shahara

Recently, we have seen a huge growth in the sale of Linux based laptops. Bundling of Linux with the laptops has  considerably reduced the price tags with laptops available as low as Rs. 20,000 from ACi, Zenith Acer, and Sahara. But point is that are these laptops vendors accutally commited to the cause of Linux adoption or it is just a trick employed to trigger up the sales.

State of Linux based Laptops.

Current, major players is the Linux laptop areana are Acer, Compaq, Aci, Zenith and Sahara. All of them claim that their products are linux friendly. Lets take the case of Acer. I own a Acer TravelMate 2310 notebook. It came preinstalled with Linux.

Are these notebooks really Linux friendly.
There has been a major leap in hardware compatibility in Linux. All the major hardware vendors either have drivers for Linux or are supported by the drivers from Open Source community. Be it LAN card, graphics hardware, touchpads, displays etc. For instance my Acer notebook has SiS PCI Fast Ethernet, SiS M661MX Display, Synaptics Touchpad and AC 97 audio, all of which are already very well supported on Linux one way or the other.

But when it comes to devices which have reputation for not being Linux friendly, tall claims of Linux friendliness fail utterly. I am talking specifically about Internal Modems and WiFi cards. When I tried to connect my dial up connection through internal modem, I found out that it was not detected automatically. Then I thought resource CD, that came with my notebook, might have some sort of instructions. It contained all the drivers and a user manual, but to my surprise all these drivers were for MS Windows. Even manual was also meant only for MS Windows. Best part was when I searched it for the word 'Linux'. The word 'Linux' was not even mentioned in that manual. Same was the fate for my  Atheros WiFi adapter, though I managed to get it working thanks to various NDISWrapper utilities.

Now the next logical step was to contact Acer Support Center. Next day at office, where we have a broad band connection, I mailed Acer informing them of my problems and asking for suggestions. They did not even bother to respond. For few days, I kept mailing them, but it just did not seemed to have any effect. After that I was able to get modem working using slmodemd packages, but that is not a reliable solution, so I shifted back to external modem using serial to USB converter to connect my serial external modem.

How many Linux laptops actualy remain Linux laptops.
This is a question that most of the Linux enthusiasts ask. How many linux laptops actually remain linux based. As far as Acer is concerned, I get an image that they assume that people are going to format the laptop for MS Windows. This is evident from the fact that resource CD contains drivers and instruction manual only for MS Windows. Linux is not even mentioned there. There are no linux based drivers avaiable for downloads from acer website while all the MS Windows based drivers are available. Online manual is also silient when it comes for troubleshooting on Linux.

Conclusion.
What I personally feel is that these vendors are just  interested in getting more and more units sold. Hardware is not picked properly. Mostly internal modem and WiFi cards fail. No information, what so ever, is provided on troubleshooting tips on Linux.

If such is the scenario, I really think are these vendors just trying to cash on Linux brand and taking customers for a ride.

powered by performancing firefox