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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."
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
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...
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.
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.
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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.