Blogs

Redmonk

Ubuntu, Drivers, and IHVs: Learning from Sierra

October 1, 2008 – 12:23 pm

Few recent posts have triggered as much offline discussion as my recent piece discussing Greg Kroah-Hartman’s presentation calling out Canonical on their lack of contributions. One of the interesting areas of pushback I received was with respect to open source drivers.

My basic contention was that the influx of new users (brought, in part, by Ubuntu) into the Linux community gave OEMs and IHVs alike new incentive to provide either open source or open source compatible drivers. Where someone like Sierra Wireless might have been little inclined to service the tiny pre-Ubuntu Linux desktop market, the increasing adoption - not to mention mainstream OEM validation - of Ubuntu perhaps changed that equation somewhat. It’s all about volume, remember. One of my correspondents, however, argued that the involvement of Intel preceded the introduction of Ubuntu.

Be that as it may, I stand by my original assertion that the new users that Ubuntu is bringing to Linux are beneficial not just for the distribution but all distributions, in part because of the influence they might wield on driver providers. The fact that this, for example, was possible I regard as attributable, at least in part, to the volume that Ubuntu contributed to.

Still, if my recent experience with Ericsson is any indication, there is much that some device manufacturers have yet to learn about interfacing with open source users.

Ericsson is the manufacturer, you might have read, of the WWAN card in my brand new Lenovo Thinkpad X301. Specifically, I’ve got a F3507g HSPA card on board, which connects to AT&T’s EDGE or 3G networks as they’re available.

Or it would, if it worked.

Sadly, unlike Sierra Wireless, Ericsson’s driver is not present in the Linux kernel by default. Which wouldn’t be a huge issue - it’s not that difficult to insert a driver - if it could be found. Because Ericsson’s own datasheet (PDF warning) asserts that there is a Linux driver available, I took the opportunity to contact Ericsson to inquire as to its location - Google having failed to turn it up. To Ericsson’s credit, I did receive a reply. Unfortunately, however, it was of no particular use:

We unfortunately do not have a direct sales or support to end customer. Our suggestion is for the customer to contact the company (Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba or LG) from whom he bought his laptop to obtain the updated driver.

The answer clearly misunderstood my original inquiry: I’m not looking for support of any kind - I can rely on the community for that. I just wanted a pointer to the driver. Lenovo, who may or may not be decommitting from Linux, was no more help than Ericsson, as its support site serves up only Windows drivers. Leaving me, unfortunately, with a non-functional WWAN card.

Hope is not lost quite yet, because it may be that an ndiswrapper solution will permit the usage of the card using the Windows driver. But questions remain: is there, in fact, a Linux driver? If so, where? And who can look into these questions on both sides.

It’s undeniably true that large corporations like Ericsson and Lenovo have to be careful with drivers and issues of support: you don’t need to look any further than this bug to understand that the implications can be severe. But it would also be useful for these firms to understand that Linux users, typically, are not asking for support - they just want the drivers. Firms that make a minimal effort to produce them need guarantee neither support nor warranty.

Sierra, for its part, seems to get this. As evidence, consider the disclaimer they apply to the page where they make their open source drivers available:

This guide is unsupported and is provided to the Linux user community as a courtesy. This document and associated drivers, scripts, and executable files are provided by Sierra Wireless “AS IS” without warranty of any kind.

Perfect. Give me the bits, and I’ll figure the rest out myself. I have before, anyway.

My hope is that with the continuing adoption of Ubuntu - along with Fedora, OpenSuSE, and netbooks of all shapes and sizes - more OEMs and IHVs will learn that lesson. The lesson that says that there are more and more non-Mac/Windows devices out there, and the community generally provide the support necessary to get them working…if they have the drivers.

I hope Ericsson, in particular, learns this. Because I want my F3507g driver.

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Open Source | 1 Comment

Is the Cloud Stupid?

September 30, 2008 – 8:29 pm

sand_beach

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign. Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.” - Richard Stallman, speaking to the Guardian about cloud computing

I don’t consider ours a business campaigning to make cloud computing anything at all: cloud computing is, after all, just one among many technology subjects that we cover. But count me among those less than intelligent by Stallman’s reckoning individuals that considers cloud computing inevitable. And actually, if one conflates - as Stallman appears to - SaaS applications like Google’s Gmail with cloud computing, I’ll go further and argue that’s it’s not inevitable, it’s done. Already.

Even communities, after all, that are staunch advocates of free software, are avid users of Gmail: just look at any project’s email list that you might care to. Given that, is it any surprise that your average user is less concerned about the threats Stallman perceives than wasting time running things they don’t have to? Or couldn’t? The history of this industry demonstrates quite adequately to me that users effectively don’t care much for the freedoms that Stallman and others nobly fight on their behalf for. We can argue about whether that’s good or bad, but I can’t see how you’d build the case that they do. Windows and Office have many virtues, but providing software freedom isn’t one of them - and yet they sell. And sell. And sell.

To be clear, I don’t mean that cloud computing or SaaS are inevitable in the sense that they replace all local or on premise infrastructure. There are far too many obstacles - be they network latency, compliance/regulatory issues or something as basic as customer trust - to project that. But the cloud is here to stay, in my view, because, well, it works.

Let’s consider an example. It makes little sense, I’d argue, for your average user, or small business, or - in many cases - medium business, to run their own email infrastructure. Outsourcing this capacity is merely sound practice; not least because a substantial portion of those audiences are simply incapable of running their own infrastructure. Stallman disagrees, arguing that you “do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program.” But something tells me I’m not likely to interest, say, my parents in the configuration, setup and maintenance of their own MTA instances. Or sendmail. Or whatever. Let alone the freedoms associated with the codebase.

Thus their email is cloud based.

What of the loss of control that Stallman fears? Well, standards can effectively mitigate that risk in certain cases. We decided to move from Zimbra to Google Apps, and thanks to IMAP the process was simple. I don’t control the Google environment any more than I did our hosted Zimbra, but I control the data (to the extent that I can retrieve it, anyway). Which is my primary concern.

It’s not that Stallman’s necessarily wrong, please note. There are legitimate concerns here, and I’ve obviously been careful to select, as my example, one of the more standardized technologies on the planet. There are much smarter people than I thinking seriously about the implications of less standardized web applications and the control they exert. And Nick Carr has long believed - as he told Stephen Colbert - that Google is poised to exert scary control over our lives, down to the way we think.

But still, in the face of end user ignorance and the impracticality of his alternative, Stallman’s quest seems - at best - quixotic. Again. Only this time, I expect him to have rather less success than in years past.

Frankly, the interview struck me more as an attempt to enlist users of SaaS applications or cloud environments as unwitting allies in his admirable crusade to secure in perpetuity the rights to the software in question. An attempt, I believe, that is doomed to fail simply not because he is really wrong, but because the economics of cloud computing are materially different than that of the deployment approaches that preceded it. As I expect we’ll see in some detail following the implosion of our economy: I’m with Tim on that one. Who can’t afford boxes rented by the minute? The fact is that Google, or Amazon, or Yahoo, or IBM, or Sun, can build and run datacenters better than I can. And better than you can. It’s simple economies of scale at work, and self-hosted free software will find that difficult to compete with over time.

In traditional computing - be it a desktop or a datacenter - in which the end user is responsible for the infrastructure, the benefits of free software are many. But in the cloud, these benefits may be trumped - easily - by the ability to outsource the cost of building, maintaining and supporting the infrastructure the free (or proprietary) software might run on top of.

Users - plenty of them - will prefer to remain unbeholden to the cloud platform providers, whoever they might be.

But many, many more will - already have - chosen the cloud. Because they’d prefer that infrastructure be someone else’s problem. And while I could argue with this in certain instances, I certainly don’t believe that it is stupidity or worse than stupidity: it’s pragmatism.

All of which begs the question of whether or not cloud computing is a clear and present danger to either or both of the free software or open source movements. From his comments, it seems reasonable to deduce that Stallman does so regard it. As does one of the smarter journalists you’ll meet: one David Berlind.

Personally, I disagree. To quote Austin Milbarge, for once I am in complete agreement with my partner: far from marginalizing F/OSS, the cloud may well prove to be its most significant benefactor.

Consider, for a moment, that the F/OSS’s impact on the PC has been, desktop marketshare-wise, negligible. And that while successful in the server market, it is hardly dominant. Yet in the cloud, F/OSS is at present the rule, rather than the exception.

Amazon? Built on Xen, hosting only (to date) open source operating systems (Linux and, in alpha, OpenSolaris). Google App Engine? Only the folks in Mountain View what, precisely, it’s composed of, but there’s little question that the foundation is open source. The language (Python) and the primary framework (Django), meanwhile, are as well. And so on. Some of the success of F/OSS within the cloud is doubtless attributable to the specific players. By Ray Ozzie’s own admission, Amazon - a shop with deep experience in open source technologies - simply took the cloud market far more seriously than did Microsoft. If the roles were to be reversed, the makeup of the cloud might look radically different.

But the foundational role that F/OSS plays within the cloud ecosystem cannot be entirely attributed to the players. Licensing - or the lack thereof - played its part, as did the technology itself. For many would-be cloud providers, F/OSS is simply the best tool for the job.

Which is why I’m far more sanguine about the role that it will play within the cloud. Are there quite legitimate questions to be asked about the business models that fund these projects, and how the cloud may impact them? Indeed.

But a successful cloud, to me, cements the success of the open source that powers it. Play the next few years out, as an exercise. The cloud is ascendant, business models are being radically impacted, and the economics of software and software licensing - have been overturned. The same economics that fund today’s commercial open source development - in other words, the majority of the development done on large projects.

Unless you can foresee a role in which these large cloud providers - the majority of whom today are based off F/OSS platforms - can seamlessly migrate to closed source, proprietary alternatives, I wouldn’t worry. The money might come from different areas than it does today, but it will be there. And given the challenge that scaling large environments presents, I’m guessing the developers will be too.

Popularity: 2% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Cloud | 6 Comments

links for 2008-09-30

September 30, 2008 – 6:03 pm

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Links | 0 Comments

links for 2008-09-29

September 29, 2008 – 6:01 pm

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Links | 1 Comment

Vocus Mail = Spam Mail

September 28, 2008 – 6:08 pm

Vocus PR is Killing Me


Vocus PR is Killing Me

Originally uploaded by sogrady

“Imagine you are a PR practitioner who has been tasked by your company with the challenge of creating buzz in the blogo-sphere to promote a new product launch. So you create a list of bloggers who have written about your company’s industry and prepare your pitch, and make sure to add links to additional information that would help them write a story about your company’s new product. Within two hours of sending your e-mail, you see that five bloggers have picked up your story. You click on the first story and are horrified to see that the blogger has completely trashed your company for ‘spamming’ them. Clicking on the others, you see that most other bloggers have responded similarly, and several have even posted copies of your pitch e-mail, criticizing both you and your company. Within 24-hours, your attempt to reach out to the blogosphere has turned into an utter failure.

Does this situation seem uncommon? Guess again. Thousands of PR pros who have been successful getting their companies covered in traditional media have encountered numerous obstacles when dealing with bloggers.” - Five Golden Rules for Blogger Relations, Vocus (PDF link)

Irony, thy name is Vocus. For the very same company authoring the above is the same that has made PR pitches the bane of my existence. Nor am I the only one so unfortunately afflicted; other bloggers like Volker Weber and Friend of RedMonk Josh Hallett have previously explained, Vocus is the originator of a substantial volume of PR spam. For many of us.

Among the entities who’ve put me on their Vocus email blast list are the Emergency Medical Associates, U.S. India Business Alliance, Welsh Assembly Government and the pictured Drug Information Association. If you’re wondering what I - a software industry analyst - has to do with any of the above, well, that makes two of us. The truth is that I could care less about any of them. Nor am I particularly interested in hearing what’s up with Jobfox, the City of St Petersburg Florida, or The World Electronics Expo - others that have chosen to Vocus-spam me in recent weeks.

Just opt-out, you say? If only it were that simple. Vocus is careful to ensure that you can, in fact, opt-out. Presumably because they’d prefer not to be litigated. But of course you can only opt-out of the list that spammed you. They decline to provide any mechanism - that any of us can find, anyway - to opt out of Vocus entirely. So instead those of us at sea in Vocus spam are required to click a link at the bottom of each incoming mail and opt-out individually. Which is clearly less than scalable. Nor particularly effective; I’ve opted out of the Abderdeen Group’s missives at least twice, and still they find their way to my Inbox.

The simple fix to this problem would be to filter everything coming from Vocus period by either bouncing it or deleting it. But sadly, this is not at present an option, because there are a few RedMonk clients that use the service. And automagically deleting client email - even that intended as marketing - is, I’m told, not a terribly strong idea.

The question then is what to do?

Ideally, reputable companies would either decline to use Vocus and/or move away from them: at which point I could simply blacklist their mail and move on with my life. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon, so for those of you that have a.) suffered from the Vocus spam problem or b.) work in the PR industry, I’m open to any suggestions you might have.

Because the situation at present is untenable.

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Spam, pr | 0 Comments

links for 2008-09-28

September 28, 2008 – 6:02 pm
  • An Inconvenient Bag - WSJ.com
    "But well-meaning companies and consumers are finding that shopping bags, like biofuels, are another area where it's complicated to go green. 'If you don't reuse them, you're actually worse off by taking one of them,' says Bob Lilienfeld, author of the Use Less Stuff Report, an online newsletter about waste prevention. And because many of the bags are made from heavier material, they're also likely to sit longer in landfills than their thinner, disposable cousins, according to Ned Thomas, who heads the department of material science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
    (tags: green wsj environment eco earth article planning)

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Links | 0 Comments

Friday Grab Bag

September 26, 2008 – 8:20 pm

sunset_on_lake_michigan

And so the sun sets on another week. A good week, in my view, as the Red Sox are headed to the playoffs for another year. Though I hear there was some bad news on the capital markets front.

Though the less most of us hear on that front, the better, at this point. I’ll keep this brief, as I’ve yet to eat and I’m up early tomorrow - despite it being a Saturday - en route to Boston, for my second Red Sox game of the week. Which is good. Less good is the forecast - heavy rain, and a near 100% chance of precipitation - but you knew that. It’s me, after all.

Anyhow, rather than the intended piece on hybrid source, here’s the usual hodgepodge of items that may or may not deserve their own entries, but aren’t going to get them. Pity them. And so, the grab bag:

  • Dropbox & Migration:
    The seamlessness of the Dropbox experience - it Just Works (TM) - makes me pine all the more for a for-pay offering featuring with greater capacity. This week saw the introduction, as you might have read, of apone, and I would have much preferred if migration consisted of automagically pushing my home directory to the new machine. Would have beat the hell out of manually rsyncing directories all over the place.
  • Firefox & Ubuntu:
    I’m quite glad to see some of the fervor and vitriol of the Firefox v Ubuntu EULA controversy subside. I make no defense of the legitimacy of the EULA in question; nor would, apparently, Mozilla. EULAs, to me, are much like patents; patently useless, but - according the current system - a necessary evil. Unless, of course, a legal type can educate me otherwise (please). My principal hope following this incident - and the Google Chrome EULA mishap that preceded it - is that the software industry feels compelled to take a harder look at the question of EULAs in general. What are they actually useful for? What, legally, do they provide? What’s enforceable, and in what geographies? And if they’re being cut and pasted, how important can they be, really?
  • iPhone App Pricing:
    After forgetting my razor and running out of toothpaste during last week’s trip to Las Vegas, I was horrified at the price of replacements in the Venetian’s “apothecary.” Three razors (I only wanted one) and a large tube of Crest (which I couldn’t take home with me) cost me north of $20. Highway robbery, but I was a captive audience.

    Like I am on the iPhone. Similarly, but slightly less disturbing was the fact that a few days later, I spent $3 on an SSH client for the iPhone. This feature - standard issue on every open source OS I’ve ever used - was for pay in the iPhone world. But as one of the Mac users at the office told me last week in response to my surprise: welcome to the world of Mac applications. Mac apps, of course, have long commanded premiums where their Linux counterparts that requested actual money were often stillborn.

    This, by itself, wouldn’t be remotely enough to change people’s perceptions of the platform. Nearly the entire staff at Beale Street, a local pub which employs a friend of mine, are iPhone owners and, further, application buyers.

    But I am curious as to whether or not free applications on alternate platforms - Android perhaps - coupled with (IMO) absolutely asinine and developer unfriendly “approval” processes will eventually have an impact. Or not.

  • Location & Privacy:
    One of the least discussed, at least in my world, aspects of location based services and the privacy implications is not the impact to the user, but their friends. I’m on record as being fairly unconcerned with location based devices, given that I’m an unlikely target for would-be stalkers. But as a friend pointed out last week, that could prove problematic if you visit people’s houses. I don’t mind, terribly, if people can track me; my friends, on the other hand, might be significantly less sanguine at the prospect. Which seriously complicates the question of how to ensure that location based services don’t infringe on privacy. Maybe Schneier has some ideas on the subject.
  • New Bag:
    With one of the zippers of my five or six year old Patagonia briefcase destroyed by TSA (thank the heavens they found that dangerous bottle of Aquafina I’d dropped in there a few days prior and forgotten about), I’m in the market for a new bag. While the odds are that I’ve already found its replacement - I should know shortly - I’m open to suggestions for replacements. Patagonia, sadly, no longer makes the model I was so happy with, nor can I find one on eBay.
  • Tomboy & Github:
    Another consequence of the migration exercise was the realization that porting my Tomboy notes was…not difficult, exactly, but far from seamless. The Tomboy team has done a good job of providing notes syncrhonization via Webdav, but I’d be ecstatic if they - and other projects - took this further, and provided an integration with hosted DSCMs such as Github. Not only would it make synchronization a far simpler task, it would go a long way towards handling the difficult problem of collisions. You know, just in case anyone was bored.
  • Yankee Stadium:
    Last, let me say a surprisingly fond farewell - almost a week late - to Yankee Stadium, the home of the Evil Empire. While I’ve had my share of unpleasant memories there - this being probably the worst - I will always remember it as a great place to watch a ballgame, and the scene of the single most improbable comeback in the history of sports. I’ll miss it, and the history it represents.

    Good and bad.

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Baseball, Privacy, browsers | 7 Comments

links for 2008-09-26

September 26, 2008 – 6:01 pm
  • Muxtape
    "Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations." - well done, RIAA. good job killing another excellent music discovery service. i mean, why would you want to eliminate a barrier to purchase, after all? it might undermine your the internet-is-killing-us act that in turn underpins your lobbyists arguments.
    (tags: riaa muxtape)

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Links | 0 Comments

Define “Contributions”

September 25, 2008 – 12:44 pm

In his opening keynote at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland, Greg Kroah-Hartman did so succinctly, if bluntly. His metric? Kernel contributions. Simple.

Using this yardstick, Kroah-Hartman (employed by Novell (not a RedMonk customer), but not speaking on their behalf) summarily judged and found wanting Canonical (a RedMonk customer), the commercial backer of Ubuntu (the distribution that I use). We can debate the merits of his usage of the venue for that purpose, the manner in which he pursued the issue, his definition of what constitutes upstream, or even the numbers themselves, but really that’s all academic at this late date.

Underneath all the rhetoric and the broadsides lies a real question: is Canonical a member in good standing of the Linux ecosystem? The answer, in my view, is that it depends on the metric you use. As usual.

As Amanda notes, Kroah-Hartman clearly is passionate about the importance of upstream contributions - and possibly equally passionate about his belief that Canonical is not pulling its weight in that regard. Which is his right, as a kernel developer and an individual. Nor is he alone in this perception; I can’t count the number of times individuals and commercial entites alike have disparaged Canonical’s role as a consumer.

Nor would Canonical fundamentally dispute the assertion, if the scope were limited to the Linux kernel; Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman is quite candid on the point, saying:

Canonical is primarily a consumer of the Linux kernel. It is one of the building blocks we need in order to fulfill our primary mission, which is to provide an operating system that end users want to use. It is, on the whole, a good piece of software which meets our needs well. We routinely backport patches from newer kernels, and fix bugs which are particularly relevant to us, but our kernel consists almost entirely of code we receive from upstream.

On that point, then, there is general consensus: we may take as a given that Canonical - whatever the numbers might actually be - not a significant contributor to the kernel, or a few closely associated projects. Especially relative to Novell and Red Hat (a RedMonk customer). The question then is what you make of that.

To paraphrase Old School’s Beanie Campbell, the whole town knows what Kroah-Hartman makes of that: the presentation’s clear mission was to embarrass Canonical. We also, thanks to Matt’s response and a piece from Mark, know some of what Canonical thinks on the subject: not shockingly, they take exception. Amanda, employed by the Linux Foundation, tends to agree, further arguing that the method employed was “unfortunate.” Last, one of my analyst colleagues - Jay Lyman - allows that Kroah-Hartman seems “to be taking a bit of a confrontational approach to Canonical.” LWN, meanwhile, was sympathetic.

Personally, I think the attacks on Canonical are ill conceived. If you disagree, ask yourself this question:

Assuming that Canonical has finite resources, are they better directed towards integration, packaging and polish, or kernel development?

Looked at that way, to me, the answer is simple: the former. The kernel, at present, does not generally suffer from a lack of contributors - at least as far as I’m aware. A Linux Foundation whitepaper from April, in fact, listing Greg as a coauthor, wrote that the “rate of change in the kernel is high and increasing, with almost 10,000 patches going into recent kernel releases.” I understand that as a Novell or Red Hat employee, it probably is irritating to see downstream kernel consumers building on your work, but in the grand scheme of things, Canonical’s lack of kernel contributions means little to customers. Focusing on a single player for their relative lack of kernel contributions, then, seems to me as an attempt to solve a corporate, rather than community, problem.

More, it seems to ignore what Canonical is actually good at; what they have, so to speak, brought to the proverbial table. The Ubuntu team and their commercial sponsor have carved out a niche for themselves as the packaging experts; it’s my relatively educated opinion that they do it better than anyone at the moment. Even better, the competition they’ve triggered has led to rapid improvements in other, alternative distributions. It’s my firm belief that neither Fedora nor OpenSuSE would be remotely as usable as they are today absent Ubuntu. This style of contribution - or its relative importance - may not be immediately apparent to all audiences, but as an Ubuntu user I appreciate it. And judging by the decision of major IHVs like Dell to ship it, so do they.

If Novell and Red Hat are then the better plumber, to beat the housing analogy to death, Canonical, to me, is the better designer/architect. And much like I don’t want a house without running water, I’d prefer one that’s designed to be livable. It takes all kinds, as they say.

When I consider relative contributions, then, to the community, my metrics go beyond kernel commits. But to each their own, of course.

Popularity: 1% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in Linux, Open Source | 6 Comments

Meet Apone: The X301 Review (Linux and Vista)

September 24, 2008 – 9:46 pm

x301, x300

For the first time in nearly four years, I have a new laptop. It’s the one with the stickers on it. Feel free to send more of those, incidentally.

After being patient and not purchasing an X61s last summer to replace my aging and beat up X40 (only a 40 GB hard drive, if you can believe that), as was originally planned, I’ve got a brand new machine with everything I could want. 128 GB SSD, 13.3″ 1440×900 LED backlit screen, dual batteries and so on in a package that weighs slightly more than three pounds (with the extra battery, otherwise ~3).

To be honest, it’s probably not in my self-interest to review this machine. The folks from Lenovo have historically been very generous with loaner machines in return for detailed reviews and feedback; what if they were to discover that I’d do these reviews anyway? But several of you have asked about the machine, and I live but to serve. So this one’s for you; let’s just keep it on the down low.

The Hardware

  • Battery Life:
    There are two problems with me estimating this for you: 1.) I’ve only had the laptop for 24 hours or so, and 2.) I actually have two batteries, complicating the assessment.

    Windows Vista, which did a better job of handling the two batteries seamlessly (Linux sees both, but will not calculate aggregated life expectation), guessed anywhere between 5 and 8 hours on two fully charged batteries. Other reviews I’ve seen indicate it’s closer to the former than the latter, but we’ll see.

  • DisplayPort:
    It’s got one, in addition to the standard VGA. I’m told I’ll care more about that in a year or two; for now, it doesn’t mean much to me.
  • DVD Player/Burner:
    Didn’t get one this time around. As mentioned on Twitter, I only used the DVD player on the X300 two or three times in five plus months, so replacing it with a second battery that I could use daily was an easy call.
  • Finish/Frame/Etc:
    It’s nearly identical to the X300. On the plus side, the frame is exceptionally stiff, while on the minus the matte finish is like glue for skin oils. Overall, the fit and finish is just what you’d expect from a Thinkpad; exceptional. They may not be aren’t sexy, but they are well made.
  • GPS:
    Haven’t tested this on Linux; on Windows, it failed to track because I was inside and had no line of sight to the satellites that power it.
  • Memory:
    I’ve got 3 GB on board, and I believe there’s room for one more - though that was the maximum available at order time. Could be wrong on that, though.
  • Processor:
    The machine is, frankly, a bit underpowered thanks to the Ultra Low Voltage processor they’ve crammed into the narrow casing. Its two cores run at a clock speed of 1.4 Ghz, which is almost a full stop down from even the X200. But the performance hasn’t been impacted in my brief usage; compiles took what they should, applications run with no perceptible impact, and so on. I’ll be interested to see what happens when I set up VMWare, but for now the processor is adequate.
  • Slots:
    What I miss most relative to other Thinkpads I’ve owned is a card reader. If you own a digital camera, as I do, the ability to pull a card and insert it directly in the machine is big. Also, the machine has no PCMCIA slot, so what’s on board is what you’ve got.
  • Screen:
    Maybe the laptop’s best feature. Although the same size as the MacBook Air’s, the X301’s LCD owns the higher resolution. The result is more screen real estate in the same footprint, one that in no way shape or form is an eyechart. The resolution provides enough space to run Firefox and have a third of the screen left for Twhirl, Pidgin, or whatever.
  • Speakers:
    They’re tremendous. Maybe not compared to a desktop replacement, but against any other ultralight or borderline ultralight, they’re exceptional. Which, given my music habits, is a good thing.
  • Trackpoint/Touchpad:
    I hate touchpads with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, which is why Michael Dolan’s reminder that it can be toggled off in the BIOS is worth a beer the next time I see him. Alex and some of the other Mac people I know might be right that I could adjust to the touchpad given time and better software, but it’s academic for now.
  • Weight/Size:
    The machine, as mentioned, weighs in between 3 and 4 pounds with the second battery (near as I can determine, anyway), and the dimensions are likely nearer the 14″ T series models than its 12″ X brethren, thanks to the sizable bezel. Which I’m fine with, personally, but if you’re used to a 12 inch model it’s an adjustment. And if you’re looking for a netbook, I recommend buying a netbook, not this.
  • WWAN:
    Lenovo offers both AT&T and Verizon cards for the machine; I chose the former because AT&T gets five bars of reception here in Maine, while Verizon gets one - if you walk up on the hill behind the house. Also, because I have one AT&T data account and zero Verizon data accounts. Under Vista, the signup process was painful because a.) it has to be done over the phone, and b.) I wanted to connect the on board card with an existing account, rather than create a new one. Making that happen took two calls to AT&T and another two to Lenovo. All of the support people were friendly, if ill equipped to handle my request.

    If you’re trying to convert from an existing card rather than sign up fresh, here’s what you need to do: get the IMEI and SIM numbers for the new card from the Lenovo Broadband Connectivity application, then call AT&T at 866.246.4852. Tell them the phone # associated with your data card to look up the account, then request they add the new hardware to the account using that data.

    That done, reboot the machine and fire up the Broadband Connectivity application or whatever Lenovo calls it, and see if it says the card is “Activated.” If yes, ignore the fact that it will tell you that you still have to sign up (don’t ask me, I don’t know). Instead go to “Access Connections,” and use that (seriously convoluted) UI to attempt a connection using HSPA. It worked here, and no, before you ask, I am not a fan of the ThinkVantage applications.

    As for the card on Linux, well, I’ll get to that in a moment.

Windows

I don’t have much feedback on Windows as I ran it for less than 24 hours all told, but Vista seemed to run without much effort. At no point, did it drag or hang, except when coming back from suspend. Boot time, however, was slow, even with the SSD.

Linux

Ok, this is what a high percentage of you people probably came here for. Herewith, then, the Linux on X301 report. One very important note before I get there, however.

For my distribution, I chose Ubuntu Hardy. Many of you will be doubtless be tempted to run Intrepid, or OpenSuSE 11.1, or something similarly new and cutting edge. I highly recommend that you not do this. Should you ignore that advice, you may risk damaging your ethernet card permanently, which - seeing as it’s integrated into the motherboard - is suboptimal. This bug describes the problem; basically, a rogue driver may overwrite the firmware of the device, rendering it inoperable. Worse, the tools that Intel provides to repair it (IABUTIL.EXE), will only worsen the problem by making the device invisible to the PCI bus. In case it’s not obvious, the fix for this is sending your laptop to Lenovo for a motherboard replacement. Seriously.

If you decide to proceed with Intrepid knowing this, I would follow the advice Chris Jones gave me, which is to hide your LAN chip from the OS by deactivating it in the BIOS.

But until that bug is fixed, I recommend you do what I did and stick with Hardy. Everything will work, with three exceptions - two important and one trivial - which I’ll get to.

On to the breakdown:

What Works

Pretty much everything. Unlike the X300, sound works out of the box (if you experience any problems, go to System:Preferences:Sound and turn off autodetect, picking ALSA instead). The display is picked up correctly, ethernet works, suspend works, as does Bluetooth and the Thinkpad keys (volume up/down/mute and the keyboard light).

What Mostly Works

As mentioned above, GNOME Power sees both batteries, and drains them serially with no issues (like a loss of power) whatsoever. It cannot, however, provide an estimated runtime based on the capacity of both batteries as could (if very imperfectly) Vista. As nearly as I can determine, it will estimate the runtime for each battery individually. This may be less of an issue once I’ve had the laptop longer and know better what to expect, but for now this is less than ideal.

What Doesn’t Work

  • Camera:
    This may be a transient issue, as I experienced no issues whatsoever with the camera on the X300, but attempting to take a picture using the on board camera using Cheese locked up the entire UI. Haven’t looked at fixing this at all; mostly because I don’t really care that much about the camera.
  • Wifi:
    As of kernel 2.6.27 - the standard kernel issued for Intrepid (which again, I recommend you AVOID for now) - the Intel 5100 drivers are in mainline. Hardy, however, is still on 2.6.24 and the 5100 drivers are not available out of the box. As a result, the wireless will not work on install. The good news is that there’s an easy fix.

    I followed theburningor’s simple, excellent instructions here and had wifi up and running first try. For the link averse, the build process is as follows:

    1. sudo apt-get install build-essential
    2. wget http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11.tar.gz
    3. tar -xzvf iwlwifi*
    4. sudo cp iwlwifi-5000-ucode-5.4.A.11/iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode /lib/firmware
    5. wget http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-old.tar.bz2
    6. bunzip2 compat-wireless-old.tar.bz2
    7. tar xf compat-wireless-old.tar
    8. cd compat-wireless-2.6-old/


    You need to make sure at that point that the CONFIG_IWL5000 switch in config.mk is marked y - mine was. Once that’s done, just do the following:

    1. make
    2. sudo make install
    3. sudo make unload
    4. sudo make load

    Reboot, and you’re good to go. Wireless works.

  • WWAN:
    This one, unfortunately, may be a significant problem. Because I’m stupid and didn’t check, I assumed that Lenovo would be continuing to use the Sierra based WWAN cards that were present in the X300. These are popular amongst open source types because they are relatively easy to get running under Ubuntu (I’ve done it a few times) and the drivers are already in kernel.

    As you might have deduced, Lenovo’s made a change. I wish Lenovo had stuck with Sierra, and I wish they published the Linux compatibility of the various hardware components, but ultimately it’s my fault for not checking. In my defense, I have been waiting for a new machine for nearly four years; you can understand if I got a bit carried away at order time.

    The card in the X301 is an Ericsson F3507g, which appears to not only have no in kernel driver - but to have never been successfully activated under Linux (please correct if I’m wrong. seriously.). This datasheet (PDF warning) says there is a Linux driver, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. Lenovo’s support site lists nothing but the Windows bits.

    This leaves me with two potential options longer term; 1.) attempt to run the Windows driver under something like ndiswrapper, 2.) reinstall a Windows partition just for the purposes of running the WWAN card. I’m fired up about neither option, to be honest.

    But maybe someone who runs across this has a solution for me. That’s the hope, anyway.

Also not working under either Linux or Windows is the BIOS setting to power USB devices while the machine is in low power states; a minor trifle, perhaps, but it would be nice to be able to charge my iPhone while the machine was suspended.

One other item of interest: while I don’t recall it being mentioned at purchase time, the BIOS mentions a WIMAX radio. Whether or not it’s on board is undetermined as yet, but it’s something to watch for.

Popularity: 2% [?]

by-nc-sa

Share This

By sogrady | Posted in How To's and More, Laptops, Linux | 10 Comments
Close
E-mail It