Does anyone use a laptop as a main computer or have Vista?

D_Martin van Burden

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Works like a charm. My wife's Thinkpad T40 has been running it for a couple years.

My work PC for the last 2.5 years has been a T41 running RedHat Enterprise 3 and then 4, although I did have a WinXP partition that I could dual-boot into as needed. A few weeks ago, I got "refreshed" so I now have a T61 running RHEL 5...it has no Windoze partition at all.

I know this will sound hokey, but I really want to give Ubuntu and other open source projects a real chance because I support the philosophy they stand for. Solid computing equipment, relatively free of all the bugs that currently plague what we play now, productivity and fun, all wrapped up in an efficient package.
 

HazelGod

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I know this will sound hokey, but I really want to give Ubuntu and other open source projects a real chance because I support the philosophy they stand for.

It's not hokey at all. It only sounds a little off to most people because general perceptions and expectations have been so grossly distorted by decades of monopolization by greedy corporate interests.

I love the FOSS stuff. I work for one of the world's biggest computer corporations, and I haven't used a Microsoft product on the job in three years. My wife's laptop runs Ubuntu, as does the PC that I built for my mom. My main PC at home dual-boots it with WinXP on the other side, because I like to play shit like Crysis...but my network fileserver that houses all my photos, movies, music (and porn) runs Ubuntu. It's a solid desktop replacement OS for the majority of average PC users that only surf the web, email, and do photo/video editing. It supports a tremendous range of hardware (old and new) and has an enormous user community supporting it with both loyalty and tech expertise.

Make the jump. You'll be glad you did.
 

D_Martin van Burden

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I'm trying. I've had some technical glitches trying to install it on my desktop. Just some silly stuff. Screen resolution [can't finish the install because I can't move forward]. Don't know how to edit or where to find some of the files to fix the goofups. Oh... and my POS wireless card doesn't want to seem to be recognized, and you'd think NetGear would be on top of that shit. Sigh.

I know that I can look around on the Web to get answers. I just don't have time right now.
 

HazelGod

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I'm trying. I've had some technical glitches trying to install it on my desktop. Just some silly stuff. Screen resolution [can't finish the install because I can't move forward]. Don't know how to edit or where to find some of the files to fix the goofups.

The main file for controlling video out, as well as mouse/keyboard input, is /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Always remember the first rule of editing system files...make a backup copy before making any changes.
 

transformer_99

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I'm trying. I've had some technical glitches trying to install it on my desktop. Just some silly stuff. Screen resolution [can't finish the install because I can't move forward]. Don't know how to edit or where to find some of the files to fix the goofups. Oh... and my POS wireless card doesn't want to seem to be recognized, and you'd think NetGear would be on top of that shit. Sigh.

I know that I can look around on the Web to get answers. I just don't have time right now.

Wireless can be an adventure with Linux, what specific card are you using ? This may help for Ubuntu:

"https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupported"

The one I have a problem getting to work, D-Link DWL-650+, it's TI's 22 Mbps ACX100 chipset. They claim it works out of the box, I'm still waiting to see that. But I have an Orinoco ABG Gold card and a Netgear MA401 Rev D that use the restricted drivers that work fine.

Edit: All 3 wireless cards work now. I challenged myself and was able to get the D-Link to work for the 1st time.
 

Dorian_Gray

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I'm running a dual opteron 1u server with Ubuntu AMD64 Server Edition 7.10 with Xubuntu desktop running on top of a LAMP configured server. I have more mainstream computers like the desktop and notebooks and use them as well. The 1u server is my experimental relational database box. Graphics aren't it's strong point, SQL transactions and data crunching though it's a monster. Got her used off ebay, it's enterprise class hardware, 8 GB of ECC Registered DDR, the storage is massive with nearly 600 GB (4 X 147 GB SCSI U320 15K hdd's RAID 1 array). Oh, btw, it's loud too.


I've just recently acquired a rack off ebay, and i'm using a dual g5 xserve, with 2 cisco 2611 routers.... just for fun of course :) but yes... my laptop has almost become my primary. It's a tablet from motion computing, model LE1600 i think. I think my dream would be that monster of a graphics machine that nvidia makes that is rack mountable!
 

transformer_99

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I've just recently acquired a rack off ebay, and i'm using a dual g5 xserve, with 2 cisco 2611 routers.... just for fun of course :) but yes... my laptop has almost become my primary. It's a tablet from motion computing, model LE1600 i think. I think my dream would be that monster of a graphics machine that nvidia makes that is rack mountable!

Xserve is a beautiful server box, the Powerbook of servers. The latest rage though are blades for density per cubic foot of rackmount space.

Wanna have an eye opening experience, go configure one of those maxxed out @ Apple's website. The base system is $ 2,999. After selecting the max options available, $ 83,041 (with software support). I'm curious to find out how much they are on ebay. I see one starting at $ 785 plus $ 65 S&H. Dual G5 2 Ghz, 8 GB memory and 80 GB hdd.

The one I wound up with was under $ 485 delivered. Configured though on-line from a vendor brand new, mine was between $ 3,600-3,800 depending upon website configurator.

Mine being PC based, I see it as having a wider range of service. That is I can run Unix, Linux, Windows and so on. The Apple though, being the G5 PPC, I guess you're stuck with OS X, not that it's inferior or anything, but that's virtually an Apple only world for clients ? The new Xserve, it's Intel hardware, so I'd think Windows thru boot camp would work ?
 

Dorian_Gray

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Xserve is a beautiful server box, the Powerbook of servers. The latest rage though are blades for density per cubic foot of rackmount space.

Wanna have an eye opening experience, go configure one of those maxxed out @ Apple's website. The base system is $ 2,999. After selecting the max options available, $ 83,041 (with software support). I'm curious to find out how much they are on ebay. I see one starting at $ 785 plus $ 65 S&H. Dual G5 2 Ghz, 8 GB memory and 80 GB hdd.

The one I wound up with was under $ 485 delivered. Configured though on-line from a vendor brand new, mine was between $ 3,600-3,800 depending upon website configurator.

Mine being PC based, I see it as having a wider range of service. That is I can run Unix, Linux, Windows and so on. The Apple though, being the G5 PPC, I guess you're stuck with OS X, not that it's inferior or anything, but that's virtually an Apple only world for clients ? The new Xserve, it's Intel hardware, so I'd think Windows thru boot camp would work ?


Actually my xserve does run linux, usually fedora and mostly older versions. But I only put fedora on there when I feel like I just wanna fool with linux for a little while, then it's back to OSX. I was actually really surprised at the things osx server can do. And yea, the first thing that I did when I got it was to UP that HDD space, as of about a week ago its got 2 Hitachi 1tb sata 300 drives. I don't think my mac pro can touch some particular app performance... especially the alti-vec optimized apps. btw... that apple xserve raid fibre channel storage system is what I have my eye on. they run like 1000+ used though... if only money grew out "mi burro" but no.

PS.. that part about it being loud... you aren't kidding there... two cisco routers and an xserve have quite a nice little hum.