Best alternate OS for an x31?

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Blake · #1 Post by **Blake** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 10:33 pm

what other os can easily be ran on my x31. is there anything else install and go like winblows?

looking for suggestions i would like to try something new

wingman · #2 Post by **wingman** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 1:35 pm

I am currently running Ubuntu on my x31. Works very well....If you are looking for something similar to windows, why not try it? The hardware support is very good, only thing out of the box that is not supported is WPA in my intel wifi and suspend (although both are easily fixed)

At the risk of a flame war, Kubuntu looks more simliar to windows than Gnome does......

wingman

#3 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 12:52 pm

Have you checked out Xandros? I tried ubuntu also, but after I checked out Xandros it is now what I am using on my desktop and one lap, right now my home network is Xandros and WindowXP and 98, the files system in Xandros is very cross platform.

Blake · #4 Post by **Blake** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:29 pm

where did you get xandros from? also where did you get install tips and drivers?

#5 Post by **Kyocera** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 11:02 pm

http://www.xandros.com/about/downloads.html

You just have to download the ISO, takes a while, use bit torrent or tornado, I used tornado it worked fine, did the check sum also. Installed, and it works fine. I have not tried every single functionality of the laptop yet though.

Blake · #6 Post by **Blake** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 11:56 pm

did it pick up your wifi, and your other hardware?

#7 Post by **Kyocera** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 1:33 pm

wi fi - yes, other functionalites - don't know yet, have been pretty busy with some other projects, but I sure like it, have it on my main desktop too, been playing around with the networking stuff, that's about all.

Oh yeah, the track point sucks major, but the touch pad works great.
There may be a better driver for the track point somewhere.

BigWarpGuy · #8 Post by **BigWarpGuy** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 2:04 pm

There is ReactOS . http://www.reactos.org It is a clone of WinNT that is being developed.

There is FreeDOS. http://www.freedos.org It is a free clone of MS(PC) Dos.
http://www.freedos.org

There is eComStation. I use it on my Thinkpad T23 and Thinkpad A22m. Both run it quite well. eComStation is an updated version of OS/2 Warp. It is put out by Serenity Systems and is based on the leased OS/2 kernel from IBM.
http://www.ecomstation.com It is at version 1.2 with 2.0 not being far away.

I have some other operating systems listed at my web site.
http://tomleem.homestead.com/pcos.html (I hope I have the url correct).

#9 Post by **Kyocera** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:31 pm

I downloaded eCom station once, a while back think it was like a demo freeware version that ran on top of windows, pretty wild OS.

Blake · #10 Post by **Blake** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 12:05 am

tomorrow im going to try the xandros i have it downloaded. i hope i dont ruin my drive because it still has xp on it. wish me luck

#11 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 1:03 am

Good luck, hope the track point works better than mine, have not really tried to tweak it, been using the touch pad. I loaded RedHat 9 on my toshiba laptop for dual boot and that worked out fine. It's always good to have a clone or recovery CD's if you don't have. There is always that slight chance. Hope it works out, it is a nice change from windows.

Blake · #12 Post by **Blake** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 10:07 pm

well its on cd, but i can not get my x31 to boot from my usb cd... help

#13 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 10:23 pm

Did you burn the ISO image to the CD, with an iso burning program?

Blake · #14 Post by **Blake** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 10:39 pm

there was no image to be burned, i unzipped then unzipped again and got 5 folders and a few files i burned to disk. i dont see an iso. also when i just click run from teh cd, it opens and says it needs to restart to being the instal

Blake · #15 Post by **Blake** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 10:46 pm

ok buring the iso, i unzipped it instead... ooops

#16 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 11:12 pm

I used a freeware program called Deep Burner to make the bootable iso image.

Blake · #17 Post by **Blake** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 11:38 pm

well im up and running, i can not get the wireless to work. i do not have wireless under internet connection but under network connection / interfaces i can drop down to eth1 wireless device but i tiwll not connect. any tips?

also where cna i download good software for xandros?

edit. i do have wireless under hardware decection but when i run hardware for ways to connect to the net, no good doesnt pick up wireless

#18 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 11:55 pm

This may depend on how your access point is configured. If you can connect in windows you should be able to connect in xandros, if you are using a router it should have dhcp enabled to give you an IP address, if there is any security settings enabled for you connection make sure you input them in the wireless settings, ssid, any encryption etc. I pretty much connected wireless as soon as firefox opened (which was a nice surprize).

Blake · #19 Post by **Blake** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 12:13 am

i think it might be the issue of the channel???? it worked hard wired but no wireless. it did pickup my comcast addy, but will not connect. also it said my battery is only 1 hour.

edit, when i put my wep key in, it put a bunch of zero's in???

alfio · #20 Post by **alfio** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:56 pm

what sort of battery times are folx getting with X31s on linux? any prospects of running XGL / Beryl on these units?

alfio

#21 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 1:30 pm

Linux power management has been improving, but most reports still peg battery life on Linux at 30-50% shorter than on Windows.

alfio · #22 Post by **alfio** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:10 pm

wow

that's a huge difference. from the pro-linux propaganda i've been reading

you'd think this was another instance of linux trouncing windows.

alfio

The Spirit of X21 · #23 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:37 am

little a wrote:wow

that's a huge difference. from the pro-linux propaganda i've been reading you'd think this was another instance of linux trouncing windows.

alfio

Eh, the Beatles said it best:
"It's getting better all the time."

#24 Post by **tomh009** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:48 am

The Spirit of X21 wrote:Eh, the Beatles said it best:
"It's getting better all the time."

Indeed it is getting better. But at least on these forums, even Linux advocates admit that whatever its other advantages, currently Linux power management is not yet on par with Windows.

richp · #25 Post by **richp** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:43 am

I have not played around with laptops too much, just starting BUT a few months ago I had some dead time at work and a Sony Vaio P3 so I tried some various unix/linux OS's in that. The Sony had no nic but I did have several PCMCIA cards, 3Com, Intel, Netgearr, dell and Dlink.
I installed Suse 10, no problems with any of the hardware, dropped in
I installed Fedoracore5, No problems, dropped right in
Solaris X86, dropped right in, even the nvidia worked, the networking did not work, period, I spent a week as I really wanted solaris seeing as how I was taking care of 30+ Sunfire V880's. Finally gave up.
FreeBSD, another one that dropped right in, everything worked.
Awaiting a hard drive for the T30. Now that I have a DVD burner in it that will read DVD+r's which the original DVD rom/CDrw would not. I will be loading Suse10.2, redhat and Fedorecore6 plus I will be trying some others as I acquire some additional hard drives to play with.
End result is I want a machine I can do ant/java builds on with a Jboss server and mysql and not have to move jar files to another machine for testing.

ajkula66 · #26 Post by **ajkula66** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 12:26 am

I went through quite a few versions of Linux, the most pleasant one to use for newcomers would be Xandros, but it refuses to recognize wi-fi or bluetooth on my A31P.

On my X31 I have SUSE 9.2 that I'm very impressed with, but will probably have to re-install it due to many hardware changes that I've made. I'll let you know how that flies. SUSE versions are supposed to be most-wi-fi-friendly out of all usual Linux distros.

The best way to "feel out" the whole Linux experience, if you're not familiar with any particular distro, is to get a "live" CD and start from there...my opinion only.

#27 Post by **carbon_unit** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:38 am

Which version of Xandros did you try? I have the latest version and it has no problem with my 2200BG wireless (even WPA) or the bluetooth in my T42. In fact the only things I had to fix was selecting a different modem driver (already installed) and changing the DPMS setting to "on" so the LCD panel would shut off in standby.

ajkula66 · #28 Post by **ajkula66** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 11:42 am

I've just used 3.0 which I know is old, but had it sitting in my house...it does see the wi-fi card, but says it's not supported, which is not really a big deal for me, since A31P is used as a desktop anyway and plugged 97% of the time.

Once I get a really good grip of SUSE 9.2 that I have on my X31, I'll have more time to play with making my "desktop" wi-fi enabled in Linux.

Thanks for the tip, though.

andrewb · #29 Post by **andrewb** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 12:30 pm

I have been using Xandros v.4 for a few weeks; Carbon Unit seems to know his stuff and is a good a reference as a Linux newbie, like myself, needs.

I have found Xandros to be very good (I am a long term Windoze user, and not a techie).

My problems, however:

I cannot play encrypted DVDs. One day I might manage this, but there is a good chance I will lose the will to live first.

Power management is not good. I can just about manage half the battery time when compared to Windows XP. When using an X41, this is not good.

Connectivity, and speed of connection if you can get it, is woeful. Connectivity is, all things considered, my biggest and probably only worthwhile cause of complaint with all of the Linux variants I have tried so far (Ubuntu was slightly better than Xandros).

On the plus side, the technical support people for Xandros are first rate in not only only response time, but the manner in which they can explain things to people who clearly do not have the faintest idea what they are doing (such as myself).

delturcious · #30 Post by **delturcious** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:23 am

Ubuntu/Kubuntu is great for the newbie Linux user. 6.10 was painless to install on my girlfriend's T40. The only issue was making the wifi work. It came with a Cisco card, so we swapped that out for an Intel 2100 and that did the trick. We've got it running on WEP at her place and WPA here once we got WPA supplicant figured out. Getting hardware acceleration to work on the ATI card also took a bit of reading, but both are well documented all over the 'net.

Gentoo is soooo much faster once you've gained the knowledge to be able to use it, but it's got a steep learning curve relative to other install-and-go distros. I've got that running on my Portege R100 and my Turion-based desktop and love it.

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