Yesterday, the well-traveled and now-infamous Quebecistani Craptop — a temporary replacement for my wonderful Dell X300, stolen in Montreal — was laid to rest. At least until EuroOSCON, at which point it will be returned to Canonical.
Today, I replaced it with a Dell D420.
It’s 100% Intel: Core Duo, 900 series graphics, ipw3945 wifi, MediaBase with DVI socket, 12″ widescreen @ 1280x800x32. I don’t have to fuck around with non-Free kernel modules. Modern, hardware accelerated rendering technologies work. It has reasonable power management. I can sort out things like suspend and hibernate.
I can enjoy unbridled Software Freedom from the comfort of my own lap!
Excuse me for the off-topic, but… are you sure the 900 series are hardware accelerated?
I don’t feel so with my intel 915 in a inspiron 1300 π
I hear you. I recently inherited an older Latitude C400. Everything works under Ubuntu. Everything. This package, enough power. π
what’s the exact name of it? π
Nice π
I was considering D420, but after much thinking I’ll take D620. Sure, all Intel, to enjoy full Freedom π
Yea I like that laptop, I was concidering in buying it before buying the E1405 which is still very good for the price.
sorry.. i didnt read well enough..
Well it ain’t a macbook!
Wireless requires closed source daemon afaik (unless someone already revengineered that)
Doesn’t the ipw3945d bridle your Software Freedom?
(a madwifi π user)
Too bad you have to pay the microsoft tax if you want to buy it from Dell.
Well, mostly free anyway. The binary daemon needed for ipw3945 is kind of a bummer.
ipw3945 needs a non-free userspace daemon
It’s smaller and has no TPM-chip. π
“I donΓ’β¬β’t have to fuck around with non-Free kernel modules.”
Actually, you do: 3945ABG network work with a closed source daemon that runs as root, last time I tried…
Please keep us updated on real-world battery life of that laptop and display quality. Some of the Dells I’ve seen in that size had very bad viewing angles. In a 12 sqm room, laptop placed on a desk, two people sitting on a nearby bed, one on a real chair – it was impossible for all of them to get a undistorted view on the movie. I find that really bad.
Sure, bright and fancy colors are nice, too. But my 4+ year old Thinkpads display is 1600×1200, dead sharp, and has a viewing angle of ~160ΓΒ° horizontally and like 120ΓΒ° vertically. That Dell was 1 year old and had like 15ΓΒ° vertically. Some 600er model.
Thanks for posting this Jeff, I’m in the (Australian) market for a new laptop myself.
I’m seriously considering purchasing one of these for myself… would you mind indulging me by answering the below questions regarding this laptop? π
Questions:
1) Have you since found any hardware components that don’t work under your GNU/Linux OS (I plan to run Fedora Core on it)?
2) Did you keep the bundled Microsoft Windows XP license, or did you manage to somehow get it refunded, excluded, etc.? I plan to attempt not paying for this, as I won’t be using it.
3) How are you finding the performance of the bundled 4200RPM HDD?
Thanks π
ps. feel free to email me wrt. this, else I’ll periodically check this blog entry’s comments (or see a related update in the Planet Gnome feed) — cheers
Super sweet! Being able to run ones hardware fully enabled while keeping everything FOSSy isn’t something one sees often. Let’s hope this is just the beginning of a new and welcomed trend, which will have many copycats π
I guess much kudos goes to intel for sticking to an OpenSource-scheme for their Linux-drivers to make this one possible.
Best regards…
MacSlow
I have last year’s Dell X1, and the SD card reader works a beaut.
Thanks jdub.
With regards to the monitor quality, I guess I’ll have to just get off my butt and visit some laptop shops firsthand… :\
MacSlow, how cool would a “Free Software Compatible” hardware certification be?!
*chemaja nudges Ubuntu*
Have to say, I’m deliriously happy with my Acer 2428. Everything except Bluetooth works out of the box under Dapper: wireless, suspend, hibernate, DVD drive, 3D, AA fonts. Pretty impressive wireless too.
Do update us on the state of the SD card slot. It might work with the sdhci driver…
Re: ipw3945, just sell the card on ebay and buy in an ipw2200. Then you only have to worry about firmware.
The 900 series is “hardware accellerated” but not very strong. A lot of the more complex features are done in software on the main CPU. If you need openGL for something light, like Xgl or Aero, they’ll do, but don’t expect them to handle games well.
I just bought a Tecra M7, and they were selling a service from LoJack, laptop theft recovery stuff. I’m guessing the software attempts to contact servers at wherever every so often and attempt to correlate the source with a particular region. Wouldn’t be too hard, with ISP cooperation, to find out that a given IP translates into the local starbucks. I didn’t buy it, partly because there’s no linux version (there is a Mac), and partly because I don’t nessecarily trust these people. The primary reason this all works seems to be that thieves don’t do things like wipe the drives before booting off the main media, etc.
I wonder how hard it would be to implement something like that. I suppose there’s some considerations before it can stand up in court, but you’d think a tool who’s source is openly disclosed to the courts would be one less obstacle.
Hi Jeff –
If you’re using NetworkManager and ipw3945, you’ll want to add MODULES=”ipw3945″ to your /etc/defaults/acpi-support.conf file if you want wireless to work after resuming from sleep or hibernation. Otherwise NM will not see networks when you wake up. I’ve had issues with S3 sleep being flaky, but hibernation works flawlessly.
I have the D620. I recommend you pollute your disk with a copy of windows and register your fingerprint with the TPM – that way you have nice biometric authentication on startup, provided by the BIOS. You can then remove windows. Be sure to register all your fingers in case you cut or mangle one =) Look on the ThinkWiki for instructions on adding fingerprint auth to PAM, works great.
No reason to disable the TPM either – it won’t magically DRM anything, it’s just a secure place to store private keys.
Also, there’ve been a bunch of firmware updates; you’ll need windows to update the bluetooth firmware, and I believe the system bios now stands around A04.