I don't understand
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Aug 14, 2009 8:29 AM EDT |
Quoting:A quick straw poll by Clarke of the primarily Linux-focused conference delegates revealed a belief that application availability was a bigger issue for Linux netbooks than power consumption and battery life. "They believed Linux netbooks should ship with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and Pidgin," writes Clarke. "After that, there was a big fall off." I set computers upr with Firefox Evolution OpenOffice pidgeon, GIMP, Inkscape , scribus, F-Spot, Brasero, Movie Player and VLC, RythmBox, Grip, Acid Rip , CD Audio Extractor, AviDemux, Homebank and GNU Cash, Ekiga and Skype, the standard Games package that comes with Ubuntu, plus PySol, Kbreakout, Atmomic, Stellarium, Tomboy (but I will probably replace it with Zim, but only because it looks better than Tomboy, not because TomBoy is mono based. Why do they always stop at Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and Pidgin, and then tell us there aren't any other applications for Linux netbooks. All of the applications I mentioned work just as well on Linux netbooks as they do on full sized machines. |
| gus3 Aug 14, 2009 9:36 AM EDT |
You set up a netbook with all that? Anything that creates constant CPU load will drain the battery quickly, media players especially. Stellarium also draws extra power, when it's rendering a real-time sky. As long as you're not watching lots of flash videos, Firefox draws less battery power than OOo. Edit: That last point isn't true. OOo needs rendering cycles, but Firefox loads the wireless, which probably uses more power. |
| tracyanne Aug 14, 2009 7:05 PM EDT |
Not only do I set up a net book with all that, but they work just fine. I use my personal netbook for processing photos, while on the go. I've even used AVIDemux to process (remove the ads) movies I've recorded on my MythTV rig while out and about. And if all these applications are such a drain on a Linux netbook then the proprietary equivelents on a Windows netbook are going to be just as big a drain on Windows netbooks, so will someone run by me again how come there's lots of applications for windows but not lots for Linux. |
| caitlyn Aug 14, 2009 7:26 PM EDT |
I agree with tracyanne. My netbook works perfectly well as a full desktop replacement in a small form factor. That would NOT be true if I were running Windows. |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 14, 2009 7:52 PM EDT |
The netbooks of today are as powerful as the laptops of 5 to 7 years ago, also known as the machines I use, and I can run a "full" desktop on them just fine. In Linux, 1 GHz of CPU and 1 GB or even 512 MB of RAM can get the job done ... |
| gus3 Aug 14, 2009 8:16 PM EDT |
With 1/2-gig of memory and SSD storage, I'd be concerned about manipulating large media files. Would that shorten the life of the SSD? |
| chalbersma Aug 14, 2009 8:19 PM EDT |
SSD's are fairly stable. It would probably shorten it but depending on use It might not shorten the life that much. |
| tuxchick Aug 14, 2009 8:24 PM EDT |
I think the whole idea of a netbook as merely a thin client is a fantasy. I doubt that very many people want that-- they want what they've always wanted, and that is a small, inexpensive, lightweight notebook with long battery life and decent performance. Not something crippled for only accessing Web apps, but a real computer. As Steven said, these modern netbooks are plenty powerful, and with Linux you have it all-- a full buffet of applications and good performance. Thanks to USB you can connect to any peripheral device, and Linux supports all networking protocols including the newfangled 3G stuff. It seems quite obvious to everyone but perfessional tech reporters, and the computer industry. **edit** And if these titans of industry would sell netbooks with good Linux distros instead of their own moronic crippled ones, they could sell gazillions. But again, too obvious. |
| caitlyn Aug 14, 2009 9:12 PM EDT |
Many netbooks nowadays have conventional hard drives rather than SSDs. Mine does. Most come with 1GB of RAM now. Some even have 2GB. That's hardly limiting. |
| tracyanne Aug 14, 2009 9:42 PM EDT |
I've got 2, 10 inch models, one's a BENQ, the other an MSI, the BENQ has 1.5 Gig of RAM, it came with 512 - t's currently on loan to a friend/client while she's in Brisbane for cancer treatment, everything on it just works, I've had no issues with any hardware, I've got Jaunty on it in the form of UNR. The MSI (it's got 1 Gig of RAM) had a problem with the Wireless card with Jaunty UNR so I tried EeeBuntu and Wireless worked perfectly, however it refused to suspend/Resume. So then I installed Karmic with Standard Ubuntu GNOME desktop, everything works perfectly, and I like the standard GNOME desktop much better - I just set the panels to hide and I have the full 600pixel height of the screen available to me (well minus 2 pixels, as the GNOME panels don't completely hide.). There are currently a few minor stability issues with Karmic, for example I keep losing the password for the Wireless connection, and it doesn't seem to load the screensaver, but other than that it's fine so far. |
| caitlyn Aug 14, 2009 9:49 PM EDT |
@tracyanne: I now have Pardus 2009 on my netbook. It's the first distro that actually worked 100% out of the box: suspend/resume, webcam, wireless... literally everything just worked. The default desktop is KDE 4.2.4 but GNOME and Xfce are available in the contrib repository. It may be worth a look for you at least until Karmic is final. I know I've been impressed in the three weeks since I installed it. BTW, it is in a triple boot configuration with UNR (8.04 LTS, updated factory install), and VectorLinux 6.0. |
| tracyanne Aug 14, 2009 9:55 PM EDT |
I'll give Pardus a try, thanks. |
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