"I came away from the second annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit with mixed feelings. I mean, it's hard not to support the group that pays Linus Torvalds to spend his time continuing to lead the poster-boy project for free and open source software. But at the same time, those golden chains are my biggest concern about the Linux Foundation."
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Member since:2008-03-17
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-02-17
If you are wanting to run a Linux desktop, then run it on Linux desktop hardware.
There are people who are willing to sell you such:
http://www.system76.com/
http://www.zareason.com/shop/home.php
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
Apparently, buried deep somewhere within their site, you can also buy such hardware from Dell.
You will have no troubles at all with drivers then ... less trouble in fact than with drivers for Vista for some hardware that comes with a "designed for Windows" sticker on it.
Just as you should run Vista only on hardware "certified for Vista", and you would run OSX only on a Mac ... the equivalent consideration should also apply to Linux.
If for some unfatomable reason you are constrained to run your desktop Linux on desktop hardware that was not necessarily originally designed to run Linux, then, unlike Vista or OSX, in many cases this is possible but it pays to check it out first:
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/compatibility.html
Edited 2008-04-16 04:11 UTC
Member since:2005-07-07
If for some unfatomable reason you are constrained to run your desktop Linux on desktop hardware that was not necessarily originally designed to run Linux, then, unlike Vista or OSX, in many cases this is possible but it pays to check it out first:
Sorry but you lose. I am running an Intel Centrino based system, probably one of the most supported laptop hardware configurations. In fact most "linux compatible" laptops seem to be Centrino based, just check your own links. The simple fact is the wifi light just does not work with the iwlwifi drivers, the driver developers at Intel even know this. The same goes for Intel's framebuffer driver. It has issues with suspend. Then there are userspace issues that prevent me from using XVideo extensions with Compiz, which also has trouble with 3D programs. I'm glad that fixes for all these things are in the works but I'm getting pretty anxious now considering my laptop is now over a year old. Despite these drawbacks I would never go back to Windows and I'm sure I would have even more issues if I did.
Now back to my point. The Linux desktop is being ignored for the most part by Linux's biggest sponsors. The simple fact is Linux is much further along on the server side than it is on the desktop side and I think it's about time things evened up.
Member since:
2005-07-07
I worry about linux on the desktop too. Linux has become very advanced but it is difficult to take advantage of some of these advanced features if the drivers don't work or are incomplete. I'm pretty happy now with Compiz on Gnome but I'm still waiting for Glucose, TTM, and updated Intel drivers to pull everything together. My WiFi drivers still don't light up my WiFi light and haven't since I switched to iwlwifi. Evdev keyboard doesn't work for me and there is little documentation to point me in the right direction. I think corporate support is great for Linux but unfortunately the biggest corporate contributors don't seem to care much about the desktop. Hopefully Adobe, the foundation's most recent addition, will start to change things for the better on the Linux desktop.