Comments on: Linux on Laptop = Epic Fail

By: eylisian

eylisian — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:11:40 +0000

ok. did the backport thing (uncommented intrepid-backports in /etc/apt/sources.list) and then installed linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic, restarted to boot into the new kernel and wireless (with hardware led on monitor) is working. Reason to stick w/ your Mac, connection flaked out after about 70M of traffic, had to restart it in wicd (which btw, is a decent tool for interface management). Could be wicd, so I’ll try network manager later on.

By: eylisian

eylisian — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:30:09 +0000

T60 & Ubuntu 8.10, wireless net is broken. Card (intel 3945) is recognized and lsmod shows the iwl3945 module loaded. Not entirely certain it’s network manager as I uninstalled it and installed wicd (sourceforge), it handles wired ok, but wireless (WPA2, pub essid) net is not showing up (didn’t under network-manager either). I am going to try the backports trick and see if 8.04 module will fix. I finally pay the ‘lenovo’ price, this is the first thinkpad I have picked up (out of 4), that has bombed this way.

Sometimes I wish I used a Mac too, and have (work), but when I get peeved I remember how much I paid for the software that commie bastard (Shuttleworth) is pushing on me… And thats when I think about falling back to Debian

By: m0j0

m0j0 — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:50:33 +0000

@chris

I have run open/net/freebsd. To be honest with you, I’m not sure I could be offered enough money to run OpenBSD as a day-to-day workstation or laptop. The last time I tried I actually lasted a full 3 weeks (a few years ago now), and it was without question the most painful desktop computing experience of my lifetime. The idea here isn’t to get more geek cred by showing people my hardcore BSD desktop system (gasp!). The idea is to get work done without giving much thought to the underlying system.

Also, to call Linux bloated is to sort of negate any geek cred you might get from running a bsd distro, because Linux is only as bloated as you want it to be. If you don’t like the bloat, recompile the freaking kernel and get rid of it. I’ve compiled Linux kernels for servers that were 1/10 the size of the one the distro supplied, and everything worked just fine.

Also, to call a spade a spade, OpenBSD doesn’t have any better support for laptop hardware than Linux does. Saying OpenBSD “works for me” is hardly a testament that holds any water with anyone who has any familiarity with these systems.

By: Perry

Perry — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:37:10 +0000

Have you gotten all of the updates? I am running 8.10 on a T61 and had some minor issues until updated the whole system to the latest and greatest. I haven’t had any issues since then.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:20:12 +0000

I’ve been using OpenBSD on a Lenovo T60 for quite sometimes with success. Linux has gotten to a point where it’s too bloated to be of any use; it has become a poor man’s Windows. Anyhow, if you want, download OpenBSD 4.4 ISO and give it a try on your laptop.