The Future of Linux on Laptops

katie_york writes "CoolTechZone discusses the future of Linux on laptops after HP and Ubuntu's recent announcement. 'What would be even more exciting for Linux is if other OEMs, similar to HP, took the same approach by partnering with selected distributions of consumer friendly Linux and started offering an alternative not only in third world regions, but also in the United States. In addition to that, support for Linux on the desktop side of things would be just as welcomed.'"

Comments

Re:Priceless...

[NickFortune]

Just goes to show perhaps that this particular meme is starting to spread outside the fairly narrow confines of communities like slashdot.

I'm surprised this doesn't draw more attention. I mean it wasn't that long ago that one vendor had MS threaten to withdraw their windows reseller's licence just for offering a machine with no pre-installed OS. I mean we're not even talking about support here - they went ballistic just because someone offered the consumerbase choice.

In fairness, I should say that MS have no objection to vendors offering linux systems. Just so long as they're about three times the price of the wndows equivalent, run on crappt hardware, or are otherwise deeply unappealing. It seems to help the vendor hides the machine away or refuses to admit it exists as well.

Re:Upgrades?

[jusdisgi]

Chances are they are going to have to choose from a very small list (by comparison to a Windows machine) of upgrades that now work with their version of Linux.

For fuck's sake, why don't you actually try a Linux installation sometime, instead of perpetuating this ridiculous bullshit story of Linux's hardware support "problems." Send it back to HP? Are you on drugs?

Linux has excellent hardware support. There is one major wireless chipset that does not have native support, and thus requires you to use the windows driver through ndiswrapper. There are some winmodems that don't work, or are hard to make work. And there are a few printers yet out there that don't behave.

Now, to put that in perspective, lots of printers won't work with Windows XP. And lots of wireless cards won't work in Windows 9x. Various legacy stuff doesn't work on newer versions, and the number of times you'll need a third-party driver is vastly higher in my experience on Windows than Linux. I've got 3 usb->serial dongles; in XP, they each need a different driver, none of which came with the OS....if you want to use them with XP, you'd better have the CD that they came with. Each one is automatically recognized and assigned a device file when plugged into any modern Linux box. Same story with my Sprint PCS phone's data connection; Linux just recognizes it as an ACM device, and you can use the regular dialup setup. To do that in Windows, you have to find a driver, which is very difficult without buying a $40 outlook-sync program.

The truth of the matter is, more hardware will run on modern Linux than any single version of Windows ever produced. Your post was 100% sheer FUD. And if you disagree, and want to come back here and bitch and moan some more, why don't you start with theorizing at least one upgrade you can think of that a normal user would be able to do himself on Windows, but would have to send the box back to HP to accomplish on Linux. I dare you.