Hi,
Acer has introduced a new range of notebooks starting at under Rs. 20,000. You can check out its features here:
http://www.acer.co.in/products/notebooks/aspire3680.html
And while you're at it, look for the line at the bottom of the page, which says:
"The Linux that is pre-loaded is a free version and would have limited functionality until another operating system is installed"
Now, does that mean that some drivers are not available on Linux or is it simply negative marketing for Linux?
Hi,
On 6/17/07, Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com wrote:
Acer has introduced a new range of notebooks starting at under Rs. 20,000. You can check out its features here:
http://www.acer.co.in/products/notebooks/aspire3680.html
And while you're at it, look for the line at the bottom of the page, which
says:
"The Linux that is pre-loaded is a free version and would have limited functionality until another operating system is installed"
Now, does that mean that some drivers are not available on Linux or is it simply negative marketing for Linux?
Has anyone tried out the pre-loaded Linux distribution or installed another distribution on this particular model (Acer 3680) ? I am thinking of buying it -- seems to be economical and suited to my requirements but my primary concern is Linux compatibility. Kindly share your experiences and reports.
The local vendor tells me the WLAN card is by Atheros.
Another thing about marketing --- look out for small prints --- the price is more than what catches your eye !
Regards, Sourabh
saurabh daptardar wrote:
On 6/17/07, Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com wrote:
"The Linux that is pre-loaded is a free version and would have limited functionality until another operating system is installed" Now, does that mean that some drivers are not available on Linux or is it simply negative marketing for Linux?
Has anyone tried out the pre-loaded Linux distribution or installed another distribution on this particular model (Acer 3680) ? I am thinking of buying it -- seems to be economical and suited to my requirements but my primary concern is Linux compatibility. Kindly share your experiences and reports.
The local vendor tells me the WLAN card is by Atheros.
Another thing about marketing --- look out for small prints --- the price is more than what catches your eye !
Acer models which come preinstalled with Linux usually have a minimal install of Linpus (http://distrowatch.com/linpus). It boots into runlevel 3. To get the laptop to do anything productive, one usually has to format and install a more capable distro.
On 6/17/07, Vivek J. Patankar list307@gmail.com wrote:
Acer models which come preinstalled with Linux usually have a minimal install of Linpus (http://distrowatch.com/linpus). It boots into runlevel 3. To get the laptop to do anything productive, one usually has to format and install a more capable distro.
They might as well sell their laptops OS-less. They're reinforcing the belief that Linux is this GUI-less, strictly geeks only OS.
On 6/17/07, Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com wrote:
They might as well sell their laptops OS-less. They're reinforcing the belief that Linux is this GUI-less, strictly geeks only OS.
Perhaps the idea is to avoid the price of a XP/Vista license on a low-end model like this one. Regards, Mohan S N
On 6/18/07, Mohan Nayaka mohansn@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps the idea is to avoid the price of a XP/Vista license on a low-end model like this one.
Are all these low end models?
http://www.acer.co.in/products/notebooks/aspire5050.html http://www.acer.co.in/products/notebooks/aspire5583.html http://www.acer.co.in/products/notebooks/aspire5573.html
--- Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
They might as well sell their laptops OS-less. They're reinforcing the belief that Linux is this GUI-less, strictly geeks only OS.
Possibly. However, in 2007, we could think this belief is /believed/ by those who are entirely covered by walls of /opaque/ windows. ;) And population of the above category could be smaller in Mumbai.
-- FSF of India Associate Fellow - http://www.gnu.org.in S K Somaiya College of ASC- http://www.somaiya.edu/sksasc ubunturos @ freenode
Once upon a time there was 1 GB storage on Yahoo! Mail. Go here for happy ending- http://in.mail.yahoo.com
On 6/18/07, Roshan d_rosh2001@yahoo.co.in wrote:
Possibly. However, in 2007, we could think this belief is /believed/ by those who are entirely covered by walls of /opaque/ windows. ;) And population of the above category could be smaller in Mumbai.
People don't know about it in the circles I have stayed in for most of the time.
On Monday 18 June 2007 09:11, mehul wrote:
On 6/18/07, Roshan d_rosh2001@yahoo.co.in wrote:
Possibly. However, in 2007, we could think this belief is /believed/ by those who are entirely covered by walls of /opaque/ windows. ;) And population of the above category could be smaller in Mumbai.
People don't know about it in the circles I have stayed in for most of the time.
Hmm. Why dont you speak up and save those poor sods some money. Unless ofcourse u spend most of your time with your enemies.
On 6/18/07, jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:
People don't know about it in the circles I have stayed in for most of the time.
Hmm. Why dont you speak up and save those poor sods some money. Unless ofcourse u spend most of your time with your enemies.
Well couple of them are a bit aware of linux. They agreed to try it but for one problem - games. All of them I know use PC for games most of the times and find it inconvinient to use 2 OS's. One couldn't because he uses sharekhan's site a lot and it uses MS-JVM. I wrote an email a month or so back to sharekhan but no reply still.
mehul wrote:
One couldn't because he uses sharekhan's site a lot and it uses MS-JVM. I wrote an email a month or so back to sharekhan but no reply still.
Recently I came across a client who had trouble opening the stock table within a share trading website. The problem was that M$ JVM had to be enabled and Sun Java VM (If installed) and JRE had to be disabled in Explorer. Now why do they have discrimination within Java which is cross platform? The same client's Power India Bulls java based installed software uses Sun JRE.
Hi, Roshan wrote:
Possibly. However, in 2007, we could think this belief is /believed/ by those who are entirely covered by walls of /opaque/ windows. ;) And population of the above category could be smaller in Mumbai.
mehul wrote:
People don't know about it in the circles I have stayed in for most of the time.
Whether one is covered by walls with opque windows or one stayes in a circle or square , the basic question is unanswered --- does linux work on acer laptops ( 3680 ,5050 , 5583 ,5573 etc ) with a proper GUI and drivers for all devices ? Assuming that I do not want to use high-end graphic applications and video games --- I want to use it only for programming , making documents , surfing Internet and accessing intranet (wireless or wired) will a linux distribution with decent GUI ( kde / gnome etc) work on it ?
Has anyone tried it ? Were any problems encountered ? Or like the advertisement says linux has limited functionality and cannot support all the features the laptop offers?
Regards, Sourabh
On 19-Jun-07, at 1:52 PM, saurabh daptardar wrote:
Has anyone tried it ? Were any problems encountered ? Or like the advertisement says linux has limited functionality and cannot support all the features the laptop offers?
the advertisement does *not* say linux has limited functionality - it says that the version of linux installed on the laptop has limited functionality. Which is true.
On 6/19/07, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:
the advertisement does *not* say linux has limited functionality - it says that the version of linux installed on the laptop has limited functionality. Which is true.
But, a not so technologically savvy person will read it as "free versions of linux have limited functionality"
On 19-Jun-07, at 9:25 PM, mehul wrote:
the advertisement does *not* say linux has limited functionality - it says that the version of linux installed on the laptop has limited functionality. Which is true.
But, a not so technologically savvy person will read it as "free versions of linux have limited functionality"
that is why the print is small - for example you need a magnifying glass to find that a certain business management group's degrees are not recognised by UGC.
On Tuesday 19 June 2007 13:52, saurabh daptardar wrote:
Whether one is covered by walls with opque windows or one stayes in a circle or square , the basic question is unanswered --- does linux work on acer laptops ( 3680 ,5050 , 5583 ,5573 etc ) with a proper GUI and drivers for all devices ?
My post gave u two urls both of which detailed the steps neede to make graphics work.
Assuming that I do not want to use high-end graphic applications and video games --- I want to use it only for programming , making documents , surfing Internet and accessing intranet (wireless or wired) will a linux distribution with decent GUI ( kde / gnome etc) work on it ?
Has anyone tried it ? Were any problems encountered ? Or like the advertisement says linux has limited functionality and cannot support all the features the laptop offers?
That is homework for you. And while you do that homework you will discover the many ways in which you are conned of your money. FOSS demands that you care about what you do. which means doing many things yourself. Corollary - dont sit on your a.. and expect answers.
Hi, Just got by a random google search:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=392666
On 6/20/07, jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:
That is homework for you. And while you do that homework you will discover the many ways in which you are conned of your money. FOSS demands that you care about what you do. which means doing many things yourself. Corollary - dont sit on your a.. and expect answers.
I agree that we learn by experiments and experience. However, in some situations it is better to know others' experiments and experiences before you venture into something !! Do we touch a hot pan to see whether it really burns ?
I do not think FOSS prohibits or discourages people from 'expecting answers' or sharing knowledge and experiences. Does any one know a person knows everthing about computers from electrons to all the sophisticated applications in the world ? So whenever a component fails people will ask for quick solutions ( rather than philosophies ) from the people who know something about it .
These corollaries are likely to drive the newbies and non-FOSS-experts away from FOSS who get the impression that things work well in proprietary solutions without much effort wheras in linux it is not the case and they might not even work . ( I have seen this attitude in the company where I worked , where a linux-based efficient solution was rejected by the client who thought it would not work reliably as it was not based on proprietary solution . So even if the team had done the homework they suffered at the hands of the people who do not like to do their homework ;) !! )
Finally as Larry Wall says : " We encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer : laziness , impatience and hubris."
Regards, Sourabh
On Tuesday 26 June 2007 13:02, saurabh daptardar wrote:
Hi, Just got by a random google search:
Finally as Larry Wall says : " We encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer : laziness , impatience and hubris."
;-)
On 6/17/07, Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/17/07, Vivek J. Patankar list307@gmail.com wrote:
Acer models which come preinstalled with Linux usually have a minimal install of Linpus (http://distrowatch.com/linpus). It boots into runlevel 3. To get the laptop to do anything productive, one usually has to format and install a more capable distro.
They might as well sell their laptops OS-less. They're reinforcing the belief that Linux is this GUI-less, strictly geeks only OS.
are canonical/ubuntu folk listening.. maybe another target to have the laptop with a desktop linux installed.. (like dell, hcl..)
Karunakar
Quoting G Karunakar indlinux@gmail.com:
are canonical/ubuntu folk listening.. maybe another target to have the laptop with a desktop linux installed.. (like dell, hcl..)
you are assuming that acer *wants* to sell linux based systems. That is wrong - they *want* to sell vista based systems - but for the price to be attractive they cannot afford to bundle vista with the system. From the experience of a friend of mine about 2 years back, the vendors are instructed to try and make sure that the computer doesnt leave the shop without doze on it - and those were high end laptops with fully functional suse installed on them.
kg
we can easily understand that the big companies must have payed for this negative marketing against the superior and cost effective linux. first these people put a command line based distro with very limited capability. this makes novices believe that linux is a very un userfriendly and limited OS. why do you think most new to linux people first give a reaction like "oh, linux nono no not for me. it is a command line based system and I can't do my daily work like office etc.". this is thanks to such marketing where one puts linux on their most selling laptops and then tell people "look how rubbish it is. this is just for starting and testing ur laptop. better put windows ". friends we all must stay away from such terrorist and stick to those who do support freedom. I believe compaq and IBM are the best for linux in must cases and I tried a few toshiba models which work well with linux. and we must wait and watch when the del/ ubuntu combination hits indian markets. regards, Krishnakant.
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krishnakant Mane wrote:
we can easily understand that the big companies must have payed for this negative marketing against the superior and cost effective linux. first these people put a command line based distro with very limited capability.
Perhaps there is an economic reason for shipping with this "OS" as opposed to FreeDOS - might be worth poking around that. Shipping hardware without a preinstalled OS does have some legal/transactional issues if I recall correctly
- --
You see things; and you say 'Why?'; But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
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krishnakant Mane wrote:
we can easily understand that the big companies must have payed for this negative marketing against the superior and cost effective linux. first these people put a command line based distro with very limited capability.
Perhaps there is an economic reason for shipping with this "OS" as opposed to FreeDOS - might be worth poking around that. Shipping hardware without a preinstalled OS does have some legal/transactional issues if I recall correctly
One reason could be a clause in their agreement with M$ that they will not install a fully functional (FF) OS that's not $doze. A "Limitted......Linux" helps sell fully functional $doze.
One other problem with installing FF Linux by the hardware seller is that for every small problem or setting, the user will keep coming back to him and for every new device he buys, he will expect it to run in linux.
saurabh daptardar wrote:
Has anyone tried out the pre-loaded Linux distribution or installed another distribution on this particular model (Acer 3680) ? I am thinking of buying it -- seems to be economical and suited to my requirements but my primary concern is Linux compatibility. Kindly share your experiences and reports.
If you have the money honey, then buy at least a centrino based lappy. Celeron is for very basic usage.
On Sunday 17 June 2007 10:30, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
Hi,
Acer has introduced a new range of notebooks starting at under Rs. 20,000. You can check out its features here: http://www.acer.co.in/products/notebooks/aspire3680.html
And while you're at it, look for the line at the bottom of the page, which says:
"The Linux that is pre-loaded is a free version and would have limited functionality until another operating system is installed"
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=34193 http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3493
The usual limitations with graphics.
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G Karunakar -
jtd -
Kenneth Gonsalves -
krishnakant Mane -
lawgon＠au-kbc.org
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mehul -
Mohan Nayaka -
Rony -
Roshan -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay -
saurabh daptardar -
Siddhesh Poyarekar -
Vivek J. Patankar