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Linux Laptop from R Cubed Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge (Also owned by VA) has a short writeup on R Cubed's latest laptop, the LS1250-L Linux laptop. From the article: 'My test machine came with Fedora Core 5, the GNOME desktop, OpenOffice.org 2.0, the Firefox browser, and Evolution mail client. The lineup also includes the normal assortment of multimedia players, administration tools, and games. If you prefer, you can choose SUSE 10.1, various flavors of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and even Microsoft Windows XP.'"
No wai.
Dell must be quaking in its boots. And Apple... well let's just say Mr. Jobs should get acquainted with his local welfare office.
Not trolling here, but the price does seem high... almost as if the MS tax in in there somewhere. Is there such thing as a Linux tax? Consider the Dell XPS M1210 for $1200.
http://religiousfreaks.com/This is clearly a slashvertizement.
http://www.shoprcubed.com/proddetail.asp?prod=LS12 50-L
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
From TFA: "The $1,433 suggested retail price for the reviewed model seems high."
That's for sure, considering the reviewed model was a 1.73GHz Centrino processor with a 533MHz front side bus, 512MB of DDR2 memory, and a 60GB 5400RPM hard drive.
I like what rcubed is doing and give them lots of credit, but until the likes of Dell and other large vendors offer mainstream factory linux installation (without hidden charges, etc), we're on our own. Modern distributions are savvy enough to handle almost everything you throw at them, but without the blessing of the big vendors, linux will be confined largely to enthusiasts.
Why don't the no-name revolutionary linux laptop makers understand that unless they sell their laptop for lesser than a similarly spec'd Dell Inspiron, people are going to buy the Inspiron and install Ubuntu instead.
:-(
Yes, I know it's easier to have a pre-setup laptop and not have to worry about searching for ndiswrapper etc for wireless, but the community that the linux laptop makers are targetting actually loves such challenges.
Okay, now I'll get back to trying to figure out how the heck this BCM4318 is going to work
Clearly they are targeting the $900/hr engineers out there. Since I don't make $900 an hour, I'd rather by my own more-powerfull $600 laptop and take an hour and load PCLinuxOS or FC5 myself. Yes it will eat up a hour of my time, but to save $900 and get a BETTER freaking laptop, I think I can deal with it.
This article made me think of the overall lack of commercial systems sporting pre-loaded Linux operating systems. It's funny that it would take such a relatively small company as this to even attempt it. In particular, I am surprised that boutique companies like Alienware don't offer their models with Linux or with a Linux-Windows dual-boot. People who are willing to shell out thousands for an SLI notebook are (relatively) likely to be interested in Linux. And if you dual-boot with Windows, what's the loss?
One of the biggest reasons why Linux has not reached a wider audience is the difficulty of installation and configuration, which involves partitioning, potentially compiling drivers, and other things that can take some time. It also requires a decent amount of technical knowledge. If Linux came pre-installed, casual users would be a lot more inclined to give it a try.
My guess is the reason they are charging so much is that a laptop preloaded with Linux is very much a novelty, so they can.
that's just peachy
Has it got a windows key too ?
I notice that the Leveno Thinkpads have gone to two button touchpads too.
I'll be glad when I'm out of computing, it's a lifetime of frustration.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Am I seeing right? Are they targeting Linux users with a two button mouse latptop instead of three? This would be pretty much ridiculous.
Wouldn't most people with the technical ability to use/maintain a linux laptop just save a bit of money and get a laptop (probably a 'barebones' laptop) with no OS on it? Especially when you consider how custom linux is, and how advanced most linux users are...I wouldn't want someone else to install linux for me, although I actually am a Windows user...
Still using Pentium M when the Core Duo has been here a while, and Merom just around the corner ...
The tagline is all about the software that comes preinstalled. But really, living with Linux on a laptop is all about hardware support. Can it suspend to RAM or disk - even if 3d acceleration is enabled and I forget to remove my PCMCIA devices first? Can I dock and undock with a docking station - each time switching over to my high-res external desktop display - without rebooting? Does the WiFi work - including support for all the weird security and authorization mechanisms? These are the important questions a linux laptop buyer should ask.
why couldn't they offer a preconfigured option with Ubuntu? I know they can't offer to pre-install every linux distro out there, but considering it's popularity...
Firefox! I must have this machine...
What's the point of creating yet another laptop with an overpowered CPU and no battery life? It would make more sense to use a less powerful CPU that doesn't suck up power. Especially when the system is designed to run Gnome on Linux — that's a configuration that would run happily on a system with 1/3 the hz.
Linux people have to stop producing technology whose only advantage over standard Wintel platforms is that there's no OS tithe to Redmond. Go with the Penguin's strengths: less resource hungry, so you can produce cheaper systems that use less power; open source, so you can fix all the usability bugs that Microsoft (and, alas, most Linux app designers) can't seem to deal with.
That notebook looks just like an ASUS notebook. Did they just rebrand it, or did they actually change it?
Let's get things straight. R Cubed says it's based on the Asus Z33A series of laptops. So let's compare the full Z33A specs on the "ultraportable" as Asus compares. http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&mod el=606&l1=5&l2=64&l3=0
It's a Centrino based system. Which means Intel Pentium M or Celeron Pentium M at 1.6 GHz or better and SpeedStep, Intel chipset, Intel WiFi. All supported, so we're good. Everything lines up nicely with much of everything... but there's a few bits that it falls on:
First, the graphics card isn't ATI or NVidia. It's Intel. That means no native OpenGL support and thus you can't play most Linux games, including Second Life. The graphics memory is also shared with main memory, which means it's going to be slower than anything dedicated. Those two alone is worth ditching the laptop for.
Second, the screen's only 1024x768. That means for most websites you need to expand Firefox full screen. My HP Omnibook 6000 has older ATI graphics and that's 1400x1050 -- enough screen real estate to run Firefox at 1024x900, a few aterms, and KDE... or KDE and Gimp at the same time. Even OpenOffice.org benifits from more room.
Third, there doesn't seem to be any word on doubling up on 9-cell batteries on Asus site. Remember, happiness is two batteries in the PC and 4+ hours of runtime.
This laptop? Not worth it. Go on Nextag or Pricewatch or maybe PriceGrabber, and search for NVidia based laptops.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Buy the exact same laptop here for a lot less? http://www.powernotebooks.com/product.php?itemId=1 232
Will it explode as well as a Dell?
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Linux is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when IDC confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Ubuntu is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Ubuntu developers only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Ubuntu is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Debian leader Murdock states that there are 7000 users of Debian. How many users of Ubuntu are there? Let's see. The number of Debian versus Ubuntu posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Ubuntu users. Kubuntu posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Ubuntu posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Kubuntu. A recent article put SUSE at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SUSE users. This is consistent with the number of SUSE Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of SUSE, abysmal sales and so on, SUSE went out of business and was taken over by Novell who sell another troubled OS. Now Ubuntu is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
Fact: Linux is dying
Yeah, "That's an Asus" was my first thought. Confirmed it by scrolling half a page down the article and reading "Powered by ASUS", nifty logo and all...
The model reviewed by the article is just one of several types of Linux laptops sold by R Cubed Technologies, ranging in price from $999 to $1,454. I really think you're getting a better buying one of these Linux laptops than buying a Dell laptop where you have to pay the Micro$oft tax or one of those exhorbitantly expensive Apple laptops.
The R Cubed Linux laptops have Intel integrated graphics cards for which Intel has released 2D and 3D-accelerated open source graphics drivers that are capable of transparent windows and drop shadows with EXA as well as rotating cubes and wobbly windows with XGL and Compiz! Way to go Intel!
Get computers and accessories from Linux-friendly manufacturers
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
It's still got a bloody windows key though :(
Looks like someone took an ASUS laptop , slapped fedora on it , hey presto linux laptop..
http://linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
It's a trap!
http://tinyurl.com/l2mcs
OK, one more seller is using GNU/Linux on laptops. Where are the news? even acer (who makes pretty cheap notebooks) is exporting notebooks with GNU/Linux preinstalled on some countries, like Brasil ( I bought one of these) and aparently Polonia. The news are that those notebooks are MUCH cheaper with the same components of these ones.
Thanks for the link to digg, asshole.
Is it really too fucking hard to link to the actual site you're talking about?
The actual link For everyone who'd like to see the list directly.
All from shoprcubed.com:
http://shoprcubed.com/products.asp?cat=27
14 inch widescreen
15.4 inch widescreen
Their super-small one (12" I think?) and the top model (which I can't quite see why it's SO much more expensive w/o looking in more detail) both are celeron M or pentium M, but the middle two on the page are both Core Duo capable.
I find it interesting that they're such big supporters of "Linux", yet their website is running Windows Server...
If you want nicer screen that's fine. They have a veriaty of other laptops, EVEN DUAL CORE. This one is specificly designed to be lightweight and have a long battery life. It's a stupid idea to give a laptop like that a seperate video card.
And Intel chipset DOES have OpenGL acceleration. If it's a GMA 900 or GMA 950 (9xxg chipsets) chipset then it's at least as good as a ATI 8500 or 9200. Intel claims parity with the 9600. AND whats more they are supported out of the box.
Of course if it's the 'extreme blaster 2' (the 8xxg chipsets) then it does suck. I'd recommend moving on to something else.
Confirmed it by scrolling half a page down the article and reading "Powered by ASUS", nifty logo and all...
The article on Newsforge does not mention ASUS.
(However, going one link further, R-Cubed's site does say "built on ASUS", but leaves open the question of whether they changed the machine in any way.)
The picture of the machine on the manufacturers website looks like a black version of my Asus S5N (mines white). I paid $1200 for the machine 2 years ago (windows preloaded :( ). Absolutely everything on the machine works out of the box in ubuntu. The best part about it is the battery life. My (extended) battery lasted the entire flight from Osaka to Detroit. If you are looking for a linux laptop give it a spin (although their price point is a bit high for a 2 year old laptop).
For that price, it better come with 900 hours of free AOL, or 6 months of Norton AV!
FC5 is the latest version of that distro afaik. So you are completely uninformed there pal.
As for being fully configured, you are missing the point: even die hard geeks need to get things done.
I have installed Linux on many laptops. Been there, done that, got the cheap T-shirt. If I needed a new laptop I would be more than happy to get something ready to go to which I can add what I need, but that has the basics (Internet stuff, multimedia, office applications) ready to rock.
They are aiming for the geek with little time. The laptop is even cheaper if you don't put the OS of the beast on it, which in my book gets lots of coockie points.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm also not surprised that the sleep and WiFi are flakey. It's gotta be tough for an OS to support proper re-initialization on hardware that can be powered off and on. That's not something that OSs typically do ... if it's on, it's on, if it's not, it's broke.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I have a LinuxCertified laptop which I have owned for a while and have been very happy with. Wireless performance is great, and hardware is very linux friendly.