Linux on Netbooks (NOT!), was: Globe & Mail article on FOSS use by Cdn gov't

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| Whatever the numbers may be, I'm fairly impressed with the way the
| global community has increased 'nix support, especially in the arena
| of drivers, etc. NVidia has been well known for good drivers, but
| ATI's drivers since the AMD merger are impressive.  Intel has
| generally been known for good driver compatibility in most areas, if
| not great performance in video hardware etc.

All video drivers seem to be going through a period of instability.

The usually rock-solid Intel drivers have been having trouble during a
change in how memory is managed or acceleration is done or something
like that.

Other open-source drivers seem to be having trouble with the Kernel
Mode-Switch cutover.

Whether you experience these problems, or perhaps just when, depends
on how aggressive your distro is.  Fedora 11 seems aggressive -- read
the release notes.

Some netbooks use the Intel GMA500 which has horrible driver issues.
A design that Intel seems to have bought rather than built.

| FOSS drivers for wireless have improved, finally snagging a lot of
| troublesome broadcomm/B43 cards. My last laptop for the longest time
| had to use ndiswrapper, but when the FOSS driver finally was included
| in the kernel it worked wonderfully.

Yeah, broadcom support is better.  Due to reverse engineering by
OpenBSD folks, I think.  Unfortunately, they have not implemented all
the modes needed by an access point so we still don't have open source
drivers for WRT54GL etc. routers.

| My current laptop doesn't have a working FOSS driver (wireless N cards
| aren't well supported by B43 yet), but I was very surprised to
| discover that broadcomm themselves released a driver (WL). That one
| ran like shite when I first tried it early this year, but the current
| incarnation has worked without any notable errors.

Interesting.

Binary-only wireless drivers might only support some kernel versions or
distros.

| Heck, even most webcams seem to work nicely, and ditto for
| cardreaders, etc. I've *NEVER* found had a machine where bluetooth
| required more than minimal configuration.

Newer web cams use some newish USB standard for the purpose as opposed
to older ones which were much more proprietary.

| One area that could probably use a fair bit of improvement though,
| seems to be sound. While a lot of soundcards do somewhat work, I've
| seen a number of ones based on the IntelHD chipset that have various
| issues (volume controls wacky, output detection incorrect, Mic in
| doesn't work), but hopefully the ALSA guys will get there eventually.

The new simplified Pulse Audio volume control is driving some people
crazy.  If it does what you want, it is very nicely simple.  If not,
you are out of luck.

| Good drivers will do a lot to improve support. It's pretty hard to
| push the sales of a linux operating system when not all your hardware
| works properly.

What was great about netbooks was that the vendors were shipping Linux
so they were motivated to eliminate barriers to working Linux.  Most
notebooks are retrofitted with Linux by users, a process that is not
guaranteed to succeed.

In general, notebooks have been harder to retrofit than desktops.
Mind you, I've not had any luck with desktop suspend but had some
success with notebook suspend.
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