Thread: Laptop Linux Shootout :-)

i will be getting my laptop sometime next week. have plans to dual boot ubuntu with vista on it. though i am not sure how i would survive on 160 GBs... i need to buy an external hard disk

ya, its probably better to have an external 500gb or 1tb HDD which you can connect to a laptop and desktop and share data... the internal HD can be used for your main/immediate files...

this tablet im getting also has vista home premium, 160gb hdd, amd 1.9ghz dualcore, 2gb ram and nvidia onboard graphics which runs aero glass and a compact 12.1 widescreen touch lcd...

woohoo just reached home with my new tablet. also got a linksys wrt54g wifi router. first will make vista recovery disks then repartition the hdd and start trying distros one by one. reports coming soon also gotta watch gadget guru coming on ndtv profit at 2pm, then wont miss the tata bashing on cnn-ibn at 630pm...

hehe i've been thinking about getting a new portable for the past year or more... finally did it.

ok, just got my networking fixed with pc (ethernet) and tablet (wifi) after putting my bsnl modem into bridge mode and setting the linksys to do the pppoe dialling...

will play with the net connection a bit then backup my tablet hdd then start playing with some distros...

well, tried the 5 distros on the tablet and it was a disaster opensuse started out looking promising but it looks like it needs rolling up of the sleeves and some serious command-line tinkering to get things working...

posting notes for each distro in reverse order of preference. i just tried the live cd sessions except for opensuse which is not a live cd so went ahead and installed it.

5. PCLinuxOS 2007
Bootup detected screen ok, no touchscreen, wireless not working (tried to look for broadcom ndiswrapper but failed), sound failed, power status icon seemed ok, special "Fn" keys not working.

4. Mandriva One 2008.0
Screen detected ok, nvidia splashscreen showed up, no touchscreen, after selecint the timezone it hung.

3. Fedora 8 Test 3 (7.92)
again screen detected ok, no touchscreen, mouse pointer not visible but functioning, sound not working, no wireless. didnt try to install.

2. Ubuntu 7.10 beta
boot screen resolution ok, i saw a msg during boot "BIOS BUG FOUND" lol, saw a msg that appeared that broadcom "bcm" wireless was loaded, but screen went blank and appeared hung in the middle of the bootup process. sad, will revisit gutsy next week with final release version.

1. openSUSE 10.3 KDE
This of course isnt a live cd, so started the installation. screen resolution ok, setup starts ok, config options all taken, cpu name/model detected properly, partitioning worked ok, saw mono-core being installed along with libgpod (ipod for linux). broadcom wireless appeared to load ok in boot msg.
first boot, "HP BroadCom a/b/g" detected fine! But no WPA2 security only WEP and WPA1 was present during initial boot config. nvidia 6150 card detected ok, lcd monitor name/model/size/resolution etc detected nicely! sound was ok. bluetooth seemed ok (not tested). After logging in I now got WPA2 option for wireless! Sadly tried all options but it would not connect wireless. More research needed to get it to work I guess there is still some hope.
Touchscreen config went missing, fingerprint reader config failed (didnt detect device), special "Fn" keys (brightness adjust etc) not working... bah.

Will do some web searching hopefully some HOWTOs will be available. Worst case, will wait till next round of releases 6 months from now to revisit Linux On The Tablet.

I just need to get the touchscreen and wireless connection working, then it will be sweet...

edit:
Its not that bad of a disaster since I have wireless working now! woohoo Laptop Linux Shootout :-)

touchscreens and linux together?

damn, you have a tough job in your hands

ya i was encouraged when i saw "touchscreen" in yast , who knows, it might just work... will keep trying...

i think there is a good reason that some companies are now working together to work on a linux UMPC... it does not support the current generation UMPCs perhaps