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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.'"
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/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
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.
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...
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.
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.
I did ask, several different reps. It's so widely publicized at Dell, that only one our of four even knew linux was an OS. The others believed windows was the only operating system.
Jesus is my OS, but he panicked on boot up so I reformated him and installed Windows.
KFG
Will it explode as well as a Dell?
Seems like the most important thing to you is playing games. If that is the case, why buy a Linux based laptop? Why dont you apply the same criticism to the OS.
First, the graphics card isn't ATI or NVidia. It's Intel. That means no native OpenGL support
Bzzt, wrong! Intel cards do support OpenGL, just not spectacularly. Here I am running XGL on one to prove it...
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.
All these arguments show why it's not a good laptop for you, but that doesn't make it a "terrible laptop." First, you're wrong about the lack of OpenGL support. Intel chips do support OpenGL, and what's more, they do it with fully open-source kernel drivers. Compare that to nVidia or ATI chips which require proprietary kernel modules to get the same support.
Second, the graphics memory is shared, but so what? That does matter if you're playing heavy duty games, but if your laptop use consists mainly of Web browsing, email, and Vim usage (as is true for my usage) then it doesn't matter if your memory is shared. If that's a real concern, throw an extra 512MB of RAM in there, which is still cheaper than going for a dedicated GPU.
Third, yes, the screen is only 1024x768, but that also means it's small. The laptop is light and fits easily in my bag. Compare that to 1400x1050, which means widescreen and it means having a bigger panel. It's fine if you want that, but to some people portability is more important than screen real estate.
Fourth, happiness might be doubling up on 9-cell batteries, but to me, happiness is not having to carry two batteries. Weight, weight, weight.
In short, the laptop is made for someone with basic computing needs who values portability over power. It's not a gamers' notebook. That doesn't make it a "terrible" notebook, it just makes it a notebook not suited to everyone's needs. The same is true of one of those XPS monsters with a huge screen, high resolution, and dedicated GPU: it's a hulking machine that weighs several pounds more. That doesn't make it a "terrible" notebook, even if it does make it a notebook that I wouldn't buy.
Penny - plain text accounting
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.