[PCWorld]

Post your comments for How to Choose a Linux Laptop here

[LiveBrianD]

"On the other hand, 32-bit distros alone don't typically need more than 3GB."
Actually, 32-bit CAN'T use more than around 3GB!

[AndreDaCosta]

Why bother go through all this trouble? Windows 7 comes preloaded, ready to go, supports all of your existing applications including new ones: commercial, freeware, shareware and even open source.

The information you have provided in this article make it sound like the days of 1993 when Windows NT just came out. You had to carry your HCL documentation with you to make sure you were choosing a system that was NT ready, even then, you were guaranteed to get a fully compatible system.

The only persons I see doing this are already Linux fanatics.

[EloyMaxam]

where i can buy a fully supported Linux laptop

[JamesLipton]

You can buy any laptop and install Linux on it. However I would strongly recommend you to install Ubuntu, unless there is a specific reason for you to use other distors. I would also recommend that you do dual boot and keep the Windows intact, in case you need to use some proprietary software that only works with Windows.

By using Linux, you wont' have to pay for any software anymore. You do not need any anti-virus or anti- spyware software. You will have freedom!

In Windows, every time you boot the machine, hundreds of processes will run in the background not including the anti-virus and other 3rd party software. As these processes run, they take up a lot of your system resources like the memory and etc. In linux, you can choose what process to run or not to run!! So your system works faster and more efficient and there is much less chances of hang ups or crashes. Everything in Windows is bloated!!

[BrianPerry]

Why do people who like Windoze worry about what people who like Linux? We like Linux because we want to use it and some of us like supporting technology that we find most beneficial to our needs. I don't find Windows beneficial to my needs. So what's it to you? Why does that make us fanatics? The fact that you would waste the time to comment on how fanatic Linux people are seems to make you a fanatic for Windoze 7.

[regulas]

"Some hardware, however, still doesn't work well with Linux, due primarily to a persistent lack of the right drivers."
This id due to back room deals with Microsoft who continually throws wrenches at Linux in an effort to kill it off.
Author Unknown
Why it's better with Windows
...because Asus, in their "wisdom," use Microsoft's ASL compiler when preparing the BIOS. This is a PoS that doesn't quite comply with the ACPI specification everyone else, including the free OSen, uses and leaves you with a broken DSDT on anything other than Windows. You can, on any reasonable operating system, disassemble the DSDT and recompile it with Intel's compiler to give you a DSDT, loadable at boot-time (or, if you're feeling really brave, grafted into the BIOS image), that works. It's rather complicated as MS's little offering quietly accepts syntax that Intel's doesn't. I'm not sure if this is the case with the Eee range as I don't own one, but it's certainly the case with desktop boards. For example:
# acpidump -dt ./acpi.asl
acpidump: RSDT entry 3 (sig OEMB) is corrupt
Whoops. Looks like I'm SOL and JWF if I want to disassemble and try to fix this PoS with a corrupt root system description table. Let's try anyway:
# iasl ./acpi.asl
[...many errors]
./acpi.asl 5189: Scope Name (G0T3, Package (0x07)
Error 4094 - ^ syntax error
Maximum error count (200) exceeded
ASL Input: ./acpi.asl - 9627 lines, 331801 bytes, 1519 keywords
Compilation complete. 201 Errors, 2 Warnings, 0 Remarks, 9 Optimizations
Suffice to say that the corrupt table is probably the cause of most of these errors and, even if I were to go through the code and try to fix the syntax errors, I very much doubt it would compile with bits missing.
The results? See for yourself:
acpi0: <033109 on motherboard
acpi0: [ITHREAD]
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
acpi0: reservation of fee00000, 1000 (3) failed
acpi0: reservation of ffb80000, 80000 (3) failed
acpi0: reservation of fec10000, 20 (3) failed
acpi0: reservation of 0, a0000 (3) failed
acpi0: reservation of 100000, cff00000 (3) failed
ACPI HPET table warning: Sequence is non-zero (2)
Oh, and just in case anyone thinks I'm blowing smoke about them using MS's asl compiler, here's the XSDT:
XSDT: Length=76, Revision=1, Checksum=31,
OEMID=033109, OEM Table ID=OEMXSDT, OEM Revision=0x20090331,
Creator ID=MSFT, Creator Revision=0x97
Entries={ 0xcffb0290, 0xcffb0390, 0xcffb0400, 0xcffbe040, 0xcffb94e0 }
Creator ID MSFT. Says it all.
This is an Asus M3A78 Pro. So, Asus, either you're conspiring with MS to shut out alternative OSen or you're incompetent. Which one is it?

[AndreDaCosta]

@BrianPerry I would like to ask you the same question. Why are Linux users like Katherine forcing Windows users to switch to Linux when Windows users are already happy with what they have? The operating system is already including in the price of the hardware, its an OEM preload which does not add any significant amount to the cost of the system.

@JamesLipton You make it sound like people are running Windows 7 on 386 with 8 MBs of RAM. This is 2010 where average systems come preloaded with 4 GBs of RAM in addition to the fact that most persons either set their systems to hibernate or sleep, which which starts in about 10 seconds. My Windows 7 laptop takes about 30 seconds to startup from BIOS to desktop. Who cares about that anyway, what in heavens name are you so desperate to start your computer?

Are you those type of persons who sit in front of your computer with a stop watch every morning just to get excited? The average consumer does not care.

[kirovs]

Dear Andre,
I had Vista. It burned 2 hard drives, a graphics card and was sloooooww. I upgraded to Linux. Much better now, thx!
I do my games, video editing, surfing, development; I have snapshots of everything, my wife has her worked backed up seamlessly (plus snapshots) from her netbook, my kids play educational games on their own nettop. My entertainment system is running Linux flawlessly. Yes, and I do not need all crapware to keep me "safe". Did I mention I am not paying for all this, except for some donations?
Oh, I did not get an "OEM", there are Linux vendors and clean systems someone can build and test for you.
So thank you for the Win 7 offer, but no, thank you. Watch your MSFT stock shares flatline. RHT anyone?

[AndreDaCosta]

12% of Windows users are still running Windows Vista, even Preston Galla of ComputerWorld seems to still be running it. So why aren't they screaming bloody murder about burned hard disks, graphics card and performance issues? I still have Vista Business in a dual boot configuration with Windows 7 Professional, Vista continues to perform very well, Intel Quad Core, 2 GBs of RAM and an nVidia Quadro, nothing wrong the system since I got it.

I ran Vista from beta (starting with build 5112) released in August of 2005 up to RTM release November 15 2006 and continued running it until Windows 7 build 6801 was released on a Dell Dimension 8300 purchased in March 2004, never had any problems at all.

So Kirovs, I think its very safe to say, you had faulty hardware from day one. Just the assumption that an OS burned components is so naive!

You can't upgrade from Windows to Linux, which proves again you are just spreading propaganda.

[candtalan]

In UK I have several experiences for friends who have used Linux Emporium with excellent results. Their ofter sales support is excellent too.

[kirovs]

You can upgrade from Win to Linux. Got to ubtuntu.com for example. Click on download. Burn the ISO to a disk (if your Win can do that). Put the disk in the CD and restart. Follow the instructions. Here you upgraded from Win to Linux! Happy now?

[AndreDaCosta]

Another thing, if you can't have a discussion without calling someone a troll, you are proving why Linux is at 0.85% Every critique you guys get, you believe its a conspiracy or trolling. I am entitled to post here, Katherine Noyes does not own IDG or PCWorld neither does the Linux foundation.

[ichingreader]

LiveBrianD, on 18 November 2010 - 04:20 PM, said:

"On the other hand, 32-bit distros alone don't typically need more than 3GB."
Actually, 32-bit CAN'T use more than around 3GB!

This is not the case. All major Linux distros ship 32-bit PAE kernels. Physical Address Extension is supported on both Intel and AMD CPUs. PAE allows the OS to use anywhere from a 36-bit to a 52-bit physical address (depending on the CPU), and thus access 64GB or more memory.

Note that while the OS can use more physical RAM, the logical address space of any one process is still limited to 4GB, of which the kernel reserves 1GB (unless you're using a kernel built with the 4:4 split option). However, extra RAM enables you to run several large processes on one machine without swapping and/or have a large disk cache to immediately access more than 3.5GB of data. (The 3.5GB limit is due to approximately 0.5GB of physical address space reserved for memory maps for PCI slots, system devices, ACPI tables, etc.)

Typically, PAE kernels are activated during installation. The installer detects that more than 3.5 GB of RAM is present and installs a PAE kernel, along with the regular 32-bit kernel. Alternatively, you can add them after installation using the disto's package manager. In practice, since the NX bit is present in the longer page descriptors of PAE, many Linux distros began to install the PAE kernel as their standard 32-bit product last year.

Curiously, although Microsoft ships PAE kernels in order to use the NX bit in 32-bit versions of Win2K Server, WinXP SP1, and higher, MSFT chose to deliberately limit the memory supported to 4G, regardless of the amount of physical RAM. (See Wikipedia for details.) I suppose that was to encourage people to move to the 64-bit versions, or something.

[bcappel]

Any posts that violate the community standards are deleted. This includes personal attacks. There is a link to the PCWorld Community Standards at the bottom of every page.

Thank you.

[kirovs]

"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2]"
In Linux thread on what laptop to buy someone posts:
"Why bother go through all this trouble? Windows 7 comes preloaded, ready to go, supports all of your existing applications including new ones: commercial, freeware,
...
The only persons I see doing this are already Linux fanatics."

I hope this post stands up to the high ethical and moral standards of PCWorld.

[kirovs]

If you still think VISTA cannot shorten your drive's live google "VISTA disk trashing". Or Bing it if you like. You are welcome.

[euripides]

LiveBrianD, on 18 November 2010 - 04:20 PM, said:

"On the other hand, 32-bit distros alone don't typically need more than 3GB."
Actually, 32-bit CAN'T use more than around 3GB!

Actually, they can - you just have to enable PAE

Edited to add: Apologies for the redundant reply - I didn't realize replies on the article were out of order or in reverse order. I also thought I was replying to the article, not replying in a forum... rather confusing!

This post has been edited by euripides: 20 November 2010 - 01:52 PM

[rrnwexec]

This article misses the mark on two counts:
1) Unnecessary obfuscation
2) People don't run kernels, they run OS'es, complete ones. Want to bet me you cant run the kernel alone?

The complete list of Ubuntu Certified hardware is here:
http://webapps.ubunt.../certification/
That should be your first stop in any hardware purchasing decision. The second stop should be our "Buy & Sell" to see who has some to sell, or if anyone's seen certified hardware in stores.

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 18 November 2010 - 04:20 PM, said:

"On the other hand, 32-bit distros alone don't typically need more than 3GB."
Actually, 32-bit CAN'T use more than around 3GB!

Actually - they CAN. As the Linux kernel doesn't have the limitations that Windows does. EVERY user has access to PAE (physical address extension) allowing you to use up to 128GB of ram in a 32bit system.