From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 27 Jun 2001 05:08:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 27 Jun 2001 05:08:14 -0400 Received: from mercury.Sun.COM ([192.9.25.1]:50354 "EHLO mercury.Sun.COM") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id convert rfc822-to-8bit; Wed, 27 Jun 2001 05:07:57 -0400 Message-ID: <3B39A269.4C7E60@Sun.COM> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 11:07:53 +0200 From: Julien Laganier Organization: Sun Microsystems X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Nilsson CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Some experience of linux on a Laptop In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org John Nilsson wrote: > > Well I thought that it was time for me to give some feedback to the linux > community. So I will tell you guys a little of my experience with linux so > far. > > I have a Toshiba Portégé 3010CT laptop. That is: > 266MHz Pentium-MMX > 4GB HD with 512kb cache (which linux reduces to 0kb) > 32 Mb EDO RAM > > After have tried > Slackware > Gentoo > Linux From Scratch > Debian > Mandrake > and soon ROCK linux > > I have come to the conclusion that linux is NOT suitable for the general > desktop market, I have configured a number of linux routers/fierwalls and am > really pleased with the scalability, but the harware compatibility is to > damn low for a general user base. I know this isn't really a Linux issue > rather a distribution issue, but in the end it's you guys that make the > drivers. So a little plea is that you let the optimization phase cooldown a > little and concern your self a little more with compatibility, and ease of > installation, (tidy up the kernel build system). > > On my particular computer the chipset (toshiba specific) is not supported > wich makes the harddrive unable to run in UDMA and/or use it's cache. > Somehow this make X totaly unusable. With a little luck if it doesn't hang > it takes several minutes to launch a simple program. > This could be X specific, but I doub't it. > > So when you speak of being able to run on 386:es I still have problem > starting X on 266MHz with 32Mb mem. This should not be =) Take a look at http://www.linux-laptop.net It's quite useful :-)