What is Digg?53 Comments
- fantastcandy10, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15I'm very surprised to not see ubuntu painted all over this article.
- Sabot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Here let me help.
I have a Dell Inspiron 1300 and I have install Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and it works great! It is now MS Windows free.
The demon of Microsoft has been exercised from my computer. - OmegaNine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I got to say, i installed ubutu on my new dell (Brand new, didnt think they would have the drivers) and after updating it via the NIC, i had all the drivers but my ATI graphics card. Worked like a charm. Wireless was painless, wich i remember it not being. So I say go for it.
- wallclimber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Nice! I have an old (old) Compaq Armada that I've wanted to try installing with Linux, but wasn't sure how much hair-pulling and cussing it would require. I think I'll give it a try (but will wear a helmet, just in case : )
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Linux on Laptops also has a decent sized list. http://www.linux-laptop.net
- bigtomrodney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Installing linux is better than installing linux?
Idiot. - esuomynona, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I have infected my laptop with the demon that is OpenSuSE 10.1 :-(
- esuomynona, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7ACK!
My demon is spawning daemons! - DiggUmFrog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I just installed Ubuntu on my old Pentium 4 Toshiba Satellite A25-207 and it was the easiest install i have ever experienced. There were no problems with any drivers and everything works perfect, except for the SD slot, but that's OK. I am really happy with Ubuntu and I recommend it to anyone who has a laptop and doesn't want to worry about driver issues. Dapper Drake was a great experience and still continues to be. Good job Ubuntu guys.
Now that I have seen what Ubuntu can do, I am going to set up certain students at the school i work at with older laptops running Linux. I have actually even though about converting most of the school's computers to using a variant of Linux. I used to be a hardcore windows user and i swore on the OS but then I bought an Intel-Mac (ICBM) and I realized that windows wasn't that great. I now wish to banish windows from my life and hopefully more developers and users begin to use non-windows systems. I can only pray. - cazabam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I'm wondering about the use of the phrase 'needless to say'. Obviously it needed saying, or you wouldn't have. Certainly it goes against the experience of the vast majority. Or perhaps you were trolling?
Needless to say, I didn't really need to say all this :) - jpfree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Plenty of daemons on my system. syslogd, cron, devfsd...
- starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4just say'n... i blew off windows on my laptop more than a year ago. hasn't hurt a bit. i first put suse on it... then ubuntu which has been on the longest. i installed wine a couple weeks ago just for fun. then went looking for something test it out. i started down the list and just didn't find anything that i really cared about. so i grabbed something... it worked. but i'm totally not needing windows... it can be done. its not painful.
- trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Copy these files http://trogdoor.googlepages.com/firmware.zip to /lib/firmware ( after unzipping ) then restart ( you don't really need to restart but I forget what the module is called and I no longer have my powerbook ) That will at least get you 802.11 b and hopefully g and WPA also but I don't remember. Anyways, good luck!
- jsaya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Recently my hdd died in my Dell Inspiron 9300, and I (a windows user) have been trying out "Live Linux" CD's. So far no wireless auto detected but there seems to be an additional setup required. This site should come in handy! Thanks.
- espyrian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Thanks! At first glance http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html appears to be more comprehensive than http://www.linux-laptop.net/ (which is what I've used up until now). Maybe they can pool their resources?
What I'd love to see is a simple 5 star rating system that summarises common issues when it comes to installing Linux on laptops. The rating system would award one star each for working:
* sound
* video
* power/battery management (esp. sleep/suspend)
* wireless/bluetooth etc.
* special keys
Then I could quickly look down a list and quickly pick the best distro for my brand of laptop. - neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Heh. I'm trying it out on my laptop - a sony vaio stuffed full of odd quirky hardware - and so far, it's been pretty impressive.
Things like the unusual screen size, firewire, wifi, DHCP, suspend-to-disk, and the keyboard layout etc, I've tested and was pleasantly suprised that it worked with no tweaking.
But I've plenty of other bits of hardware in there. It will need to pass some more tests, before it earns my adoration. Bluetooth, the Motion Eye camera, video playback, TV-out, VGA-out, ... I'll probably never get around to testing the built in modem because I don't use dialup anymore...
Hell, if everything works and it passes the test, maybe I'll post something on Digg so that it can be Marked As Inaccurate =D - Lobster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Put something with a bit of bite on your laptop!
These are all the laptops known to work with Puppy Linux
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/LaptopsWorking
. . . more probably work . . .
There are advantages to using Puppy. Running from Ram means hard disk usage is cut down - extending battery life. You do not need a hard disk (cutting down on weight) You can boot from USB meaning no CD or DVD required.
Puppy runs on a 32MB ram laptop but needs 128MB for faster usage. Puppy looks better and is better than you imagine. Check it out. Your laptop deserves it . . .
http://tmxxine.com/p3/ - s-m-a-c-k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have a hp Compaq nx6115 (Turion ML-30, 1GB, 60GB, Radeon X200) and recently loaded OpenSUSE 10.1 and thing freakin' rocks. ALL(!) XGL Eye Candy Works with the new (8/18) ATI Driver. The AirForce 1 Broadcom internal WiFi works perfectly with NDIS wrapper and KNetworkManager. The only hiccup with OpenSUSE 10.1 is the move to libzypp, install Smart Package Manager and it's GUI component and you'll never miss it.
Note: This is sub-$1000 laptop that I purchased for training machines at my job, but the machine is robust enough to run Windows XP via VMWare Server (you know those licenses are free if you register) almost natively. - Flamekebab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2OLPC laptops run a version of Fedora, IIRC.
- Flamekebab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How odd, that sounds almost exactly like my story!
I can't say I enjoyed SUSE, but Ubuntu runs wonderfully. I've just installed Xubuntu on my latest laptop, a lovely little Toshiba Portege 3490CT. Runs like a dream! - trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Replied here to warn any macbook pro owners: I only took a quick look but it seems like the person who wrote this tutorial http://modular.math.washington.edu/macbook/ on the macbook pro does not know much about macs ( says you need boot camp for BIOS emulation, says to hold down option to boot from CD when holding down C is faster ) I don't have time to verify his instructions but I would take them with a grain of salt.
- Kruncher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"distribation"?
...
Wow...I'm not even going to touch that with a 10' poll. - vicaya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, what you have is X11_USBMICE_HACK in hotplug, which is quite self explanatory :) Then there're USB webcams and other generic usb input devices...
- neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2eh? Just yesterday I plugged in a usb mouse, and bam! working. I know this wasn't always the case, but I've never had a problem with it. I'm using -the-distro-which-must-not-be-named-because-diggers-take-offense-
It's not really X11 that's doing it though, I think. Probably hotplug and hal that are working the magic. - NtrmDscrptr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ubuntu on my Dell m1710 works flawlessly.
- PanteroBlanco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The only issue I've known up-to-date Linux distros to have with Armadas is that the volume control for some of them depended on a series of built-in keypresses that only worked with Windows (my m700 suffers from this). Alsamixer will do the trick, though, and after that you can use $DISTRO's built-in method.
- MoofTheStoof, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I put Ubuntu on my PowerBook 17" but I had a hell of a time getting it set up to dual-boot OS X. I finally got it, but it took a lot of trial and error. Now if I could just get 802.11g working under Ubuntu, I'd be totally satisfied. It really is a great laptop OS.
- thegsa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I Still Don't Know How To Install Linux On My Mag Tinynote aka NEC Ready 120LT
good site though - SDNick484, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wow, it's been a while since I've seen sites that have been around for years make the front page of digg. Reminds of back in the day when sites howardforums.com use to be "news" (http://digg.com/hardware/Hack_almost_any_cell_phone).
Regarding this topic, you can get Linux working on pretty much any laptop as long as it's not the latest and greatest (and even then, it will probably mostly work, but you might have to wait a couple months for some features). Over the last few years I've installed Linux on 3 personal laptops (IBM T21, Dell LS, & Dell D610), and eventually got all features working (wireless, sound, suspend/hibernate, etc.) on all three (running Gentoo on the D610 right now). In the case of my D610, I got it when it was first launched, and likewise the video card (X300) didn't work entirely for a couple months (bug in the ATI drivers on laptops with over 732MB of RAM -- worked fine with the non-proprietary drivers but with dismal 3D performance). - cecil_t, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1On my Dapper install on my laptop the USB mouse works if I plug it directly into the computer, but if I plug it in through a USB hub then I do have to restart X.
- vicaya, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Linux desktop/laptop support is still quite immature partly due to lack of hotplug support in X11 so far (if you plug in a usb mouse, it won't be able to use it until you restart X, same for external monitors). Still it has come a long way, so power users can get pretty much everything to work equal to or better than windows now, with a little effort :) If you want to get the most out of your laptop and learn linux at the same time, the best bet is to use gentoo and fiddle yourself. I've got an odd ball amd64 laptop and everything seems to work (including but not limited to: builtin wifi (broadcom with wep, wpa), ati (dri, dual monitor), synaptics touchpad, hibernate (just close the lid or push the power button), firefox/konqueror with flash 7 and wmv9, wine, vmware, cups with samba (printing to everything tried, including windows printers), dvd/cd burning via k3b, and of course the best media player anywhere now: amarok...)
The data on http://tuxmobil.org/ seems quite old. Lots of deadlinks. They should convert it to a wiki if they want to preserve the content, not just the links) Anyway, check out http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Gentoo_on_laptops - esuomynona, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2add "will support grub boot sector" to that list.
I have Toshiba m35-s456. Grub will not "boot" the computer.
I have to use the ntloader to load grub and then go to linux. - HsoKinees, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4ubuntu ** not ubutu :P
- mskadu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have my ravings on trying to install it on my Vaio written here:
http://mytechieself.blogspot.com/2006/08/ubuntu-606-lts-dapper-drake-on-my-sony.html - drizek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1use the ubuntu 6.06.1 live cd. Im running it on my 9300 right now. It detects your wireless, but youll have to set up wep encryption and stuff manually(obviously).
- bluering, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I am running Ubuntu Dapper on my Vaio Sz-110 now. I have also tried SuSe 10.1, SLED 10, Dreamlinux, Sabayon and Xubuntu. SLED was the easiest to install and setup, but it is hard to beat the forums for info on Ubuntu. Wireless works, AIGLX and compiz are running, and the Sony buttons and function keys work. The 3D desktop is very slick and always gets a "wow thats cool" when I demo it to friends and family. The integrated webcam, mic, and fingerprint reader aren't working, but I haven't really tried to set them up yet. If you can get past the whole Sony is Evil thing the Laptop hardware is really well suited for mobile linux.
- cazabam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Indeed. All the distros that support hotplug USB mice just set up a secondary pointer in xorg.conf looking at /dev/input/mice. Any pointing devices plugged in will be attached to this device node by hotplug and they will 'just work' because X has already gone through the motions of attaching that node as a pointer device.
- tech42er, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Neko, is that Dapper, Breezy. or Edgy? ; )
- Flamekebab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've finally got a laptop that supports Suspend and I must say I'm over the moon about it. It's a lovely little device, runs like a dream with Xubuntu. I'd hate to think how badly it'd run under Windows. I'm not going to let anyone torture it like that any more!
- luistux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@cazabam: Read the forums and documentation on the website for the distro you want to install. Most linux instalations had Mac suuport way before a BIOS emulation was available for the Macs so I am sure you can get away without the need for bootcamp.
- cazabam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Reading around, I have found a couple of places that state that the intel macs (the macbook in particular) can use Ubuntu without messing with BootCamp, instead using lilo or rEFIt to allow dual booting straight from EFI. Can anyone confirm and if possible provide links?
- evolution360, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I never tried updating my nVidia driver on my laptop except those released on the dell website, though I know the importance of community support through my many trials and tribulations with win and mac machines (like finding out to turn off zero config wifi in windows and putting a $ before the wep key in mac osx). if my comment sounded like other OSs don't have good support I apologize, I just like seeing this kind of support from such a small user-base using products that are free.
- KimHarding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I set up my Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000 to dual boot Win XP and Suse Linux 10.1. So far it works really well for most things I want to do. See http://kimharding.f2s.com/dual_boot/ for the full story.
- AICkieran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@cazabam:
Im not sure but i know you need some form of bios compatibility there - davidnwelton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I help run the Linux Incompatibility wiki at http://www.leenooks.com which tries to track stuff to *avoid* because it won't work with Linux. Hopefully the list will be able to go away some day:-)
- AICkieran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@trogdoor:
He's right in the sense that you need bootcamp for bios compatibility as it includes the bios compatibility layer for EFI and prehaps his reason for installing linux is that he doesn't know much or want to know much about OS X? Its just standard ***** hardware that uses EFI instead of BIOS....big deal, get over it. - evolution360, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Got to love the community support for Linux. I can't wait for the day we don't have to make sites like this, but considering how far Linux-for-the-average-user has come in the last 5 years (look @red hat 7 w/KDE vs Ubuntu) I wouldn't be surprised if, in another 5, Linux became a dominate player in the desktop market.
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2There are plenty of windows sites like this. You know how big a pain in the ass it is to get nvidia drivers working on a windows laptop? You have to go get hacked versions otherwise youre stuck using the outdated official drivers for mobile.
- kohan69, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1xubuntu will work even more flawlessly
- jonhohle, on 10/12/2007, -3/+040 comments, and nothing about the ridiculous use of "UniX". I have to admit, I've never seen it capitalized that way.
The Open Group seems to be pretty consistent about it being capitalized UNIX. I'm a little hesitant to trust a site which apparently makes up arbitrary capitalization rules. -
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