LinuxCertified today announced its next generation laptops optimized for engineering and scientific community. Powered with Ubuntu 7.04, these laptops focus on high performance and scalability. The laptops come pre-configured with many of the common tools used by technical users. The two new laptop models are: LC2464DC, a 64 bit (based on dual-core Turion 64X2) laptop, and LC2520DC, sporting a 17″ screen with accelerated 3D Graphics based on nVidia GeForce Go 7700.
LC2000 Series Ubuntu Linux Laptops
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Ubuntu is the only distro that receives press attention it has become the Windows of the Linux world.
Just like writing this will receive negative ratings because opinions are not allowed; however this is an opinion based website off the articles.
If anyone dares to mention an ‘opinion’ it is modded down because you are not one of the ‘minions’ like a Windows XP/Vista minion.
Fedora, SuSE, Slack, the list goes on and on, receive no praise because Ubuntu might as well be called UbunVista…
All other uses of Fedora, SuSE, Slack take a back seat and get ready to be brainwashed into Ubuntu land…
If it runs Ubuntu, it will also run Fedora, SuSE and Slack. They are all easy to install … go for it.
As someone else stated a Ubuntu Laptop will also run Fedora, SuSE and Slack . . .
And Fedora does get tons of coverage close to releases, SuSE and Novell get lots of coverage even if lots has been bad press.
I think it’s about time that Linux has a public name and face. Those at Canonical have done a lot of things right with Ubuntu, and if the general population needs to associate Linux with Ubuntu, than so be it.
Well, I can associate with his point to a certain extent. Mandriva, Novell and RedHat for instance pay a lot of engineers to work in various upstream projects, be it the Kernel, GNOME, KDE, Compiz or various other. Ubuntu’s biggest strength is its marketing department and while it certainly helped it to become the most popular distribution in a very short time I feel that other distributions like Fedora, Mandriva and openSUSE deserve a lot more attention due to their parent companies’ contributions to the improvement of the Linux desktop in general. Let’s not forget that Canonical is also a commercial entity with the goal to make an income of Linux so they should consider forking some of their marketing money to some developers and give back to the community.
Yes, I perfectly understand that this compliant with most OSS and Free Software licences but in the long run Linux will benefit if paying companies stay afloat and interested in continuing their work on the Linux desktop.
“Let’s not forget that Canonical is also a commercial entity with the goal to make an income of Linux so they should consider forking some of their marketing money to some developers and give back to the community. ”
Ubuntu does contribute to the community. They submit patches back to Debian, they are developing upstart, they help bring public recognition to the Linux community. They release their software under GPL. What else do you want?
I thought that was pretty clear in my previous post: Since Canonical wants to play in the same league as Novell and RedHat I expect them to start contributing to Linux in form of paid developers in upstream projects as other big Linux companies do. “With great power comes great responsibility”…yadayadayada. Because “public recognition” means to me first and foremost marketing for Ubuntu, I don’t see how the community (yes, including the one beyond Ubuntu) as a whole profits from the fact that Canonical pumps money into their marketing department to increase their market share. If they retain their behaviour by mostly using that other companies (and competitors!) paid for with very few giving back it will remains to be seen if Ubuntu’s popularity will be beneficial in the long run.
Oh, and since beating on dead horses is always great fun lets remind once again that Canonical refuses to release the sources for Launchpad which as an additional “benefit” is developed pretty much following the “cathedral” model which we all know is pretty popular around OSS/FS parts.
The more market share Ubuntu has the more market share Linux has. I thought that was clear. Complaining about Ubuntu not contributing anything to development is irrelevant, they contribute by bringing new users to the community and that is something that all distros can benefit from. Fedora could have easily have been in the position that Ubuntu is now had Red Hat not treated the project and community like a red headed step child, but that was not the case. Ubuntu has been clearly focused on giving users an easy down to earth experience. Fedora has now been revamped and Red Hat is focusing on the desktop again. Suse has also been highly focused on the desktop and Ubuntu and its large following has quite a bit to do with that. Interest in Linux is a good thing and if Canonical happens to be the point man to bring the masses to Linux, so be it.
I do wish that Canonical would try to innovate more, and that they would setup a R&D lab to bring new things to the linux community, but at the end of the day Ubuntu is a repackaging of Debian with polish, and as far as I know Debian’s strong suit has always been packaging.
Wow, way to go getting your point across and making people take you seriously.
Since when is it a bad thing that a Linux distro has mass market appeal? Surely that can only be good for all distros? The more the merrier I say.
Personally, I don’t run Ubuntu. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the vibe Cononical are generating. Anything that gets people interested in Linux is a good thing in my book.
At the end of the day, Ubuntu is not a one size fits all. Some of the newcomers will end up wanting something else from they’re systems and that’s when other distros will step into the void.
Point well stated!
~Ryan
LaptopBudget.com
Careful you will get modded down for an ‘opinion’ I am just stating the facts and that is the way it is.
It just gets old every article is about Ubuntu this or that, Red Hat is the #1 DataCenter OS on the market followed up by SUSE.
Red Hat has the Global Desktop, in which it will provide support and so on also RHEL5 client that I run on a server at my desk at work.
Fedora is a awesome distro and the fact it is by the ‘defacto’ standard in the industry. But according to some Ubuntu is LINUX the others are treated like step children which aggravates me.
OK this is pretty off topic, mod down if you wish, it really isn’t relevant to the topic at all, BUT…
Looking at the posts this guy has made, it seems pretty obvious that he’s just a huge troll. Whether it’s satire or he’s genuine however, I don’t know. I mean, I’m the first to admit my posts aren’t exactly mind-blowingly informative or witty at every turn, but come on.
Also, click the username for hilarity such as: “Bio: I am an expert in all fields, I am a Scientist, Programmer, Doctor, and most all I know everything.
Best of all the USA is #1 all other places are 3rd world…”
As was often said by Bugs Bunny I believe … “Indubitably”.
Nevertheless, even though the original post is clearly a huge troll, it doesn’t hurt IMO to take the opportunity to make a plain and simple point in reply, and it may even help to counter the apparent trend (which seems at this time to be that MS astroturfers are being commanded by their Redmond masters to post something negative and also divisive if at all possible in every Linux thread on any message board).
Fedora, SuSE, Slack, the list goes on and on, receive no praise because Ubuntu might as well be called UbunVista…
If you check out the two machines that Linux Certified offers, you can see that they will also install Fedora instead of Ubuntu. I see OpenSuse, CentOS, and Red Hat are available for the more expensive machine. That covers DEB and RPM based distros. All they need to do is include Slackware to cover all bases.
Less good are the ATI graphics in the cheaper offering.
not worried about it. if one distro can run on it, then your distro can most likely run on it too
I think that any modern distro should be able to run it, but there is a possibility that another distro might not run everything perfectly until the next release (like 6 months). However though I think that this laptop would work much better than the average one, which is getting good (except ATI graphics systems).
And what do we see? An (almost) 6-month old version of Ubuntu being used 🙂
I would think based on your comments that you would atleast be happy to see that an OEM manufacturer was making availible full blown systems that can be slated as “Linux Certified”.
It so happens that they come with Ubuntu however if you read the article carefully I’m sure you noticed the mention of “The mission of LinuxCertified, Inc is to help our clients benefit from significant savings of effectively using Linux and Open-Source software in their IT and development infrastructure.”
As a matter of fact if you follow the links through to the actual products page the plainly states:
Certified Distributions
LC2520DC has been certified with following distributions:
Ubuntu 7.04 (Recommended)
Fedora 7
Fedora 6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Client (feature Limitations)
CentOS 5 (feature Limitations)
Open SUSE 10.2
So whats you point?
The LC2000 looks pretty sweet design-wise. I’m quite satisfied with my computer now, and wouldn’t purchase one, but at least they LOOK good.
Also, I modded GENIUS out of the negative. He’s likely trolling, but it’s inappropriate on osnews.com to mod something down that could be read as an honest, if angry, and slightly incoherent opinion. He makes his point, does not attack anybody, or otherwise violate the site’s terms and conditions, unlike those who modded him down because they didn’t like his opinion, or his tone.
“He makes his point”
Yeah, he does. Constantly. In every item involving Ubuntu. This is osnews.com, not distroangst.com.
He should be modded down.
Expensive, heavy, and no WiFi standard (!).
“Wireless Upgrade: Built-in mini-pci 802.11g Wireless card: $69”
But it’s heavy, and with the upgrades (cpu,mem,hdd), it isn’t cheap either.
I absolutely agree. Way too heavy for me, but I take my laptop around with me everywhere so I like a laptop no more than six pounds. This might do go for a work computer that mostly stays at the desk.
I’m not sure about the virtual RAM for the video card. Didn’t they used to call that integrated video memory or something? That seems like not terribly great, but maybe I’m mistaken
To anyone who uses and or promotes Linux, this is awesome news! Way to go and where exactly do you see that Wifi is not standard…. Wake Up!!
News is not that awesome for reasons that I pointed out: expensive, heavy, no WiFi in the standard configuration.
As to WiFi availability, read the specs. None of the two specs has it standard, the first lists WiFi as $69 “upgrade” (though there is actually no WiFi in base config), the second lists it as an $69 option.
Yeah I know they just released specs, still no really good driver in sight though.
I’ll take my Latitude D830 any day. Cheaper and better Linux support.s
Edited 2007-09-28 07:37
It won’t take long.
There are already open source 3D drivers, including one for earlier ATI chips, and there is Mesa http://www.mesa3d.org/ so there is no shortage of know-how in open source graphics arena.
Now that the specifications are made available, it won’t be long before having a recent ATI card is actually the best graphics option for Linux.
There is already a start made:
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/09/24/novell-whips…
http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/09/25/novell-sh…
http://news.opensuse.org/?p=265
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view
Edited 2007-09-28 09:21
“Fedora, SuSE, Slack, the list goes on and on, receive no praise because Ubuntu might as well be called UbunVista…
All other uses of Fedora, SuSE, Slack take a back seat and get ready to be brainwashed into Ubuntu land…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_man
That is the role of Ubuntu.
Yup. Have to agree there.
Too often we tend to stay with what we’re used to, rather than try something new that might be better. I’m not saying Ubuntu is better than RHEL of SLED. But it ain’t bad, either. Since I have to support RHEL and SLED, I prefer to run one of the them on my desktop, but I can think of a bunch of users that Ubuntu would be perfect for and I don’t have a problem using it either. To me the article says “Hey, here’s a manufacturer that offers a Linux distro on a new machine, instead of throwing out the usual tired old fud that putting anything other than wincrap on it will damn you to the lowest rings of hades.” I say good on em. And, yes, Linux users do know how to replace OS’s. That’s kind of how we got here in the first place. :}
I know it’s marketed as a workstation replacement but its still odd that it doesn’t come with wireless built in as standard. I didn’t know you could even buy a laptop these days without it.
I wouldn’t see the 17″ as being a workstation worthy of engineering use (as the ad says). A 1.66Ghz C2D w/ a GeForce isn’t suitable, IMO.
We use the HP NW9440, which has a 2.16Ghz C2D (4MB L2 cache), and an FX1500m Quadro. Sure, more expensive, but it makes our engineers work better and faster, therefore saving money in the long run.
BTW, we run OpenSuSe 10.2 on it, and it runs beautifully, works with WiFi, 6-way input device, etc. Cool stuff.
of “scalability”
What do they mean..? 8 CPU laptops?
How much you wanna bet the poor buggers who designed this thing felt their hearts sink when AMD announced that their GPU specs would be made public? It looks rather stupid now to release a “Linux” laptop which has no hope of running open source software for something as important as the graphics subsystem.
Perhaps some people don’t care, but it will be a cold day in hell before i (or my company) buy any computer with Nvidia parts in it.
Anybody can announce anything.
Microsoft can announce that they will release Windows version based on Linux.
It means squat!
When there are real quality, fast 3D drivers for all ATI cards then we can say that something has happened.
Until then, Nvidia is the only one that has fast, reliable 3D drivers for Linux.
So for gamers on Linux there is nothing else but Nvidia.
And Nvidia also deserves a lot of credit for regularly releasing quality Linux drivers for the past 7+ years.
So far AMD/ATI has done absolutely NOTHING!
Other then opening their piehole and spouting a few empty promises when being criticized for shitty Linux support.
Until then, Nvidia is the only one that has fast, reliable 3D drivers for Linux.
So for gamers on Linux there is nothing else but Nvidia.
And Nvidia also deserves a lot of credit for regularly releasing quality Linux drivers for the past 7+ years.
There are perfectly adequate open source 3d drivers for several ATI cards like the X700 etc. And the Intel graphics drivers are getting very good. So for most peoples purposes today (save gamers and high end CAD/CAM) there is no need at all to support Nvidia’s binary cruft.
You may choose to give Nvidia credit for their binary “support” but i give them _none_. They haven’t met my companies needs at all. It’s made life very difficult for distributions as well.
What Linux needs, and now is within grasp, is high quality _open source_ drivers. So I will reward those companies who are interested in delivering that, and shun those that don’t.
Therefore, Nvidia will get no business from me, it’s that simple.
So far AMD/ATI has done absolutely NOTHING!
Other then opening their piehole and spouting a few empty promises when being criticized for shitty Linux support.
Here you’re just showing ignorance of the facts on the ground. Real documents have been released already and more are on the way. There are other things happening in a quiet way in development circles that are very promising as well.
Thanks Intel!
Thanks AMD!
No thanks Nvidia!
“optimized for engineering and scientific community”
In what ass backwards world is that configuration optimized for scientific research? Not only are Intel’s mobile CPU’s more productive at the moment but they also happen to use less power. And most of all at the end of the day no mobile CPU is really up to the task of heay computations. Yes it’s nice to see Linux optimized computers but this is such a shameless plug. After all most of the non-exotic laptops out there would run Linux just fine although you might have to fiddle with the configuration a little.
First off I am not a ‘troll’ and I find it amazing how this site and or users are allowed to ‘discriminate’ against my opinion.
Second, just because I do not praise Ubuntu NOR do I believe this should rule the desktop for all.
Third, it is about CHOICE which entitles an OPINION as in an operating system of choice otherwise why not say Windows rules the desktop.
Lastly, I stated my opinion on the article in which this talk back clearly states I am allowed to do. I have not slandered nor insulted anyone. The truth is articles about Ubuntu are praised while anyone who does not agree is modded or chastised as a ‘Troll’….
Since I am a RHCT and will be taking my RHCE in 6 months from this date I find it amazing how someone thinks one distro equates to it is GOOD for everyone.
One can have an opinion, it is not against the law and people should learn to GET along with others or agree to disagree and this world would be a better place without 99% of the conflict.
‘edited due to garbled text’
Edited 2007-09-29 04:08
Why not something unique with the hardware? I mean , something revolutionary? I know that is a crazy concept but given the flexibility of choosing a Linux system and building the hardware yourself it seems a shame the two cant seem to meet with an advantage that a provider like this could give by having the source code to the OS and being able to put together the hardware rather than off the shelf stuff. I *guess* it can be argued that they are a small company and cant afford to develop something “revolutionary” with the hardware and Linux, but has anyone else tried something like this? I remember the Toaster hardware was cool on Amiga and helped the platform. That may or may not be a good example of where I coming from. I always feel that whenever I see stuff like this, its great but does not really provide anything compelling for the average user VS buying a vanilla Dell. I sort of feel it would be nice for some hardware folks to take an opensource attitude and work in conjunction with software folks to leapfrog other systems for personal use.
I suspect the reason there isn’t much specialized innovation is the same reason the laptops System76 ships have Windows logos on the keyboard: Laptop parts produced today are produced with Windows in mind. Yeah, there’s Apple, but they do custom design work and invest a lot of money in their (shiny white plastic) image.
You’re not going to find strange or exotic hardware Windows can’t run available for laptop form factors. Not now, anyway.
I agree with what your saying, but it pretty much means what I said about the easy solution and cost involved in just using off the shelf hardware. I am suggesting that the idea of developing something new might be the key to popularizing open source solutions. I hate to think the idea of a quantum computer is going to end up as a licensed technology from a University or private company patent.