The state of Laptop Linux

LinuxWorld has an article on the current state of Linux on laptops. It considers suspend/resume functionality, video and other device drivers, CPU throttling, and overall ease of use.

I thought it was time to revisit the question of whether any Linux distribution was really laptop-ready. My criteria were simple. To be considered a success, a distribution needed to install and all the laptop components needed to work without any software installs or changes to the kernel.

The author comes to the conclusion that things have improved a lot in the last year, but there’s a long way to go. I agree with him whole heartedly and I’m hoping more distributions follow in the path of Novell’s Suse which has been the only distribution to be fully effective on my Dell 600m (even Gentoo can’t get the wireless right just yet - but I’m working on it). I’m hoping the next release cycle of distributions sees the following features perfected:

• flawless suspend/resume
• fast hibernation (Windows can do it, why can’t the penguin?)
• full, native Centrino support
• full support of the recent releases from the ipw2200 project
• full support for specialized shock-resistant hard drives (like HP’s Active Protection)