Chander Kant, the founder of the Linux laptop company LinuxCertified.com, gave an interesting interview at Tux:Tops. He speaks of the hardware challenges that laptops pose to Linux but also about the progress of the 2.6.x kernels, especially with ‘software suspend’. LinuxCertified sells 12″, 15″ and 17″ Linux laptops and an ultra portable is in the works, while they are considering Ubuntu to become among the distros they support.
LinuxCertified on Linux Laptop Support
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Both small and very fast, at a decent price!!!!! How did they do that?! I want it!!!!!!!1
Yup, this one is really nice indeed. I have here the LC2430 and it’s a bit too big and heavy (but very powerful). But I agree, the LC2100 is the best of the bunch overall…
I’ve been running Fedora II on my Compaq notebook ever since the release, it’s been solid, no real problems. It was great to be able to whipe out WindowsXP from my life because the notebook was the last remaining vestage, I had tried RH 8.0 and 9.0 but they never shut down properly, anyway, Linux has it covered now.
If you’re looking for a desktop-replacement (not some ultra-portable) I would recommend http://www.pctorque.com. That’s where I got mine. They have better price/performance.
And except for the AMD64 powered machine, their “power” notebooks have horrible video cards and bad LCDs. Also, you’re going to want to get another 512 meg of ram. Who buys a machine with only 512 meg of ram these days?
Except none of those laptops are certified to run Linux. Sure, they probably do, but it’s nice to have linux preloaded without paying the windows tax.
Except none of those laptops are certified to run Linux. Sure, they probably do, but it’s nice to have linux preloaded without paying the windows tax.
Wrong. You can buy most, if not all, of those with no OS installed. That is what I did.
Except none of those laptops are certified to run Linux. Sure, they probably do, but it’s nice to have linux preloaded without paying the windows tax.
Wrong. You can buy most, if not all, of those with no OS installed. That is what I did.
Wrong. How is buying a laptop with no OS installed the same as buying a laptop with Linux pre-installed?
As far as ultra-lightweight and portable laptop goes, nothing has impressed me more than Sony’s VAIO X505. But Sony has an ill reputation for proprietary, hardware and software, and absolutely nil support for Linux.
Trying to get Linux to run on any Sony product is synonymous to taking a vacation in hell. I’m just going to ignore the price for now (approximately $3000), but has anyone got Linux running on this beast?
All the other laptops I’ve researched all wannabe desktop replacements, are too bulky, have large screens, have little support, among other silly quirks. Plus, unfortunately, laptop support on Linux is less than stellar.
I hope the folks at LinuxCertified begin to work with hardware vendors like Sony (*cough* yeah, right *cough*) to provide adequate support for non-Windows operating systems, especially Linux.
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/U…
You get the peace of mind that it will really work. When I looked for such a laptop, the closest match (in the UK) was a Mac powerbook. Not Linux but reasonably close.
Everything else was really taking a chance, especially that noone would let you boot a live CD in a shop.
Recently I discovered proteus-linux.co.uk but their laptop lineup is not quite there yet.
What part of “without paying the windows tax” didn’t you understand?
If there is no windows tax, why can I buy a Dell with the same specs for LESS?! I have yet to see ANY linux laptop that was not overpriced while offering a free os or a commercial Linux for that matter. When will someone show me how the Linux laptops are cheaper? I do run Linux by the way, I’m not a M$ lover.
What part of “linux certified” you didn’t understand?
Mbrown:
Because these “linux certified” machines aren’t a great deal. I guess if someone is too incompetent to put in a Mandrake CD, then this might be the machine for them, but the price/performance on these things are far from great.
I think you need to realise that you made a compound statement.
I am sure that you configure out that when Lumbergh says he never paid for Windows or got it without an OS he is refering to the ‘Microsoft tax’ part of your statement.
If you looking for a travel notebook (not a desktop replacement) I can really recommend Apple’s iBook.
Linux support is quite reasonable, everything except 802.11 works (thanks broadcom). You can also order them with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed.
If you get an older model (with an AirPort, not AirPort Extreme card), you have a PPC notebook that’s fully supported on Linux.
This looks like a good example of how a free OS has little to no effect on the overall price of a new computer. It will cost you $50 to have debian pre-installed, and over $100 to have SuSE installed. That is more than and OEM version of Windows XP will cost you.
I looked through the comments, and am very surprised with some of the negativity.
I think you guys are just looking into hardware price, which is a very small component of overall cost of buying and supporting an engineering workstation/laptop.
At our university we have spent countless hours in supporting various dell laptops. It was complete head-ache and costly. Starting early this year we have started buying LinuxCertified laptops, which come pre-configured with everything, as well as support for all configuration and driver related questions our administration staff may have.
Overall this has been a great BARGAIN.
I know they say they are Linux certified and all, but it looks like you’re paying at least 1.5x (if not 2x) more than you would otherwise. It’s nice to know that I’m not giving Microsoft any money at all … but that seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face since you’re paying an extra $500+ to not give Microsoft any money.
Also – what is the relative quality of these notebooks? How good are the LCD screens? Bright? Vibrant? Do the laptops ship with GOOD batteries? The Sony Vaio I bought (never buy a Vaio!) came with a super generic battery that only lasted 45 minutes when it was brand new. Within 6 months it was more like 20 minutes.
I’ll pay more money when there is real value to be had, but I”m not going to shell out an extra $500 for some silly idealogy.
Check this site to see how well the laptop you want is (or isn’t) supported. A lot of Dells seem to have very good support.
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/
Here is a site I check regularly for cheap prices.
http://www.gotapex.com
And except for the AMD64 powered machine, their “power” notebooks have horrible video cards and bad LCDs. Also, you’re going to want to get another 512 meg of ram. Who buys a machine with only 512 meg of ram these days?
I don’t really see the problem with the LCD displays so could you please elaborate. As for the video cards, not many mobile video cards work with Linux. It would be pretty pointless to put a non-working card in one of these machines, no matter how good the specs are. As for the 512MB of memory, it’s a pretty standard amount these days. 1GB of memory is overkill for most people. In fact I had 1GB and when I was having trouble with stability I removed one 512MB chip and both Windows and Linux (KDE) ran just the same.
I was able to get wireless networking up and running on an IBM ThinkPad but not a Compaq Presario using the same loadable modules and Linux distro (using ndiswrapper).
What steps are being taken to get more commerical companies to support Linux driver development.
So far, all I hear are people bashing companies for not being “Linux Friendly”…
Maybe I’ll try FreeBSD 5.3…
What part of “Linux pre-installed” didn’t you understand?
dell 8600 is excellent, and netbsd 2.0 promises support for centrino wireless:
i run mandrake 10.0 over the dell 8600 widescreen. everything works that i want. speakers, wireless (added drivers myself, easy), sound, networking, both touchpad and usb mouse, etc etc … excellent documentation online for getting linux to work on dell laptops… i’ve never tried the suspend to ram/disk or the wirless radio off swicthes…
the newer linux distros now support the centrino 2100 2200 chipsets by default … and netbsd 2.0 will do too!
and in my experience that dell’s hardware is easily recognised.. no magic proprietary workarounds required.
the problem with pre-installed linux on specialist hardware (sgi stations, some proprietary laptops) is that when you want to upgrade, you lose all the drivers and verdors applied patches to make it all work. stick with open hardware.
“This looks like a good example of how a free OS has little to no effect on the overall price of a new computer. It will cost you $50 to have debian pre-installed, and over $100 to have SuSE installed. That is more than and OEM version of Windows XP will cost you.”
Incorrect.
That is more than the cost of Windows XP Home OEM, a disabled version of XP without tools power users adore such as remote desktop. Comparing a full fledged OS with every possible tool available at no extra cost, to a torn down one in an OEM version os unfair.
Box > OEM
Full > Cut down
This is like saying Intel is cheaper than AMD because the Celerons cost less without a cooling solution than the Athlon 6400’s cost with a cooling solution….
Also, people who buy these aren’t looking to save money. They’re looking for a full fledged linux laptop at a reasonable price. Not cheap, just reasonable with everything on it working. And do you want to know why?
Linux isn’t a windows replacement, a large number of people prefer it over Windows. I’d gladly pay to use Linux instead of Windows, because it’s just that much more powerful (when considering most full distributions, not the kernel
).
most everything on my Compaq laptop was supported. i never tried PCMCIA or winmodem, but the former was probably fine. i didn’t mess with configuring the extra scroll on mouse (cause i never use it). the shutdown and power management generally worked. DVD and CDRW worked fine too. i did a lot of googling and searched on Linux on Laptops web page, but most everything worked out of the box anyway.
there’s something to be said for buying a laptop with linux that’s certified to work. certainly i was gambling when i bought mine. my next laptop will be an IBM or Dell, probably surplus used. i wonder if the microtel laptops (that were at walmart) support linux?
i prefer desktops since they are more bang for the buck. plus you can add stuff like 3com nic which is supported by most every OS on the planet. on my desktop, i tinkered with most every OS, and only had issues with Darwin and Unixware.
That’s why you just keep upgrading everything but the kernel.
I know it seems odd, but in the service world there aren’t major system upgrades every 2 months, that’s a geek thing
.
If you get like Fedora you should be able to use apt to update everything on it except the kernel, pretty easily.
The LinuxCertified laptops we buy come with install script and packages, which let us upgrade to newer distro versions. We recently went through an upgrade from RedHat 9 to Fedore Core 1 in our department.
HP makes Linux laptops now too:
http://tinyurl.com/6ce3f
For businesses it just makes sense to have all the stuff pre-installed and ready to go. Vendor support of Linux and “out of the box” Linux machines are critical to getting penetration into this sector outside of the server space.
the problem with pre-installed linux on specialist hardware (sgi stations, some proprietary laptops) is that when you want to upgrade, you lose all the drivers and verdors applied patches to make it all work. stick with open hardware.
So, are you saying that the laptops at LC are specialist hardware, or are they open hardware?
Who manufactures the laptops at LC? Do they still have the Dell/Toshiba/Compaq/HP label on them?
BTW, just from personal experience trying to get correct and working Windows drivers from these companies’ websites, I have the worst time dealing with:
Compaq/HP
Sony
And have an easier time dealing with:
Dell
Gateway
Never tried downloading drivers for IBM’s or Toshiba’s. Just taking a quick look though, the Toshiba site downloads area looks pretty good. The IBM downloads area unfortunately gives a very large number of different driver downloads to sort through, so it’s probably more of a pain to get what you need.
Just stop. You’re just wrong. It’s embarrassing to watch you flounder.
Some sites that distribute Linux systems (ie: laptops, desktops, workstations, rack servers).
Linux Voodoo:
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com/
Sub 500:
http://sub500.com/
IBM:
http://www.ibm.com/us/
HP:
http://www.hp.com/
Dell:
http://dell.com/
Game PC:
http://www.gamepc.com/index.asp
Mandrake 10.1 has some great updates that make Linux more laptop friendly. I can actually use standby and suspend now with no issues. You can use CPU performance throttling and ACPI works for the most part. I’m using Linux on my Dell Inspiron 2650 with few issues considering I’m using the Community(beta) edition of Mandrake. My question is this. As Linux begins to better accomodate laptops will there really be a need for Linux certification? I understand that businesses have a need for things like upgrade scripts but what about your average home user?
Read my half assed review here: http://crackhouse.blogspot.com/2004/10/bold-prediction-mandrake-101…
Sell a cheap laptop that is linux compatable and uses decen’t video, like nvidia?
The LC laptops we get have “LinuxCertified” label on them, and don’t have any other brand label.
Dell has the Inspiron 1150 for $854 with a 2.6Ghz Celeron + 15 inch XGA LCD + 512MB RAM. I don’t think it has Nvidia graphics but you might be able to shave off a few bucks if you can convince them you don’t need Windows XP.
Stop saying stuff like that. Most of the time (95% of the time actually), non-certified laptops are not out-of-the-box linux-friendly. They require lots of hacking and knowledge to get all their hardware running. The whole point of LinuxCertified is to offer laptops that work out of the box, for the most part at least.
There’s nothing wrong with someone posting that they have a system running Linux perfectly fine even if it doesn’t have a “Linux Certified” sticker from LinuxCertified.com. If you noticed I posted links to several companies that do offer preinstalled Linux OS on various systems. It is true that at present companies HP, Dell, and IBM advertise offering Linux systems only for business class but they will install Linux on a client’s request for custom installation on a home system. Also there are the other companies such as GamePC.com that offer both business class and home systems with Linux preinstalled as an optional OS. They don’t have a “Linux Certified” sticker, etc but the company since installing the OS have an obligation to support it. There is no need as one poster claimed to “Hack” or “Tweak” the OS just to make the hardware run as this is already done by the company installing the software.
newbert, I must agree with you wholeheartedly, I have a Compaq 2175 us, running Mandrake 9.1 PowerPack edition linux, and EVERYTHING just works! Great deal. ^_^
I want to get a linux laptop next year (start of). I’m hoping that FC3 has even better support, which they should since I think they’ll have all the updates that ubuntu has (which I’ve heard great things about on the laptop front).
I can’t wait when vendors will actually support these things.
Most of the Linux Certified laptops seem to be from Uniwill:
http://www.uniwill.com/
You can purchase (some models) from:
http://store.ekm.com/notebooks.html
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/ProdNOTEBOOK-MWAVE.hmx?updepts=popcatnb….