Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Last week when I was at OSAF I saw Ducky's new T41. Her box is running Gentoo and the wireless card was working. However, power management (sleep/hibernate) was not. But the combination of the machine and Edd's post got me thinking about it again.
I like the Powerbook. The software is great, but the hardware is mediocre. I feel that the processor is underpowered, the screen resolution is less than I would like, and the battery life of 2:30 is poor compared to today's Centrino based notebooks.
Here's a list of things that would need to happen in order for me to look seriously at a Linux powered notebook:
- Support for recent hardware (Pentium M + 802.11 a/b/g)
- Good power management (fast hibernate and fast sleep/wakeup)
- Something that works with iChat A/V: I love e-mail and IM/IRC as much as the next open source guy, but using the iSight really makes a difference
- Something like SubEthaEdit: in combination with audio/video chat, this really makes it easy to debug problems live.
- Something like Launchbar/Quicksilver: These launchers are just so good
- A really good RSS reader

Obviously, some major systems vendor is eventually going to bite the bullet and actually chase up those Taiwanese original equipment manufacturers and/or get coding in order to support Linux properly on their laptop offerings, but HP's recent announcement of a not-totally-capable laptop still demonstrates their (and other vendors') willingness to perpetuate the misguided belief that it's up to Mr Torvalds and associates to reverse-engineer and hack up hardware support in their own (or their employers) time so that end-users may then install over the copy of Windows XP that they didn't want in the first place.
Posted by Paul Boddie at Fri Aug 20 07:08:01 2004
There are some neat projects working on advancing hardware management and configuration in Linux. I think it's just a matter of time and many of these issues will go away...
to be replaced with new ones! w00t!
In the meantime, I have Windows XP on my "modern" notebook and I have Linux running on my circa 1998 Dell Inspiron (runs great).
Posted by will at Fri Aug 20 08:18:44 2004
Yes, I know about http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html and one of the custom boot CDs worked fine on the NetVista. That's not the point. This has been happening for years. New hardware, combined with my expectations of what a computer should be able to do (which now includes wireless and power management and so forth) conspire to make Linux a headache year after year.
Posted by Mark at Fri Aug 20 13:52:31 2004
Also, the laptop_mode scripts keep the HD off most of the time and seem to significantly extend the battery life: http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsamwel/laptop_mode/tools/index.html
Take care,
-Brian
Posted by Brian Dorsey at Fri Aug 20 15:15:27 2004
i've got it working with hardware acceleration (ati mobility), suspend/resume, lots of goodness.
and i even got chandler working on it.
Posted by hazmat at Thu Aug 26 19:40:53 2004

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