Hi all,

can anybody give me feedback on this system:
http://linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2464.html

How, as a brand, is Linux Certified generally considered?

The specs of the system are quite nice and they seem to sell even over
to Europe.

I'll give them a call tomorrow anyway.

Thanks,
Lorenzo

--
Get my PGP Public Key @ http://www.bolognini.net/LBolognini.txt

Lorenzo Bolognini wrote:

If you want to run 64-bit Linux that machine may work well enough but be
aware that the 64-bit video drivers for the ATI chips are not yet
available. It would have pretty much the same limitations as the
emachines/gateway/Arima machines.

To get full functionality at this time you'd do better to go with a machine
that has nvidia video--the potential performance is not as good with the
nvidia chips commonly found in laptops but their 64-bit drivers are
available.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

I have this unit, and I absolutely love it. It handily out-performs
even a high-end P4 based desktop I have. Also, the company seems good
about providing support for Linux driver issues.


Lorenzo Bolognini wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:
Hi J.

never thought of this issue: a 32 bit video chip on a 64 bit system. How
does that work out?

Anyway I'm thinking about using it with Windows and don't really think I
will need to use it for 64 bit computations, but it's still the fastest
processor out there!

Lorenzo


--
Get my PGP Public Key @ http://www.bolognini.net/LBolognini.txt

linux-fanatic wrote:
Cool! How is the case then? Is it solid? And the hinges? Does it
overheat on the palm rest (as I read on the Acer Ferrari)? Does it cool
enough? Is it noisy? What about battery life?

Thanks,
Lorenzo


--
Get my PGP Public Key @ http://www.bolognini.net/LBolognini.txt

Lorenzo Bolognini wrote:

32 bit vs 64 bit is not really an issue--it goes on the AGP bus, which is 64
bit. The issue is that ATI has not seen fit to release drivers that have
been compiled and linked as 64-bit code. Nvidia has.

If you want a Windows box then why are you looking at "Linux-certified"?
Their prices seem quite high. Take a look at the aforementioned
Gateway/emachines/Arima boxen which you can get for under $1000 US with
Windows XP preinstalled.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

John wrote:

Yeah nice specs these Arima boxes but they cannot make a website that
works with Firefox... what makes u think they can build a PC?

About Gateway/eMachines they don't sell outside US/Canada and I'm
european.

I think LinuxCertified are good value for money (even though I'm still
lokking for feedback from someone who actually uses these boxes)
especially now with the strong euro.

Nice spam filter

Lorenzo

lbolognini@gmail.com wrote:

Well, other than that mine's working find and there are numerous other
reports of their working quite nicely . . .

They're a Taiwanese OEM with a typical Taiwanese OEM web page. The miracle
is that it loads at all.

Try Targa or Medion. Same machine, different brand. Or take a look at
<http://www.amdboard.com/athlon_64_notebook.html>--you'll find that the
"LinuxCertified" is also avaiable under the "Fujitsu-Siemens" brand among
others--if you like that box then shop for price and support--you may find
it locally for a better price and with better support than LinuxCertified
can provide.

The thing about the Arimas is that they have an active and established user
community--see <http://notebookforums.com/archive/index.php/>, look in the
"Gateway/Emachines" section and you'll find a lot of discussion.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> writes:
That LinuxCertified laptop is made by Fujitsu? Hmm, according to some
other posters, those machines are supposed to be pretty good. Maybe I
shoulda bought one intsead of this X40. But I wanted a small machine
for a change. Any idea where I can get one of the Fujitsus under its
own label? Or is it actually some no-name Taiwanese machine sometimes
sold under a Fujitsu label?

Hmm, looks like it supports just WXGA screen resolution (max), and max
1 GB of ram . I was hoping for something like the Compaq machines
which support WUXGA and 2 GB or more.

Paul Rubin wrote:

No, it's made by some outfit called "Uniwill". It's _sold_ by
Fujitsu-Siemens. Fujitsu-Siemens is neither Fujitsu nor Siemens, it's a
distribution company owned jointly by both that sells some Fujitsu
products, some Siemens products, and some third-party products.

Not under a Fujitsu label, under a Fujitsu-Siemens label. And if you check
the link above you'll see all the brands under which it's sold.

That's the native resolution of the built in screen--they seem to be using
the same Sony panel as Arima, and it's very nice. Any higher res on a 15"
screen and you'd need a microscope. It should be able to go to whatever is
the limit of the Radeon Mobility on an external.

For Linux the DECPaqards would actually be a better bet.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> writes:
Thanks.

I don't think so. I have an A20p with SXGA+ (1450x1050) and it's
great. If I were doing it again I'd get UXGA in the same screen size.
It's just 110 dpi or something like that. If you had a 110 dpi laser
printer would you say you needed a microscope? Would you even think
of buying a 110 dpi laser printer? More resolution is better, no
matter what the screen size is. If the higher resolution makes you
need a microscope, that means you're using the wrong fonts.

What's that?

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> writes:
Oh, you mean "HP". I had thought the HP and Compaq machines were
exactly the same except for some cosmetic changes and perhaps
different Windows preinstalls (irrelevant to Linux). I saw those
machines in a store and while the feature sets were mostly pretty
good, the hardware seemed poorly made, and they have proprietary
driver disease.

Paul Rubin wrote:

What "proprietary drivers" do they need that the "Linux Certified" machine
does not?

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Paul Rubin wrote:

Not a valid comparison. With a laser printer you typically print text and
graphics that you have formatted. With a display you typically display a
user interface or web pages that someone else has formatted, that you can
tweak to (with Windows anyway) a limited extent.

I'll put it another way, maybe _you_ can read the text on a 15" 1450x1050
display, but I'd rather not try.

Only if the figure size is unchanged. With Windows more resolution results
in smaller figure size. If you tweak it then you run into formatting
problems with the application menus and the like.

So what are the "right fonts" that will never, ever result in a hosed up
menu?
DEC-Compaq-Hewlett-Packard--they use nvidia video rather than ATI. Nvidia
has AMD-64 drivers out across the board, ATI doesn't.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> writes:
The HP/Compaq uses the Broadcom wireless chip and an NVidia graphics
chip that both need binary-only drivers to work properly. The
so-called Linux Certified machine may or may not have the same issues.
I understand there's an X.org driver for the NVidia chip that makes
the screen usable, but doesn't use the acceleration features which
have a secret interface, so it can't work as well as the proprietary
driver. The Broadcom stuff appears to be hopeless. I sort of thought
of buying the HPaq anyway and using a PC card for wifi (as I'm now
doing with my X40), but I just wasn't that impressed with the one I
saw in the store.

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> writes:
Hmm, I thought Windows had accessibility features that made the fonts big,
but I don't use it much, so don't know.

It's really completely readable, I've never had problems with it even
at the times when I've run Windows on that box. That's the factory
Windows 2000 preinstall so they may have configured the fonts to be
appropriate for the screen.

I think 15" SXGA+ comes out to about the same dpi as 12.1" XGA which
is what I'm using now.

All I can say is that this has simply never been a problem for me.
The default fonts look perfectly ok on the A20p, as far as I can tell.
I really like the SXGA+ screen. The main reason I ever think of
getting a desktop machine is to have even more screen resolution, or
multiple screens.

I would have thought the 32-bit drivers would work for either card. Hmm.

Paul Rubin wrote:

Nvidia has binary only 64 bit drivers. ATI has no 64 bit drivers of any
kind. I'll take proprietary over none.

And quite honestly I've reached the point that all this posturing over
purity turns me off. Nvidia video works well with Linux, ATI doesn't.
I'll take dirty drivers that work over none or over clean ones that are
broken.

As for broadcomm, there are no 64 bit drivers for broadcomm at all. But
most AMD64 machines with wifi use broadcomm, so you're screwed there.

Just use the proprietary driver and if Stallman doesn't like it tell him to
get off his butt and write one that he approves of.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Paul Rubin wrote:

It does. Which means that they're too big to fit into the width allocated
for menus, dialog boxes, and the like and so you end up trading one problem
for another.

Must be nice to be young. Maybe when I was 20/15 near and far I'd have felt
the same.

More screen resolution on a larger screen is nice. But not on a 15.4 inch
16:10, which has a vertical dimension less than an inch larger than your
12.1".

They do, but 32-bit drivers do not work with 64-bit operating systems. And
if you're not going to run a 64-bit OS then why get a 64-bit processor?
While it's faster than a 32-bit, it's not a whole lot faster in 32-bit mode
and a lot more power-hungry.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> writes:
Lately I'm using larger fonts than I used to in years gone by, but
again, more resolution would help by making small characters easier to
read. Take a typical paperback book and compare the absolute size of
the printed letters in it to the letters on your laptop screen, and
you'll probably find that the book printing is smaller and yet still
more readable than the screen. Why? Higher dpi giving more precise
shapes to the letters.

Hmm, if those 15.4"'s are widescreen, that would make them shorter
vertically than my A20p, that's not so great. There are starting to
be more 17" laptop screens so maybe I'll hold out for one.

I had thought that the Athlon 64 could run intermixed 32 and 64 bit
code. So a 64-bit OS could run 32-bit drivers if needed, just as
32-bit Windows ran 16-bit DOS stuff for a very long time.

I wonder what other chipsets are available.

Yes, I wonder if they use removable mini-PCI boards. Maybe then I
could swap in something with a different chip. Otherwise I'd just use
a PC card. It's less of a problem with a big machine than with the
X40, since I wouldn't move the big machine around nearly as often.

It's a political problem, not a technical one. The NVidia programming
interface is secret so it's impossible to write a non-darkware driver
for it. If I want to run darkware, I'd probably buy a Powerbook
(possibly the 17 inch one) instead of messing with these x86
headaches. Note that if the interfaces weren't secret, there'd be no
shortage of 64 bit drivers.

Paul Rubin wrote:

Again, not a valid comparison. One does not read a paperback at the same
distance as a typical computer display.

And again diddling the font size causes other problems.

An Athlon can run 32-bit application code on a 64-bit OS. Drivers are not
application code.

None that you'll actually find in a recent laptop of any kind that has
decent performance.

Personally I use the 100TX port most of the time. Wifi is nice but not all
that useful to me.

So one reverse engineers the thing if it's all that important. Personally
I've never seen what all the fuss was about. So nvidia wants to keep their
drivers binary. So what? Who other than political activists really cares?

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)