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LinuxCertified LC2210D Laptop Review

Posted by timothy on from the that's-where-the-linux-laptops-are dept.

Provataki writes "OSNews posted a review of the LinuxCertified LC2210D laptop, running the latest Ubuntu. The laptop delivers pretty well and it has modern characteristics for a fair price but it's not without its small configuration issues. It is also another proof that Linux's ACPI sleep support does not work on most laptops out there, even the ones picked for best compatibility with Linux."

19 comments

  1. ACPI sleep by mjg59 · · Score: 4, Informative

    ACPI sleep works on most modern laptops. http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/HoaryPMResults has rather more "Yes" entries than "No" ones, and a large number of the failures are now well understood. Toshiba, IBM and (surprisingly) Sony seem to be good for ACPI support. For HP, it depends on the range - a lot of their hardware is very different. Older Dells seem good, and some of their modern stuff works without problems.

    1. Re:ACPI sleep by Trelane · · Score: 3, Informative
      Additionally, the vast majority of sleep problems aren't in the kernel, they're in the bios (specifically, the DSDT as compiled by Microsoft tools). Go to acpi.sf.net for more information on broken DSDTs for more information on what this DSDT brokenness means to hardware compatibility, both device (e.g. sound cards) and suspend-resume and how to fix it (and maybe you're lucky and someone's already fixed your DSDT!)

      Without fixing the DSDT, your best bet for suspend-resume on Linux is to use software suspend 2, as it seems to sidestep the BIOS/DSDT brokenness pretty well.

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      Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
    2. Re:ACPI sleep by mjg59 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This isn't true for the majority of semi-decent hardware. Most resume failures are entirely down to Linux not resuming the IDE controller properly, with most of the remainder being video and i8042 related.

    3. Re:ACPI sleep by pantropik · · Score: 1

      If you look at those results more carefully you'll realize that the machines listed there comprise only an incomplete subset of laptops on the market (none of the very popular eMachines M68XX models, no Gateway models, only one Apple listing, no Powerbook info, etc.), so using those results to say that sleep works on "most modern laptops" is just plain wrong.

      I have an older Toshiba that works okay, but a Gateway 7405GX and a Powerbook that either wake up braindead and broken or, much more often, not at all.

      Telling people it works on "most" laptops when it clearly doesn't even come close, and having them get all excited and waste time installing something that's going to be nothing but frustration for them and will send them running back to Windows does nothing to help Linux and/or OSS in general.

    4. Re:ACPI sleep by mjg59 · · Score: 1

      Yes. Since I haven't tested every single piece of hardware on the market, I'm extrapolating. Based on my experience, I have no reason to believe that the underrepresented vendors are especially good or bad, and so the overall ratio of working/non-working machines should be similar. As long as your Powerbook doesn't have nvidia graphics, it should work fine with a sufficiently recent kernel.

    5. Re:ACPI sleep by slashjk · · Score: 2, Interesting
      So, I have some experience with this, on this particular laptop.

      In the past turned on the suspend-to-ram feature, it worked most of the time, but didn't resume may be one out of 10 times. I did more extensive research on this topic, and found that while suspend-to-ram can be made to work on many laptops, it is not very solid. So, now I am somewhat sceptical when someone says suspend-to-ram is working on their laptops, because I want to be able to resume my laptop every single time.

      In any case, suspend-to-disk is fast enough for me, and it does imply complete power-off of the system.

  2. A small step for computers,.. by treff89 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    a great step for Linux. Yes, I know that there are computers being sold with Linux pre-installed. This is taking the logical next step! After so many years of laptops designed for Windows, we are starting to see those designed for alternate OS's emerge. This is great, as there will be no obviously flawed device choices. (For example: modem.) The ACPI discrepancy is a minor one and no real issue for 99.99% of users. Again, this is the logical next step in the development of these great operating systems that are free. Good going FOSSS!

    1. Re:A small step for computers,.. by Kaamoss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      how can you say that sleep is only an issue with 0.01% of laptop users? The reason that I got a laptop was so that I could be mobily productive and a big part of that is being able to go a long time between charges. I imagine most people have laptops for the same reason and so it is an issue.

    2. Re:A small step for computers,.. by treff89 · · Score: 1

      It's exceedingly easy to press "Sleep". ACPI is not the only power management API out there. Good as it is, it's not the end of the world if it doesn't work.

    3. Re:A small step for computers,.. by mjg59 · · Score: 1

      The only big vendor shipping with decent APM support nowadays is IBM. If you buy anything else, you need ACPI support for sleep.

  3. Sleep issue by Kaamoss · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The whole sleep issue/ battery consumption rates is kind of a big set back for the whole linux on latops movements. I know that's the main reason that I took gentoo off of my G4 ibook. Don't get me wrong I love linux just as much as the next /.er but I get much better batery life running OS X on it ass opposed to linux and the more and more I use OS X the more I like it. Not to mention the fact that there is no airport extreme linux driver either. Those are the two really big issues that I don't see changing any time in the near future which will hold linux back on the laptop, but maybe I'll be proven wrong.

    1. Re:Sleep issue by pantropik · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I couldn't agree more. I have a Gateway 7405GX that is completely supported EXCEPT for sleep (well, also the Broadcom wireless [ndiswrapper works, tho, even in 64-bit mode] and maybe the various memory card readers, which I never tested since I don't use any).

      In all my fiddling with various Ubuntu and SUSE 9.3 installs I've only seen this laptop wake up and actually work properly once, and that was apparently just a fortunate accident since I couldn't reproduce it.

      I'd LOVE to use Linux on this machine, but having to shutdown every time I want to move the thing more than a few feet is just too tedious. It destroys the whole point of having a mobile computer.

      In XP I can just close the lid, drive wherever, open the lid and keep going where I left off. XP's hibernate is fantastic in that regard, too, since you can hibernate and come backs DAYS later and pick up exactly where you left off without having to worry about the gradual dying of the battery while the machine sleeps.

      The day I can get even close to that kind of convenience while running Linux is the day I blow the XP install away for good. I'm not going to hold my breath, though, since I've been waiting for YEARS for proper Linux laptop support and the pace of improvement seems glacial.

    2. Re:Sleep issue by Trelane · · Score: 1
      Then today could be your lucky day. Software Suspend 2 is out for Linux. While you may have luck with earlier software suspend in the kernel, Software Suspend 2 is under very active development, and hopefully will be in the mainstream kernels (and hence in desktop distros) in the near future. It's working quite well for me now, and might work well for you too, if you have the knowledge and patience to use it. It seems to work around various crappy hardware problems with suspend-to-ram pretty well, so I'm pleased. This (Dell Inspiron 8600 w/ ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, WUXGA) laptop has some large issues with suspend-to-ram, apparently due to video card issues from the WUXGA screen (on resume, it drives the lcd at the wrong frequency and you get the oh-so-fun melting effect).

      Hope this helps a little bit.

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      Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
    3. Re:Sleep issue by jedi_pj · · Score: 1

      I have a Toshiba A200. The sleep works with both Ubuntu and Suse9.2 with modifying some of the paremeters for the ACPI through the KDE control panel and also specifying the resume option to kernel as the swap space.

  4. Wonder what..... by KingBahamut · · Score: 2, Informative

    Emperor Guys think.

    http://www.emperorlinux.com/

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    "God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
  5. Excellent laptop by slashjk · · Score: 2, Informative

    My primary work laptop is a LinuxCertified LC2210D laptop. I have this laptop around for few months now, and pound on it constantly. For me the greatest value add is LinuxCertified's support line (actually email-line) - which has helped me come out of some corners. BTW, multimedia features work fine on mine.

  6. How bout a decent video card? by mclaincausey · · Score: 1

    Intel Extreme graphics? Yech!

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