Although Linux is growing meekly when it comes to end-user usage and interaction, the overall experience of using a Linux distribution has turned out to be a positive one for numerous beginners. In recent years, Linux has made advancements in leaps and bounds, which has led to its adoption by many corporate users as well as regular desktop users. Though it’s still not in a perfect state, the rapid pace of development in numerous areas of Linux promises a bright future, nonetheless.
I remember just a few years ago, Linux was pathetic on a laptop. Things change quickly.
Linux worked just fine on my laptop 9 years ago.
As far as I can remember I have never seen a computer sold with Linux preinstalled in any major shop in Norway…
I own an HP laptop (ze 5385us) that I purchased in the summer of 2003. I just installed Hoary about two weeks ago. This is my first time to use linux, though I have done a fair amount of reading about it and the open source movement. I had no problems with any hardware (wireless, external hdd, etc.). So this announcement is not that big of a deal in my opinion. Ubuntu seems to do just fine without any additional modifications. However, HP won’t be installing this on the laptop for you, which is not that great. The installer for Ubuntu is not as straight forward as some of the others I have read about. It is not impossible, but it is a little behind the times when it comes to usability. This is nothing some rudimentary linux lingo and an adventuresome spirit can’t overcome. I wonder if HP will sell this laptops at a slight discount since there is no Windows on them.
Linux has a *long* way to go before it’s a viable alternative on most laptops, IMO. Hardware accelerated graphics are a big black hole on most platforms, and don’t even get me started on power-saving features.
With Windows XP, I like putting my laptop into hibernate mode when I know I won’t be using it for the next hour or so. I then boot it back up later, and everything is the way I left it. Linux and hibernation? What’s hibernation? 🙂 The last time I tried the hack called swsusp2, it ended up putting my laptop to sleep correctly, but then completely locked up the next time I turned it on. As if that wasn’t all, it corrupted my ReiserFS partitions as well.
What a fucking joke. Stand-by is basically non-existant as well.
Yeah, hibernation is pretty bad, that is why I left Windows on another partition. How does a distro correct this problem? Does it have to do with closed drivers for the hardware?
TTSIA…
It’s pretty easy to see why HP is doing this.
They are not so much supporting Linux as they are allowing people to choose to use a pirated version of Windows vs a licensed OEM version. By shipping the the notebooks with FreeDos, they get rid of the OEM cost of Windows lowering the overall price making the notebooks more cost competative.
The consumers in the countries where they are doing this are countries where pirated Windows is readily available so the consumer is not losing a thing.
I think this is a totally legitimate way to sell a computer but to be fair they should sell all the notebooks with FreeDos and then allow users to purchase OEM Windows or Linux, sell notebooks with a choice os OS’s pre-installed.
So in the end I wonder if the Linux will really get used more often, or if Windows will just get pirated more.
The most problems with hibernation came after forgetting good old hw/bios-based hibernation and turning everything in the hands of acpi.
I still have a good old hp omnibook 500 here on which I had dabien installed for quite a long time, and guess what, fn+f12 does work, and without anything needed to be done to be so, it just writes everything out onto its partition and you’re good to go. No matter what OS you use on it, it just works. Too bad it has some IDE problems, cause I love this little guy (without its dock that is, but I never use the dock anyways so it’s small and lightweight).
Anyways, returning to the original story: I always have a really bad feeling when I read titles like the above, about linux and laptops. Why ? Because they are 99.999% written by people who are not skilled enough to correctly setup a linux and tweak everything to work on a laptop. And in the end they always say linux is not ready. Which is only partially true: sometimes it’s hard for the clickety click joe6packs, but that doesn’t mean Linux can’t do it. It can, most of the cases, it’s just not totally straighforward. The problem is that these days everyone+dog seems to pick up the Microsoft philosophy of make-it-so-that-every-lame-and-dumb-will-feel-professional, no matter they don’t know what they are doing.
those who campaign to keep linux esoteric.
I have suspend to RAM (ACPI S3 sleep) and hibernate working on a Dell Latitude D600, on an HP OmniBook, and on a iBook G3 900. In each case, it was rather easy to set up. As a matter of fact, everything on the laptops that I have been using “just works” in Linux, including more estoeric items like wireless, bluetooth, and accelerated graphics. linux-on-laptops.com has plenty of information on how to accomplish these tasks on a variety of machines. I agree that “out of the box” support would be nice to have today however it’s getting closer and to say it has a *long* way to go is patently false.
I dont think it has that far to go. I get about 3 hours 10 minutes under linux and 3 hours 30 minutes under windows on my Dell 9300 and its just about equeal between windows and linux on my HP laptop.
ACPI does suck under Linux but from what I have read that has to do with the crappy DSDT on most laptops. I have yet to see a laptop suspend to ram and come back to a desktop.
SoftwareSuspend2 has actually come along ways since the last time I checked it out. I can be watching a movie in mplayer put my laptop to sleep via hibernate to disk and after waking it up the movie will still be playing where i left it off.
Any how this is a step forward that they are targeting select laptops to work with linux.
—
Shawn
Linux has a *long* way to go before it’s a viable alternative on most laptops, IMO. Hardware accelerated graphics are a big black hole on most platforms, and don’t even get me started on power-saving features.
That’s a pretty generic statement. My laptop doesn’t seem to fall under that.
Dell Inspiron 8600
Nvidia GeForce 5200 (with 3d Accel on)
Suse 9.2
Right out of the box I was able to get everything working with minimal config time. Oh, and I get 45 min to 1 hour more on my battery in Linux than I do in Windows.
With Windows XP, I like putting my laptop into hibernate mode when I know I won’t be using it for the next hour or so. I then boot it back up later, and everything is the way I left it. Linux and hibernation?
My laptop hibernates just fine, and Dell has been known to have holes in their ACPI implementation in their bios that prevent some earlier distro’s from running right.
The last time I tried the hack called swsusp2, it ended up putting my laptop to sleep correctly, but then completely locked up the next time I turned it on. As if that wasn’t all, it corrupted my ReiserFS partitions as well.
Which distro were you using?
What a fucking joke. Stand-by is basically non-existant as well.
Also, works for me just fine.
The one thing I did as a serious user was to look up all the information concerning the laptop I was purchasing and which Linux distro would best fit it. Suse seemed to be the best fit for this laptop, so that’s what I went with.
works just fine…thank you
a lot of the problems with laptops is because the features are implemented in software and rely on a certain OS to work correctly…
i have a OLD thinkpad and i think it is so cool that i can use a mouse/trackstick to navigate the bios options and all of the function key features work no matter what OS i have on it…
blame crappy hardware builders not linux please… OH, and try a recent distro – you might be surprised….
I was all set to surf over to HP’s site until I read that they won’t be selling this in the USA. Bummer… Dell low-end laptop prices are almost cheap enough (less than $600.00 USD) for me to buy one, strip off XP Home, & install Kubuntu. Maybe in a few months.
BOYCOTT HP, DELL, GATEWAY until they offer consumers a non-Microsoft choice.
This means USA consumers, too
Yeah, exactly. Like you said, Linux can do majority of the things, but it’s not as simple as Windows. Well, Duh! If you don’t know, over 90% of the computing population are newbies who need something that just magically works. Linux doesn’t magically work.
It doesn’t matter if the author can or cannot configure Linux, the article is from a general point of view.
And this is also a fact, that over 90% of the computing population won’t know how to configure Linux by themselves, so your theory falls short. Just because you can handle doesn’t mean millions of other people can.
Be a broadminded…
Which distro were you using?
——————————–
That about sums up my biggest problem with Linux. So many distros to try, and with my experience, each one behaves differently. So someone talks about a problem they had and you gotta ask “what distro?”. So they arent using it and they go install a new distro and it may fix one problem, but another one crops up. I think if Linux were to really succeed there needs to be ONE distro. One distro for everyone to concentrate on to have work properly.
Jackson: Haha, you get points from me.
I used SuSE, Fedora Core 3, and even tried my own generic distro that I had whipped up (Linux From Scratch). I managed to get basic 3D acceleration after 5 pain-staking hours, two Linux kernel recompiles, and an X server recompile.
In general, it wasn’t an out-of-the-box experience, nor was it a successful one in attaining my goals. That is why Linux is doomed to fail. No one in the community can get their shit together and release a CORE set of 2-3 distros, and no more.
That’s right, everyone who writes software for Linux/unix/BSD/GNU/GPL (insert preferred term here) is going to roll over, start programming for, and switch the millions of desktops and servers and embedded devices to Windows/Mac/BSD (insert preferred platform here).
*End Sarcasm*
I can understand that people doubt that Linux will dominate the software industry (hell, I’d describe myself as a non-frothy zealot of the first order, and I doubt that it will dominate), but to say that Linux ‘has no future’ seems a little unlikely.
Actually, I think it’s the other way around: Linux, either on Desktop (still a lot of work to be done) and on a Server will have a bright future. It is Free Software and it is powerfull, and still not owned by a company which has its future unguaranteed.
I have been using Suse since 9.1 on my Dell 600. It works great (with ndiswrapper for wireless). My biggest complaint is the freaking boot time. I mean, I can come back from the plant, turn on the system, wash my face, change, drink a beer, turn on the TV and it is JUST getting around to loading KDE. OK, I exaggerate. But it takes at least three times longer than XP. Things can only get better!
I must say that i think the experience of running Linux on laptops has improved dramatically the last year, installing Fedora or Ubuntu is dead-easy and right-on on this Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M i have here. Hey, Ubuntu even gives me working wlan straight up.
But the desktop environments are maturing too, KDE 3.4 is actually something i could recommend a small business to run instead of paying Windows licences. It’s maturing, but not fully mature just yet. Before it had too much of a “Christ, if i drag&drop this file, will it be copied or just disappear?”-feeling. There’s still some of that left, but it’s gradually disappearing. Shitloads of stuff left to fix, but the future of Linux On Laptops surely looks bright.
I’ve been using Fedora Core 3 on my Balance CN4949. It seems fine to me… even better since I added a 512M SODIMM to it ($47 mail-order). Hardware support for the graphics is excellent and not as hard to setup as ATI’s drivers. I wrote an article on it for TheJemReport (no link so I won’t be accused of spamming).
I haven’t really tried any of the power management features because I don’t really care. Most of the time, the laptop is plugged into the wall with the battery serving as an UPS. I have’t had it running on the battery long enough to care whether the power management was working or not.
The only other feature I haven’t tried is the modem. In these days of broadband, who cares about that? I imagine a few people would, but most will find linux more than adequate for their needs.
Sshhhhhh, Debian just finished that….
AFAIK, Apple laptops don’t have hibernation at all, just suspend to ram (“sleep”), and nobody in Mac-land seems to miss it much. So why is it such a big deal?
Suspend to disk was one of the listed supported features.
You have issues with graphics. They really aren’t *that* bad anymore as long as you get it from the company who knows how to write drivers (*cough* Nvidia *cough*). And ATI has gotten a lot better, there’s is pretty usable for most basic things (like games); it’s not so good for rendering X11 graphics and compositing. But anyway, this is laptops, graphics are about the last thing most people care about in their laptop. Very few serious gamers use laptops, and the ones that do spent $3,000 on their gaming laptop: And it still has mediocre graphics. But they liked portability enough to sacrifice some graphics capability. We call those “social geeks” … jk.
Eugenia:
I think leaving his comment up was innappropriate. I for one think the placing of the comments on OSnews dictates that some use of honorable diction is necessary. Certain words in the English language should be reserved in respectable Public forums. In other words: If you don’t want OSnews to be a joke like Slashdot, than don’t let people use vulgarities at random.
I frankly, don’t care, but many intelligent readers likely do.
Debian. Anyone who doesn’t have a preferred distribution should be using Debian because of their ties to FSF.
And no, I don’t use Debian on any of my machines.
Happy now?
I suppose I wouldn’t miss hibernation in Linux — if it did suspend-to-RAM. It does neither on my laptop.
@Chris: Granted, but I still like the ability to use my hardware 3D acceleration features if the time arises. I don’t play games on my laptop, but I do use a number of 3D applications.
Linux and hibernation? What’s hibernation? 🙂 The last time I tried the hack called swsusp2, it ended up putting my laptop to sleep correctly, but then completely locked up the next time I turned it on. As if that wasn’t all, it corrupted my ReiserFS partitions as well.
Hibernation works great on my Averatec 3250HX (nice little machine, btw). The Linux laptop is evolving quickly – I believe this was the point of the article, in some way. Maybe things have improved since the last time you tried it.
What a fucking joke. Stand-by is basically non-existant as well.
Suspend-to-RAM seems to work on quite a few laptops, but the implementation of this feature is still in active development. It doesn’t really work on my laptop, it suspends but pressing the Power Button restarts the computer instead of unsuspending. Right now this is the laptop’s only missing feature, and it should work pretty soon, so I’m quite happy with my Kubuntu lappy!
Well, Duh! If you don’t know, over 90% of the computing population are newbies who need something that just magically works. Linux doesn’t magically work.
Most of the computing population uses a pre-installed OS. Among laptop users I’m sure the proportion is above 90%. If you had Linux pre-installed on a laptop, guess what, it “just works”. There’s nothing magical about it.
And this is also a fact, that over 90% of the computing population won’t know how to configure Linux by themselves, so your theory falls short.
If this a “fact”, as you say, then you must have some data to back it up. To me it seems to be more of an opinion than a fact, and a biased one at that.
But what I don’t understand about the anti-Linux posters in this thread is that the article is about how Linux on Laptops is improving. Are you all disputing that fact?
I don’t really care, come to think of it. Kubuntu on my laptop works wonderfully well (and turns quite a few heads – KDE 3.4 is really a superb desktop). That’s all that really matters.
I was all set to surf over to HP’s site until I read that they won’t be selling this in the USA.
The weird thing is, their previous Linux laptop offering, a nx5000 if I remember correctly, was only available in the USA.
Maybe that market wasn’t as receptive as they thought.
I got a new Dell Latitude d410 recently.
Stuck Ubuntu 5.04 on it, and it all worked great. Wireless, 3D, speedstep, battery monitoring, and suspend-to-disk all worked out of the box. Suspend-to-ram required a single # removed from a config file, and external VGA output involved installing “i810switch”
VERY impressed.
I got a new Dell Latitude d410 recently.
Stuck debian sarge on it, and it all worked great. Wireless, 3D, speedstep, battery monitoring, and suspend-to-disk all worked out of the box. Suspend-to-ram required a single # removed from a config file, and external VGA output involved installing “i810switch”
VERY impressed.
How very odd, given Sarge doesn’t support the wireless out of the box, nor i915 in general, nor speedstep on dothan-core (i.e. modern) Pentium-M’s.
Perhaps you think you’re clever?
define out of the box….
Out-of-the-box: No addition configuration/software necessary. As it comes. Out of the box.
nun: That’s great. I’m happy that you have a half-functioning laptop. Linux’s standards are really improve, eh? Give people a ration of sludge and they thank you genuinely for the fine gourmet meal. Laughable.
Anyway, considering that I tried Linux on my laptop approximately a month ago, I’m not impressed at all with the state of things. It’s 2005 — Linux has been around for at least a decade, and it still can’t get things right? Feh.
Out-of-the-box: No addition configuration/software necessary. As it comes. Out of the box.
In other words, pre-installed and pre-configured, like Windows laptops are. If you’re going to compare the two, then you should be honest about it. But since that would against your anti-Linux agenda, I guess we won’t hold our breath for an objective comment on your part…
nun: That’s great. I’m happy that you have a half-functioning laptop.
How does “all features minus one” (and a non-essential one at that) translate into “half-functioning”? Let’s have a little intellectual honesty, please. How can we take anything you say as the truth when you make such biased statements?
ZealotHater, eh? You must really hate yourslef…
Linux’s standards are really improve, eh?
Yes they do. Compare the status of the Linux Laptop two years ago to what you have today. I mean, compare it honestly, don’t just spread FUD.
Give people a ration of sludge and they thank you genuinely for the fine gourmet meal.
That’s what Microsoft has been doing for years, isn’t it?
Laughable.
Your arguments? Yes, they are.
Anyway, considering that I tried Linux on my laptop approximately a month ago, I’m not impressed at all with the state of things.
Considering how biased you are, I’m not convinced that you’re telling the truth at all. I was expecting a lot of troubles installing Kubuntu on my laptop, and was overall very impressed with the state of things.
It’s 2005 — Linux has been around for at least a decade, and it still can’t get things right? Feh.
How long did it take for MS to get it right (starting from DOS, as Linux a decade ago was a command-line OS)? More than Linux, that’s for sure. Linux progresses at a much quicker pace than Windows ever did. I know this makes you mad, but it’s the truth.
I don’t have any problems with using Linux on my Laptop. ACPI Software supend works fine. Wireless, graphics, Reiser 4 file system. Full hardware compatible without adding any drivers or ever using the command line interface. Running Linspire 5.0 (debian type distro). The laptop came preloaded with Red Hat Fedora Core 2(for a couple of hours at least) from LinuxCertified.org.
I use a compaq x1030us, which came with a XP Home Edition. When I tried to copy some of my stuff from my old 200mhz PC with a usb cable, it somehow caused problems. And than it started to booth only in safe mode. I tried everything, but it over and over doing the same. Than I learnt that most people had that kinda problems with XP Home Edition(its XP as well isnt it folk?) Well, after me pirating windows and using xp pro that problem passed, but the tragic side was, me having to use a pirate copy of a software from the same company… Well, I don’t feel any liability or guilt, its not fault. They wouldnt have to make me force to use a crippy OS.
I have informed Compaq(HP)guys about this, and asked them if they would be in help even, but they say that can’t do anything since its OS oriented problem, and suggested me using XP Pro:) I do, but I won’t pay more money to make MS guys richer… I have tried Ubuntu once(the previous version), and it worked almost perfect(except my modem detected), however soon I’ll give another shot to themm since I have adsl now with robotics modem which is linux compliant.
Well, I wonder how others laptops are out of box, but without the drivers provided by compaq(hp), even XP Pro is poor, it can’t even detect my graphic card, modem, wireless,soundcard. I still wish it was more similiar in linux to install new files and to remove them as in windows thats all. Hopefully, I would totally switch to linux when they port photoshop and freehand, until that I’ll have windows but just for those software thats all. Thanks to windows, I do have to scan addware,hicjakers,viruses and other stupid software installed automaticly by the software I downloaded.
I praise the work of GNU people, and their efforts, I really wonder how it would be without their efforts. I am sure MS was charging us for every software update for their crippy mistakes on their OS’s.
By the way, does anyone knows from where would be able to download the hp-compaq version ubuntu?
Have a nice weekend all,
“Out-of-the-box: No addition configuration/software necessary. As it comes. Out of the box.”
Uh, as long as I install the right packages everything works just fine. Debian asks me a few questions about how I want it setup and away I go. Ever used that network connection wizard in XP, I couldnt even figure that one out much less my grandma!
So EVERYTHING in XP is configured and waiting on you… must be nice
Inspiron 1100
WINDOWS XP – that came with the system
3meg modem driver (complete crap modem)
5meg video driver, reboot
2meg soundcard driver, reboot
3meg chipset driver (whatever that is), reboot
6meg network card driver (which is a buggy piece of crap), reboot or else the card wont pick up a ip address…
LINUX – most any newer flavor
install and wheeeeee……
havent tried the modem – wouldnt want it
Everything configure out of the box huh, yea with windows XP you are perfectly configured to get tones of virii, exploits, worms, trojans… all kinds of yummy stuff
Windows XP Pro SP1 on my Balance CN4949:
VESA graphics
no sound
USB 1.1 only (no USB 2)
no modem
Upgrade to SP2:
no USB at all since drivers in SP2 broken (you have to use the drivers from SP1.1a)
You have to go to VIA and get video, audio, and modem drivers. The audio drivers install one package that fails every time you boot the system, but at least the sound still works.
Fedora Core 3:
VESA graphics
full sound
USB 2
no modem
Full hardware 3D and video acceleration available from VIA and a third party. The third party drivers work better and are due to be added to the kernel in the 2.6.12 release.
Out of the box, linux is better on this laptop. The Windows video driver is easier to install, but the USB support is totally whacked. Overall, win for linux.
If other laptops are similar, look for many more folks to move to linux on their laptops.
my laptop running XP drags… even if i stop all unneeded services all I have to do is browse to a website using a couple of gif animations and my processor usage is pegged at 100% and my usb mouse starts skipping… but no such problem on linux… And my battery seems to last a good while longer on linux but it could be due to the condition I mentioned earlier or similar conditions…
I do not think HP has a custom version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a project to get all Dell, IBM and HP laptops fully working.