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IBM Thinkpad 600E to be certified "compatible"

Posted by Hemos on from the making-steps-in-the-right-direction dept.

dkm wrote to say that IBM has declared their intention of making the Thinkpad 600E named as Red Hat Linux "compatible". Sounds great, right? Well, the fun part is that while IBM wants to get named compatible, the bloody modem still won't work with Linux. Marvelous-compatible, but not really. Apparently they'll be "taking steps" as time goes on to get the modem working. disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in red hat

6 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. This is Good News! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5
    I'm having a little trouble believing all the negative comments I've read here so far! It seems to me that when a hardware manufacturer starts a Linux compatibility program, that is a Good Thing for Linux and all of us. How many complaints have I read in the past that Linux gets ignored by hardware manufacturers who only care about compatibility with Windows?

    I for one would like to express my appreciation to IBM for what it has started. Getting Linux running on laptops has often been a tricky deal, and now we are getting support from a manufacturer. This is definitely good news, and IBM is taking a lead in this area. Hopefully it is the start of something that continues to show improvement.

    Sure, they are targeting Red Hat. What else are they going to do? Target every Linux distribution out there? There are so many, it's hard enough to even get a list of them! They have to start somewhere, and starting with the most popular (or at least most high-profile) distribution is the sensible thing to do. And hey, if it will run Red Hat, it will probably run any decent version of Linux.

    So stop whining and complaining and visualize a world in which hardware manufacturers care more about Linux compatibility than Windows compatibility. Visualize manufacturers dropping Winmodems because they're not Linux compatible. Visualize more manufacturers shipping computers with Linux installed, with your choice of distribution.

    Jay Ts
    http://jayts.cx

  2. IBM Thinkpad 600E with Linux by zanzar · · Score: 4

    This is indeed an amusing announcement, to say the least. Let me give a little background:

    I am a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). This year, they issued every freshman an IBM Thinkpad 600E. The configuration they gave us had an empty partition which basically said "put linux on me." We did. And we discovered the problems with compatability. I daresay this is one of the least compatable laptops with any version of linux. Let me list the problems:

    1. Modem doesn't work at all under linux. Probably a winmodem.

    2. IBM EtherJet CardBus 10/100 ethernet is REALLY hard to get working. After 10 hours of research and tweaking, I managed to get it to run using pcmcia-cs-3.0.14, but only if I tell it to bind to the tulip_cb driver. This isn't necessarily a good solution in 100% of the cases, either, according to one of our local tech guru's at RPI. Apparently the chip in the card isn't exactly the tulip. Oh, and this only works after you've changed the memory addresses that pcmcia scans for.

    3. The number lock key that turns on the "numeric keypad" does not function under linux.

    4. Hibernation mode and suspend mode lock up the laptop. (unless I've set something wrong on my config)

    5. The sound card is a crystal audio CS4239. It's not quite supported by the kernel. ALSA will get it to work, as the rumors go, but I'm still trying on my laptop.


    For this laptop to be "Redhat Linux Compatable", redhat and/or IBM will have to do some serious work on this, or Redhat will lose much credibility.

    -Larry Lansing
    zanzar@nycap.rr.com

    --
    ...These aren't the droids you're looking for....Move along....
  3. Linux combatable by Signal+11 · · Score: 5
    If Redhat were to declare the IBM thinkpad compatible while it still has outstanding problems (modem!), Redhat would be running it's own trademark through the mud. Redhat "compatible" won't stand for anything if anyone can get a certification that say their product is compatible - anything could be!

    This is why we need a vendor-neutral group like the LSB to certify systems as being not just "redhat compatible", but linux compatible. I want to buy a product and have it work flawlessly under debian, redhat, mandrake, suse - all of them. Right from peg 1. I'm willing to pay alittle extra to make sure that the product I buy will work (right out of the box) with linux. I am not willing to pay even a penny more because redhat stuck a label on a product and sent it on it's merry way without any quality standards.

    --

  4. Read IBM's announcement carefully by shambler+snack · · Score: 4

    Before everybody goes and condemns IBM and RedHat, they should look at the document that IBM has published. This type of document from a major manufacturer would have been unheard-of just six months ago.

    Somebody at IBM went to a lot of trouble to pull this together, pointing out the gotchas and the need to perform further mods to the distro (power management, for example) as well as some of the gotchas (suspend/resume problems with the built-in sound chip).

    As far as the built-in modem is concerned, they admit to a lack of support and an attempt to evaluate future support. What more do you want? The great majority of buyers are still Windows users, and it works fine under Windows. If I wanted a modem, I'd more than likely add the additional PCMCIA services required by Linux and add a seperate PCMCIA modem.

    I'd like to see a notebook-only Linux distribution that supports just the notebooks and their peculiarities. The IBM document, and other information on the web, would be an excellent starting point for pulling this together. The distro could focus just on that market to provide the best Linux experience to the grizzled veteran as well as the Linux newby.

    And let's commend IBM and others for this type of work, rather than just picking and grousing at them for the holes. If we (the 'Linux community') keep this up, then where is the incentive for any help from IBM, or anybody else?

  5. Red Hat compatable? by unixchick · · Score: 4

    Last time I checked anything relating to money was Red Hat compatible.

    If you check out their site http://developer.redhat.com/certification/cert-ove rview.php3 you can see for yourself that getting a "compatible" rating doesn't take much effort or thought. They can't even use the Red Hat logo on packaging.

    For that matter getting Red Hat certified was very easy. However trying to get RH to improve the certs program is like hitting your head against a brick wall.

  6. Re:Red Hat compatible? by kieran · · Score: 4

    > but the big companies out there need to know that Red Hat != Linux.

    You're missing a large point from the corporate point of view, and that's that IBM and such aren't
    going to waste their effort making things "probably more or less compatible with most distributions,
    really". If you want them to support "Linux" as opposed to just "$distribution Linux", we're going
    to need more from the LSB or other standards body.

    When IBM can go and chat to the LSB and be told "You need to do this, this and this to make your
    system 100% Linux-compatible, which means that it will definitely work on all these LSB-compliant
    distributions", _then_ you'll see the Distribution-independence that you're looking for.

    A backlash against RedHat for this sort of thing would be somewhat misdirected.