I was reading an article by Alexander Wolfe titled ” Ubuntu Linux’s Achilles Heel: It’s Tough To Install On Laptops”. After reading through the problems he had trying to get Ubuntu installed on a 3year old HP laptop, I was some what skeptical since my personal experience with Ubuntu and other newer distributions has been positive. But than I thought to myself. All of my installs have been on a desktop system, and not on a laptop. So after reading what Alexander had to say, I decided to try some of the more popular distributions on my laptop to see if laptops may pose a problem.

First of all, I was not going to install the distributions onto the hard disk. I decided to try using the Live CD approach just to test on how well they performed. My first choice was Kubuntu 7.04 final. The Live CD ran well on my Gateway laptop and I was at the desktop very quickly. Video and sound worked just fine. Kubuntu also found my internal wireless which is a Broadcom 802.11.g adapter. But I was unable to make a connection to the router. I checked and double checked, configured and reconfigured but no connection. OK. How about PCLinuxOS 2007. It got worse. This distribution couldn’t even find my wireless adapter at all. Than I tried Freespire. Nope. It couldn’t find by wireless adapter as well.

So I went to Gateways site to see if any Linux drivers were available for my model. Just XP and Vista drivers only. Nothing for Linux on the Broadcom site as well.

So I made several conclusions. The first is that wireless on some laptops and desktop systems may not function properly on some systems. My desktop test system uses a D-link wireless adapter and I haven’t had a single issue with any Linux distribution locating the adapter and making a wireless connection. Second is that this is a known problem. I have read about such problems in some of the Linux forums. Third, it is advisable to try a Live CD first prior to doing a hard disk install. This way you can confirm that ALL of your hardware works correctly prior to a hard drive installation.

If and when the time comes for me to install Linux on my lappy, I just need to find either a PCMCIA or USB adapter that is Linux compatible which should solve the problem for me.

But my question is this. Has anyone else experienced a problem getting a Linux distribution to work properly on their laptop? If so, were you able to solve the problem?

Comments welcome.

Complete article here.

[tags]linux, laptop, problems, drivers, wireless, [/tags]