[vox] Running Debian on a Laptop

[Ken Bloom]

On Sunday 19 March 2006 13:45, Bob Scofield wrote:
> I recently subscribed to the Debian-laptop list, and I see that some
> people are having a hard time getting Debian to run on laptops. 
> Those who have older kernels especially have problems.  And it looks
> like solving those problems sometimes requires recompiling a kernel.
>
> So I was curious about a couple of things.
>
> 1)  Are there any Debian fans on this list who have given up trying
> to install Debian on a laptop, and have instead installed a
> commercial distro with more drivers?

One myth about commercial distros is that they have more drivers. They 
don't. Most drivers are already included in the main line kernel, and 
the few that can't be (e.g. nvidia, fglrx, or ndiswrapper) are included 
in Debian as well as in other distributions. (You may have to compile 
them, but module-assitant makes that incredibly easy). If some distro 
carried a driver that wasn't available in other distros, Debian would 
be able to pick it up from them pretty quickly, either by copying it 
(if it's free) or by getting permission from the manufacturer to carry 
it in non-free, or by writing some kind of package that downloads and 
installs the appropriate driver.

The only thing you can really get from a distribution other than Debian 
is more recent stock kernels. This is a function of the distribution 
age (since last release), and on any distribution, you can compile a 
new kernel from the lastest sources at kernel.org and have it work 
correctly. As the installation kernel, Debian makes it really easy to 
master customized install media with a more recent kernel (among other 
customizations), and such an installer is indeed available for my 
laptop (although I did not use it to install because I didn't know 
about it).

I have directions for my Compaq Presario v2310us available at 
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/Main/Compaq_Presario_v2310us
I gave up on ubuntu to install Debian instead.

--Ken Bloom

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