COMPUTING OUT OF THE BOX
MICHAEL C. BARNES
I have been using Linux on my notebooks for over eight years. It's often very challenging to get Linux up and running on a notebook - there are so many different variables. Even examples of the same model might use different components. For example, my Acer Aspire 5050 can have different integrated web cams and different Wi-Fi cards, depending on where and when it was purchased.
I've been running Mepis Linux (http://www.mepis.org) on my Acer for two years. Mepis has been the Linux I have used for many years in our company and it is very easy to install, get running and update over the web. It has been months since Mepis has had a new release and going to its web site shows that there haven't been many updates for a long time. This is not really an issue for our company as it is easy to update individual packages as Mepis is based on Debian, so any application developed for Debian (http://www.debian.org) will run on Mepis. Nonetheless, I decided to test newer versions of Linux and see if there was a version that would run better on my notebook. The Aspire 5050 was good value when I purchased it, coming with an AMD Turion 64x2 and an integrated web cam. It has worked well for two years. but it's been very difficult to support with Linux. I tried several different distributions. Suse 11 proved to be too slow, and I tested the newest version of Linux Mint (http://www.linuxmint.org) as well as other versions of Ubuntu (http://www.ununtu.org). None of these would even boot on it. I tested Debian. Debian loaded and installed with no problems. Debian is a very stable and very complete distribution, but requires a great deal of customisation to get running.
I started testing the latest version of Sabayon Linux (http://www.sabayon.org). I had tested an earlier version but that was less focused on business and more focused on games. Nonetheless, I remembered that Sabayon had lots of eye-candy and ran very quickly. The newest version impressed me much more than before. Sabayon 3.5 installed everything needed for business and quite a bit of games and other activities.
My problem was that while Sabayon recognised the Broadcom BCM43XX wireless driver, it didn't recognise it completely. It would work with no security set and it would work with WEP, but it would not support WAP. I am sure that I could have fixed this but I decided to test more distributions first.
I downloaded Mandriva 2008.1. Mandriva used to be Mandrake. Back in the old days of Linux, Mandrake was always my favourite distribution. I have purchased many versions of Mandrake Professional, but I stopped using Mandrake a few years ago when it was experimenting with how to monetise its business. Mandriva offers a free download or a Professional pack for $89.00. I downloaded the free CD. Mandrake boots on a live CD so it is possible to test Mandriva on your notebook or desktop before committing to installing. Once I booted Mandriva, everything worked with the exception of the Wi-Fi. I was not surprised by this as Mepis Linux had been the only Linux I've tested where everything just worked on this particular machine.
I decided to go ahead and install Mandriva onto my hard disk. My notebook has two partitions, one for Windows XP and the other for Linux. It was quite easy to get Mandrake to install. The whole process took about 20 minutes. Mandrake and Sabayon were the only two distributions I tested where the sound card worked without any fiddling.
After doing the install, Mandrake configured very nicely. The theme looked very good. Everything worked (with the exception of the Wi-Fi). Visiting YouTube, I was pleased to see that Flash was installed and that everything worked just fine. I tested out some streaming audio and video sites, and everything seemed okay. There was an option to use the video acceleration provided by the integrated ATI graphics card, so I selected this and once I set Mandrake to support these 3D features, everything ran blazingly fast. In fact, my experience running Mandriva was the fastest I have ever had on my notebook. Compared to this, Windows XP runs sluggish. Mepis has always provided very good performance but Mandriva raises the bar even more.
The default software set installed by Mandriva is very complete, and Mandriva provides a tool to download additional software. While Skype was not on this list, I was able to easily install the Mandriva version of Skype 2.0 for Linux by going to Skype's download site. Most everything else I wanted to add was listed as software I could install simply by clicking and downloading.
I showed one of my colleges my notebook running Mandriva and he exclaimed "Wow!" He was impressed by the speed, the 3D effects and the overall appearance of the themes. I then decided to tackle the Wi-Fi issue. When all else fails, most Linux distributions provide a tool called ndiswrapper that allows you to use Windows drivers instead of Linux drivers. In most cases, either the Wi-Fi will work, or it requires a patch to the kernel. Mandriva's site said that the paid version of the software included support for the Broadcom BCM 43XX chipset used by my Wi-Fi card. I have enough experience to know that often the Windows version of the driver that comes with a laptop won't work with ndiswrapper because it has been tweaked or changed in some way by the notebook vendor. I have found that it is better to look for a more generic version. I used Google and searched for "ndiswrapper bcm 43xx", and found links to download the OEM version of the windows driver. Then I simply used the instructions on the web site to install the driver. Once I did this, I went to Mandriva's control panel, selected "Add a new network device" and followed the instructions.
I consider my Acer to be a "worst case" scenario for Linux. I have installed Linux on a number of more generic notebooks, and the install goes much more smoothly. Because my notebook is so difficult to support, I had very few options. Fortunately, Mandriva was one of those options. Not only did Mandriva install easily, it also provided me with one of the best user experiences I have ever had with Linux. Mandriva is now back on my list of favourite Linux distributions.
Michael C. Barnes is president NorhTec (http://www.norhtec.com).
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