Geeks.com were once more very kind to send us one of their products for a review. Geeks sells cheap laptops --among others-- and so we asked for a low-cost laptop without an operating system in it for the purpose of this review. They sent us the IBM T23, (currently selling for just $299) and an extra 256 MB stick of RAM ($30). We tested the laptop with three different OSes, read on for more.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
To be honest, if the requirement was for sleep/hibernate to fully work, and for video (esp. 3D) to work as well as windows, I probably wouldn't run Linux on any of my laptops. These are the kinds of issues I always assumed you had to live with if you wanted to walk on the Linux side.
Member since:2007-03-09
To be honest, if the requirement was for sleep/hibernate to fully work, and for video (esp. 3D) to work as well as windows, I probably wouldn't run Linux on any of my laptops.
I agree. Especially with the sleep/hibernate part. One other thing that Linux often fails behind of Windows is WiFi, as we all know. OTOH, 3D works very well in Linux with Intel chipsets, which are popular in laptops.
I would even say that, although Linux IS ready for the desktop (IMO), it's not ready for laptops as long as these problems remain unresolved.
I must add though, that none of these problems are usually directly Linux's fault but the fault of manufacturers who refuse to publish specs or provide Linux drivers for their hardware.
Edited 2007-04-05 09:49
Member since:2005-11-14
I keep updating Feisty daily. When Feisty is out in 15 days, send me an email and ask me if the bugs are still there. I mentioned this above. I bet that all bugs will still be there.
I don't doubt that the bug will still be there in 15 days; it may not be until after it's released that they find a fix for it. (on an unrelated note, I'm very happy with 2.6.20-14. That version isn't being pulled yet, maybe you'll want to try to install it manually).
But keep in mind in 15 days you'll be comparing a freshly released version of Ubuntu with a 5 year-old version of Windows on a 4 year-old laptop.
If you have the time, maybe you should compare Feisty with Windows Vista on that laptop (it does meet the minimum requirements, doesn't it?). And if you can, try a more mature version of Ubuntu on it. From your comments, I get the impression that an older version of the kernel as well as Xorg 7.0 would be a better fit. You'll find all that on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem.""It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Member since:
2005-06-28
I keep updating Feisty daily. When Feisty is out in 15 days, send me an email and ask me if the bugs are still there. I mentioned this above. I bet that all bugs will still be there. That's what matters to me, because for me, the laptop is unusable with these suspend and graphics bugs. The savage bugs is sure to happen on all distros for example.