Ken Restivo wrote:
On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 04:11:38PM -1000, david wrote:
Ken Restivo wrote:
On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 03:29:52PM -1000, david wrote:
Ken Restivo wrote:
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 04:41:25PM -0600, Josh Lawrence
wrote:
Hey all,
After getting scorched by purchasing two laptops with
almost zero Linux support (battery status? what battery?),
I have decided to go looking for a laptop that is sold by a
company that supports Linux. I'm looking for any pointers
to companies that sell Laptops that run Linux here in the
US. (I'm already familiar with System76.) Bonus points if
you've done business with them and have praise or warnings
to go along with the pointers. Feel free to shill for your
own company if you want, just make sure if you recommend a
laptop that Linux can read the damn battery status. :)
I bought an Asus laptop (Core 2 Duo, 2.33Ghz) 4 years ago and
it is still my main audio production station on Linux. There
was some weirdage with the ATA support; a SATA drive would
have been a better choice, but that wasn't their fault, it
was mine in configuring the machine.
I also have an Asus EEE in which everything "just works",
better than any hardware I've ever had... probably because
Asus used to actually ship the EEE with Linux.
A friend of mine's family has a number of Asus EEE PCs, they
all work very nicely with Linux.
I have used ThinkPads before, and they do indeed work well on
Linux, but I absolutely HATE HATE HATE that damned nurple. I
will never buy a Thinkpad again. Gimme a trackpad or
trackball or a real mouse any day, and please, no nurple.
Decades ago, at a previous employment, I borrowed a Thinkpad
laptop to take notes at a meeting. It had the IBM Trackpoint in
the keyboard. I used the laptop for about 45 minutes, went back
to my desktop machine (also an IBM, but no Trackpoint in the
keyboard) - and found my fingers automatically reaching for the
Trackpoint. They are incredibly efficient. Sorry you didn't
like it.
I guess some people actually do like it.
ThinkPad + focus_on_mouse + typing anything with a 'g' or 'h' in
it == TROUBLE.
Didn't have any trouble typing those letters. What do you mean by
"focus_on_mouse"?
I have for the last decade or so set whatever window manager I've
used to focus on mouse. Every window manager I've seen on Linux has
this as an option; although I'd have to go back probably 20 years to
find one that had it as a default (Sun OpenLook? HP CDE?).
Focus on mouse means that, wherever the mouse is over, that window is
where whatever I am typing is going to get typed. I don't have to
click on a window (or bring it to the front, if it is a non-tiling
window manager) in order to switch from one window to another. This
makes it very fast and easy to switch between windows. In ion3 I can
also do it with key commands as well.
Anything that moves the mouse while I am typing, screws me up
massively. I end up with stuff typed in wrong windows. It sucks a
lot. ThinkPad nurples do that to me, hence I don't use them.
To be fair, the trackpad on the EEE does this to me occasionally too,
since my palm will occasionally contact the trackpad and move my
mouse around, causing me to exclaim "AARRRGHH!!". I dislike that a
great deal. But it happens far less often than with the IBM nurple.
Also, trying to do any kind of fine graphic manipulation (i.e. GIMP,
or even selecting text in an xterm!) with a nurple is beyond
frustrating for me. Trackpads and mice can do fine manipulatinos with
a lot more coarse movements.
My wife encountered that problem with trackpads a while ago. Only way I
could figure out to avoid it was to disable the trackpad completely.
(Although the distro on her present laptop doesn't seem to be having the
problem with the trackpad is enabled.)
I HATE focus on mouse. I always turn it off. Needing to keep the mouse
pointer over the window I'm working with just puts it in the way.
Positioning it somewhere else is also annoying - trying to find an empty
bit of desktop space for it isn't easy. Plus accidentally moving the
pointer over some other window and having it become active (as you
mention). I think focus on mouse isn't worth saving one click to make a
window active.
I find keystrokes like Alt-Tab much faster than clicking to switch
between windows - don't have to grab the mouse, move the pointer over
the target window (assuming it's visible) or over whatever window task
bar thing the desktop environment offers, then click. (Although there
are a few apps that don't cooperate with that method if they happen to
have a dialog box open.)
I can use trackpads, but I don't really like them.
I have a trackball right now, but would much prefer to be using a
graphics tablet again. Used one for many years. The mapping between
tablet surface and display is marvelous - could do all kinds of pointer
moves and actions without looking at the tablet.
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
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