Dell: High Linux netbook returns a myth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...

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?

SSD's are fairly stable. It would probably shorten it but depending on use It might not shorten the life that much.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

I'll give Pardus a try, thanks.

How long until we see a video of Dell executives explaining that this comment was erroneous, with Microsoft's "men in black" standing behind them, scowling?

tuxchick: Look at it this way. All the lies and FUD give us material for mountains of articles debunking the lies and nonsense.

I still think pounding their heads has some merit, though :)

> it's the lusers who screw it up

That one's actually true. If Windows had no users, there would be no Windows security problems, hence Windows users are the cause of the problems.

Caitlyn, pounding heads is barbaric. Are we not geeks? Do we not employ advanced technology? Therefore I propose either Tasers or Hot Shots. Much more geeky. And fun.

http://www.taser.com/pages/default.aspx http://www.flemingoutdoors.com/hotshblcapr3.html

Key, tc, the head pounding was your suggestion. I do have a pounding headache in any case, which means I certainly won't be pounding back shots.

Quoting: Key, tc, the head pounding was your suggestion.

That statement is no longer operative. (Bonus points to anyone who knows who said that first.)

OK let's compromise-- pound heads and zap them with Hot Shots. See, we can work anything out if we try!

Quoting: That statement is no longer operative. (Bonus points to anyone who knows who said that first.)

Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon's press secretary after the President had been caught in a lie. I'm old enough to remember Watergate.

I'm old enough to remember afternoon cartoons were cancelled for the Watergate hearings.

Speaking of canceling a TV program...

When I was in college a very large group of students were gathered around the big (well, big, by late '70s standards) color TVs in the student commons watching the premiere of Battlestar Galactica. That's the original series, mind you, with the late Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, and JaneSeymour. Anyway, it was interrupted for special coverage of the announcement of the Camp David Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt. There was President Carter, Egyptian President Sadat, and Israeli PrimeMinister Begin announcing a peace nobody thought was possible. The students loudly booed the interruption and kept calling for the news to end and the silly science fiction series with flashy special effects to come back on. They booed Middle East peace!

Oh well....

OMG Caitlyn. Considering how awful the original Battlestar Galactica was, that is seriously twisted. "Marching Morons", anyone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

tc, I hope you're saying some of those students in a supposedly elite university were morons. The Kornbluth story was actually quite good.

Actually, the very first episode wasn't that bad. I enjoyed it, anyway. Every so often they had a good episode amid the dreck. The last one was also particularly good. (No, I don't mean the last Galactica 1980, I mean the last one where they pick up the broadcast of the 1969 lunar landing.)

I will admit that while I made fun of it I actually enjoyed the original BSG way back when. The thought that it was somehow more important than the peace treaty, though, boggles the mind.

@caitlyn:

FWIW, we actually had a school assembly for that occasion. The entire school packed into the gymnasium to watch the ceremony.

Later that day, I got clued in to how significant it was.

> ... to how significant it was.

Very significant. It's a real shame it was also effectively a death warrant for Sadat.

Agreed. He isn't the only Arab leader that suffered that fate. King Abdullah I of Jordan was ready to sign a treaty with Israel in the 1950s. It cost him his life as well.

> King Abdullah I of Jordan was ready to sign a treaty with Israel in the 1950s. It cost him his life as well.

A fact which only makes Sadat's action more impressive. He almost certainly had knew what the reaction and likely consequences were. He did it anyway,

@jdixon: I agree with you 100%. The world needs a few more Sadats, people of courage who are willing to risk everything to bring peace and make the world a better place. People like that are rare, unfortunately.

> The world needs a few more Sadats,...

Agreed. Few of us will ever have our courage tested in that way. If I ever do, I can only hope to do even half as well.

It's a thin line between being courageous, and being a jerk.

I tap-dance on that line regularly.

@gus3: If your tap dancing could make the world a more peaceful place I'd support it wholeheartedly.

Alas, being a jerk often enough means nobody takes me seriously even when I'm being merely courageous.