Linux laptop lust

Laptop hardware is an unconquered frontier for Linux -- a place where the cutting edge sometimes slices free software to shreds.

By Andrew Leonard

Sep 7, 1999 | My old steam-powered portable computer is finally showing signs of age. It never did like the Internet very much anyway -- now the merest suggestion that it get up to speed on full-motion video computer games or MP3 songs elicits senile disapproval. Increasingly, I've found it hard to restrain my drooling, lustful greed for a sleek, ultra-cool, oh-so-late-1999 laptop. Even though I know that a new laptop stays hip for about three minutes before it becomes obsolete, I still gotta have one. My credit card is ready.

There's just one problem. My new laptop needs to be Linux-compatible. I make my living covering the world of free software and I'm just not going to be satisfied with a computer that only runs Windows. I'm planning to be a dual-boot kind of guy, flipping back and forth between operating systems according to my whimsy.

But am I just asking for trouble? Laptops -- especially brand-new laptops -- are notorious for causing headaches to users of the Linux-based operating system. Laptop manufacturers delight in packing their machines with newfangled chips and gadgets whose design seems to change by the hour. Free software hackers, understandably, are often one or two steps behind those manufacturers in the struggle to write code that allows Linux to make use of such hardware.

Indeed, one of the main raps against the Linux-based operating system is its lack of support for brand-new hardware. The problem is that it's difficult for Linux hackers to gain access to the hardware specifications that they need in order to write code that will work with that hardware. This, in turn, is because many hardware manufacturers, especially those who aim at the consumer marketplace rather than at technical users, deem the Linux market too small to warrant accommodating.

It's not all doom and gloom. In some niches, vast progress has been made over the last six to 12 months. The leading makers of 3-D video chips, for example, are racing to ensure that their newest goodies work with Linux; they are increasingly aware that the avid game players who tend to buy the fastest 3-D chips are also often free software hackers.

Will the entire computer hardware industry fall into line? Or is this a case where free software may be hitting some of its limits -- consigned to always lag a little behind cutthroat hardware manufacturers constantly pushing the envelope of technological innovation? As I researched, for my own selfish reasons, the question of which new laptop might be most compatible with Linux, I found myself unable to get any definitive answers to these questions -- but I did get a close, illuminating look at the front lines of free software.

Consider, for example, the case of the much despised "winmodem."

Next Page: Death to the evil winmodem!

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