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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.'"
From TFA:
Wow...sounds like Gundeep Hora wrote this article with Slashdot specifically in mind...
^_^
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"started offering an alternative not only in third world regions, but also in the United States" .. Didn't HP launch it in Europe and South africa ..perhaps im wrong.
I was unaware i lived in a developing nation , such as um the whole of Europe
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
not only in third world regions, but also in the United States
So I guess that leaves Europe, Canada, Australia, and many others out uh?
I know, I know, it's a US centric site (per your FAQ), but we still feel it you know?
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
through a different, smaller mfg, though. so perhaps when this article states 'like HP' they mean, Dell?
do you have shinyfeet?
Installing Linux of a laptop is easy, especially with ditributions like Ubuntu. The fact that Linux comes preinstalled or not with the hardware doesn't matter IMHO.
But once Linux is installed, the difficult part is to *use* it. Installing new software and making it work properly is not trivial. Even with GUIs like Synaptic, using any Linux distribution requires Unix knowledge. You can't use (upgrade/customize/etc) a Linux workstation without using a terminal for instance.
So for a newbie or for my parents, I'd never recommend a laptop running Linux (preinstalled or not).
{{.sig}}
What would be great is if everybody started moving to the LSB so that you could use virtually ANY Linux on the hardware. This crap where all you need is a different variation on software packaging and you have a different operating system has GOT to stop.
I agree that this is the way to do it (making sure all the hardware works with Linux), however what happens when somone wants to do an upgrade down the road? 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.
Now some of you may not think this is a bad thing, but I can see where it could be heading... Want that new upgrade? Send your machine back to HP and for $400 you can have this $100 piece of hardware because you have no choices and we can charge you whatver we want! Profit margins here we come...
I've used every major distribution out there, and NOTHING is as friendly IMHO as Xandros. You want a desktop PC certified for Xandros. Here you go, bitches, a $69.99 computer, with mostly realistic specs! (note the Earthlink "catch").
You can't beat that!
Apparently, HP is determined to make certain models work 100 percent with Ubuntu.
Is Linux still suffering from incompatible hardware in computers these days? I haven't purchased a laptop since 1996 but it ran Linux (I did have to use AcceleratedX because at the time XFree didn't support the video card chipset) just fine.
Are we still having serious problems with people not being able to use their computers 100% with Linux or are they talking about "out-of-the-box" with no configuration necessary?
This is good news, I guess, and making something work with free drivers on any one distribution makes it work (with some kicking and swearing, anyway) on all Linux. But I'm not throwing a party just yet...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
There are already ways by which laptops with Linux installed can be purchased. The major news is the HP initiative that can spark similar behaviour in IBM, Dell (who do SuSE), etc.
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
It would seem that the it would make more sense at first to design a desktop that is 100% linux compatible. The vast majority of Linux machines are acting as servers of some sort or are being used by us geeks that are locked in a basement with no windows anyway, and have no reason to be portable. I don't see the average college kid running out to buy a linux machine for school, nor do I see executives deciding to buy linux machines for their traveling businessmen.
You can also get more horsepower for cheaper. I'm sure that are plenty of people that want a Linux laptop, but if I was going to specifically design hardware for linux, I would start with a desktop. I would probably also include the US, but that's another story.
/. ++
While I've never been an HP fan, I'd be inclined to purchase one of these after reading the initial reviews.
I'd be especially interested if it had an AMD processor.
HP had one of the best laptop repair policies I've ever seen. Back when I did HP warranty work, one could send in a (broken for just about any reason) laptop, and pay a flat $400 fee for getting it fixed. While that may sound expensive, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than paying for the parts + labor for an LCD replacement.
Additionally, it seems HP doesn't hide behind the "bad pixels are not a defect" policy. While some manufactures (*Cough* Apple, Dell) require that your LCD has at least 20+ bad pixels before they fix, I've seen HP repair laptops with 5 or less.
Obviously, this is anecdotal, and their policies may have changed.
1. How many true "geeks" run a system "as it is shipped" Im willing to bet most of us reinstall for one reason or another soon as we get the system. Maybe we want a diffrent partition setup? Maybe we want to make sure there are no Vendor installed CPU wasting crap installed.. For what ever reason most geeks reinstall the OS soon as the computer enters there care.
2. I don't want to be limited to what I can run.. I don't want to be "taxed" for software I will never use.
So in the end I really don't care what OS's you offer.. What I want is the ability to order a laptop void of any OS at all!!!
Personal Website
There isn't much that doesn't work, but it's worth listing, and easier to keep track of than all the stuff that works just fine:
http://www.leenooks.com/
In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of a laptop is how well it enters and leaves sleep mode. Use an Apple laptop for an idea of how close to ideal you can get.
My IBM laptop, an older model, does not sleep well, the battery may last a little longer, but its not dead like an Apple laptop is. Perfect entering and exiting sleep mode, and Linux will get a toe-hold
Support for clunker desktops and laptops will go a long way towards making Linux and computing in general available to the financially limited. I was actually rather impressed with M$ rumored foresight at creating a version of XP to run on old machines that are still running 95 or 98. Who here doesn't have a few (dozen) friends with eMachines that they bought 6 years ago and are running on limited RAM, limited disk space, and everything else? The further they reduce the hardware requirements of a basic distribution (coupled with ease of install), the more plain folk will agree to do the switch. I'm personally hoping for the day I can slap something like an Ubuntu install CD into a Sony PCG-N505ve and have everything work well.
I just got an HP ZV6000 series laptop, featuring an AMD 64 processor. I got it with all the intention of installing Ubuntu for AMD 64 on it.
To say that the laptop is not linux friendly is an understatement. There are no drivers for the video card, you can get X.org sort of working with the vesa driver. The touchpad is partially supported, scroll bar doesn't work and you need to resort to tricks to make it work (remove and readd the psmouse module).
I installed the latest Java development kit for Linux AMD 64 on it, followed by Eclipse. Eclipse keeps crashing every few minutes.
Although my intention was to run Ubuntu on this laptop, I find myself booting to Windows XP home all the time just to get some work done.
Expert Java EE Consulting
No, it actually refers to communist versus democratic countries. 1st world countries are either "within the sphere of US interest" or were democratic and somewhat allied in the cold war. Second World countries are communist. Third world countries are not in either sphere of influence. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_ countries.htm
... HP is launching these notebooks in regions where Windows piracy is high because they can rely on the security of selling them to people that will buy just because they're cheaper, but will eventually install a pirated copy of Windows instead of Ubuntu. Not very promissing for Linux I say. Heck, the bundled FreeDOS even makes this easier...
If linux had better graphics support, I think that linux would take off more - on both the laptop and desktop - as a development platform for console-style games. Think of it this way: If you are developing a game, you currently have to develop the game for windows, mac, linux, etc. if you want it to be on all platforms. However if you were to use a live linux distro as the base for a game, you could make it so that all you have to do is restart your computer, put the CD in your drive and the game runs automatically - no need to mess with installing it on the hard drive, no need to have to port the game, nothing! It will run on any processor that it is designed for that has a fast cd-rom drive (which is pretty much all computers these days), and with network support built into linux you could very easily set it up to connect to the internet and get to a gaming server for lan parties or just regular internet play.
http://www.virtualvillagesquare.com/ Online Communities: The Next Generation
I disagree. I see more and more people opting for laptops with >=17" screens. These usually have dual drives and whatnot, and wind up being ridiculously powerful email readers. Ain't no way I'm calling a 12lb laptop with a 17" screen a notebook. It's barely a laptop and more like a lower-leg warmer.
-- I have fans? Wow.
(I originally wrote this yesterday in a comment to the article "Mad has hell, switching to Mac", but it's even more topical here so I'll repost:)
> He doesn't want to bother with packaging, experimental drivers,
> non-ability to sleep, and other issues that come with Linux (especially
> on laptops). Plus, Macs can run a lot of Officially Supported
> Microsoft software that the industry feels it needs in order to be compatible.
Yup, that just about sums up my experience too. My company really tried our best to standardize on Linux, but since most employees need laptops we had to give up and buy Macs instead.
We put a lot of work into getting drivers for the laptops and making stuff work right, but in the end it just wasn't worth it. Stuff like ATI graphics adapters that either worked with dual screens, say for projector use, with the X.org driver or worked with accelerated 3D graphics with the ATI driver, but not both.
Or the lack of stable drivers for the Intel Pro WLAN 2200 Mini PCI WiFi cards which also had to be manually reinstalled after each kernel upgrade.
As you said, the non-ability to sleep was also a major issue.
This isn't really a problem with Linux, it's more a problem with non-open and proprietary hardware, hardware that changes constantly and comes in a pre-packaged form wich you can't influence (laptops come with everything soldered on the mainboard, you have to take or leave the whole package). We never had a problem with our whitebox dektop PCs, nor with our servers of course.
We didn't have much problems on the application side of things by the way. People adjusted quickly to OpenOffice and Thunderbird (for email) and of course loved Firefox, everything else we do we host on the web. The only grumble we had was the CEO who claimed there really wasn't a proper Linux replacement for Microsoft Project available anywhere, open or closed source.
In the end we came to the conclusion that the TCO for Linux on laptops was too high, but on desktops it was mosly a no-brainer. Had we been able to use desktops all over the firm we would have stayed an all-Linux shop for sure.
So why Mac laptops, why not Windows? That was a no-brainer as well. We already run Linux (and OpenBSD) on everything else in the company, Mac OS X is also *nix-based and based on open source projects so the skillset we have is applicable. But the clincher was security and TCO. Macs are by far the cheapest laptops to own and operate in a corporate environment, because they a) Just Work with the hardware and b) the OS is secure from the ground up.
Add to that the fact that Mac OS X plays nice with everyone else, especially in a *nix environment, and the fact that we can still run OpenOffice (NeoOffice/J), Thunderbird and Firefox and we're all set. We can even run Microsoft Office if we want.
This is a win-win situation, the users are happy because they have tools that work all the time and we IT guys are happy for the same reason.
The only downside is the fact that we now have to rely on only one supplier of laptops and have to pay their, frankly, inflated prices. In the end we decided that there is really nothing wrong with rewarding a supplier for making an excellent product, it's not their fault that the competition stinks. Anyway, it's not like we had a huge array of choices in the PC laptop marketplace either, once we started eliminating ATI graphics adapters, Intel WiFi chips and other problematic components from vendors who won't allow proper Linux drivers to be made.
The field of remaining, workable laptops was depressingly small, and the fact that we couldn't rely on any of the models being available for any amount of time was unacceptable.
Apple gets our money from now on.
(I'd like to add that if HP will commit to making laptops that will only use hardware that Just Works with Linux (any distro, we happen to use Fedora), we'll consider purchasing their laptops as well as Apple's.)
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
All I care about is: will they make suspend/hibernate work on their hardware? Nothing else matters as much on a laptop, but I have never yet seen it running without any problems on any Linux laptop. (I know some people have it running "flawlessly", but I've never seen it, and not having it working makes a laptop much less useful...)
> one _CAN NOT_ sell computers without an os
> if one is at the same time selling m$ stuff.
Why is this not illegal under anti-trust law?
FYI/
Nokia's new 770 Tablet - Debian Linux, X, Gnome, Opera, 802.11g, Bluetooth 1.2, 800x400 widescreen, handheld form factor - supposed to go on sale for US$ 350 within 4 months. (No phone included.)
Nokia's site for open-source components for the 770: Maemo.org has Linux sources and application development resources.
Developer's FAQ PDF here
I wonder why an OEM vendor shipping Linux pre-installed on laptops only signals "The Future of Linux on Laptops" when it's Debian^WUbuntu ?
... but that's the price of Freedom ... Ubunto isn't Free!)
... I see this more as Linux becoming more mature in support of features we all want working out-the-box (which previously requried manual setup).
HP first started shipping Linux preinstalled on NX5000s with SuSE.
And, Mandriva ships pre-installed HP laptops (looks like an NX9030) in Europe
I point out that Mandriva 2005LE does everything (at least on my HP NX7010) this apparently "highly configured system designed especially for HP notebooks" does out-the-box, including:
-LAN (8139too)
-WiFi (ipw2100 in my case)
-Modem
-Sound
-Bluetooth (I use it with a Logitech MX900 and my Nokia 6600)
-Graphics adapter (fglrx or radeon)
-Battery usage meter (ie acpi)
-Suspend to disk
-Hotkey configuration (new in 2005LE, keyboarddrake should choose the right keyboard layout )
I don't have any Firewire devices, and I all the IR devices I have have a faster medium (bluetooth or cable), so I haven't tested them, but the firewire modules get loaded fine.
(On the download edition of Mandriva, you would need to download the firmware for the ipw2100, you would get the radeon driver, and the modem may not work out-the-box
So