works. The never-ending battle of Morality vs. Functionality rages on.
(For those with the same/similar ThinkPad, see my quickly written guide for more detail.)
Ever tried to install a "pure" Windows XP on a laptop lately? You probably run into the same problems as with a one-size-fits-all Linux distribution.
As I mentioned some time ago, my Thinkpad T40p came with a customized version of SuSE 9.1 pro. This is what I would say is a ready for the laptop linux distribution. You simply put the the disk in your DVD drive, answer 2-3 short questions at the beginning regarding the partitions and amount of space you want to use (or simply go with the defaults), click ok and off you go.
Just like using a recovery Windows XP CD, all hardware modules are installed and configured, plus a whole bunch of usefull applications for e-mail, WWW, office applications.
I had a lot of trouble installing XP from a "normal" installation CD on my old T21, which came with a Windows 98 recovery CD, and which I wanted to upgrade.
Of course, the FC3 installer shouldn't just have displayed a black screen. But this whole question if Linux is ready for the laptop isn't fair if you compare an unmodified Linux distribution with Windows recovery CDs explicitly made for your computer model.
Or unable, due to licensing restrictions in their driver code. I've heard ATI and NVidia developers would love nothing more than to just open source their drivers. It'd be a big, nasty monkey off their back. But they can't because of some of the technology that they license from other companies. It's not lack of desire that's preventing this, it's lack of legality with current IP agreements.
I mean, just look at what ATI has done with getting the older Radeon's supported with OS drivers. They have released a lot of info.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.