[RLUG] Linux on a laptop

[Dennis Bagley]

Whew.  Chris - sounds like way too much work.  But then I don't use
Gentoo....mostly because I don't want that much of a hassle.  (Ask Jay
McDonald - I create enough hassles all by myself.)

Damon - I put Ubuntu on an older Dell Laptop with almost no problems
including taking care of screen resolution and it auto-detected and
set-up an old Alverion wireless card.  (802.11.b) connected to the
internet and updated itself.

Just my experience with Linux and Laptops.

Dennis

On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 18:44 +0000, christopher baus wrote:
> > I just got my new HP laptop, don't know if any of you noticed it
> > lastnight. I would like to turn it to a linux box, Gentoo most likely.
> > This will be my first install of linux on a laptop. It there anything that
> > I should be aware of that is different from a desktop install?
> >
> > Damon
> 
> I've had a couple issues.  X still doesn't automatically detect screen
> resolutions and even common ones like 1640x1080 aren't in the defaut
> x.conf.  I've had to manually hack the x.conf to get RedHat to run
> correctly on all 3 of my wide screen monitors.
> 
> Wireless support IMHO is joke on linux.  I've gotten it to work, but not
> without major headaches: iwlist, iwconfig, edit
> /etc/sysconfig/networks-scripts/ifcfg-x to add WAP keys, compiled drivers,
> and use windows drivers on Linux.  I've wasted hours of my life on this
> stuff.  This type of stuff might be fine for servers that don't change
> configs often, I find it to be hell on a laptop where you are constantly
> changing networks.
> 
> I ended up maxing out my RAM and installing VMWare on XP, and that's the
> config I'm using most of the time now.  I know a lot of people here will
> probably disagree, but is my opinion that XP is far better than Linux on
> x86 Laptops.  And I spend a lot of time keeping Linux boxes running in
> production, and have been very happy with its performance in that domain.
> 
> Unless you are developer interested in improving Laptop support for Linux,
> I say save yourself the hassle, max out your RAM, and take a look at
> VMWare.  BTW, VMWare won't solve your problems with X resolutions.  Still
> requires manually hacking the config file.
> 
> Just my experience.
> 
> 
> 
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