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Linux Laptop from R Cubed Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-the-merrier dept.

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.'"

6 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Dell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dell must be quaking in its boots. And Apple... well let's just say Mr. Jobs should get acquainted with his local welfare office.

  2. A bit expensive for a Linux laptop? by gasmonso · · Score: 4, Informative

    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/
    1. Re:A bit expensive for a Linux laptop? by also-rr · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well this one is 66% of the weight of the Dell (a big deal for me since I travel a lot - in fact being sub 3lb it's amazingly light), by the time I picked out similar specs for both the Dell and the R Cubed the comparison was around $1700 (Dell) vs $2000.

      $300 is easily paid for with the weight reduction and having every bug already worked out so I don't need to spend any time setting it up to run under Linux, in my opinion, but it depends how much you value your time I suppose.

      Anyway it's interesting enough that I'm seriously considering getting one as my next laptop instead of a MacBook Pro as I'm not sure I can face messing around like this to get wireless working again when I could have it all functioning out of the box.

      --
      Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
  3. And why would I want to pay the premium by namityadav · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 :-(

  4. Forget the software by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Hot Item? by thunderpaws · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will it explode as well as a Dell?