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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.'"
What I don't understand about all the "clearly a slashvertisement" comments is how Slashdot is every supposed to post a story about a new product? I agree that sometimes a summary is highly slanted... some obscure piece of hardware is given a rave review and called a "must have for any geek" and the only links are for places to buy it.
However sometimes the community really does want to know about a new product of some kind. And I would think that Slashdot would care about the goings-ons in laptops sold with Linux pre-installed.
So while we should always take Slashdot to task for abusing their "position of authority," we should not dilute such arguments by crying wolf every time a product-related story is posted.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
why should i pay HP/Compaq for preloading my laptop with linux when i can just throw in suse 10.1 and everything but the broadcom wireless card works?
Two reasons:
1. So that you don't pay HP to preload Windows (Assuming HP won't sell you an OS less laptop because that may add a new cycle in their QA process)
2. Because then HP will ensure that our wireless cards, suspend, media buttons etc work everytime.
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.