| 8,000 TuxTop models and counting |
Nov. 24, 2008
 An online web directory that tracks pages about installing Linux on specific laptops and notebooks says the Internet now has over 8,000 such pages. And, according to Werner Heuser's TuxMobil.org site, the number of online Linux guides has been "rapidly increasing" during the current year.
Werner Heuser. That name brings back memories.
Flashback to 1997. HP was selling a little 4-pound Pentium laptop called the OmniBook 800. It had a full-size keyboard, 10.4-inch TFT display, and a Neomagic chipset with an integrated graphics processor (IGP). Heuser took an interest in the machine, and published several webpages about installing and tweaking Linux on it.
I remember all this, in part, because a year later, when 800ct's went on sale for $900, I bought one. At that low price, I was happy to buy the optional 80MB RAM expansion module, too.
A "netbook" with a 7-inch screen, and the 800ct, with a 10.4-inch screen
(Click to enlarge)
Pretty soon, Heuser began maintaining a "Laptop HOWTO" for the Linux Documentation Project. Whenever someone would manage to get Linux running on another laptop, he'd add their resource to the HOWTO, and give it a listing on TuxMobil.org.
Back then, installing Linux on a standard whitebox PC was often a challenge, due to spotty driver support. And on a laptop, the challenge was tougher, because you couldn't just swap in a different video card or peripheral if you needed to.
I still recall the evenings spent getting Debian onto my 800ct. Sound, in particular, required editing the driver source code and compiling a special driver to support the half-size buffer in the "100% Soundblaster" hardware. But oh, how sweet that 16-bit audio sounded, once it finally worked!
Things have changed a lot. The Linux kernel and drivers now install transparently on almost all hardware, regardless of vintage. That is because Linux drivers are maintained by the Linux community, rather than by hardware vendors (who may have a vested interested in letting drivers for older products become obsolete).
Still, Linux's openness to user configuration means that the work of tracking hints and helpful tidbits is never done. Higher-level challenges for laptops include tuning power management, getting less-used stuff like IrDA working properly, and configuring peripherals for any new or emerging technologies that may not have completely settled yet (until recently, wireless, bluetooth, and webcams arguably fell into that category).
Today, TuxMobil claims to have guides for 8,000 different machines, making it the largest web directory of Linux and mobile hardware. Additionally, the past year has seen a "rapid" increase in the number of guides contributed, according to the organization. Sorted by manufacturer, distribution, and language, the guides offer something about "almost any laptop model ever produced," the organization claims. Other touted resources include pages on power management, WLAN, IrDA, BlueTooth, and hard disk drive encryption.
TuxMobil encourages users to submit their own Linux config pages. The site hopes to surpass its 10,000th page by 2010, it says. Find the site here.
-- Henry Kingman
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