February 20, 2008 at 19:20Linux Mobile Office
I want to talk about my experience in creating from scratch an office of a designer / programmer on a mobile platform under linux.
1. Choosing a laptop
I am a broad-profile designer by profession, so for my work I needed a computer that was quite powerful in its characteristics. The purchase of a laptop was primarily associated with the possibility of free work everywhere: in a cafe via wifi, on vacation via Bluetooth, in the office and in negotiations. In this regard, increased mobility was required.
Now I live and work in Novosibirsk, and I work mainly with Moscow and St. Petersburg, where I lived for a long time before that. Initially, I opted for Dell laptops of the inspiron 1501/02 and XPS 1330 series. This choice was explained primarily by personal warm feelings for the company to the manufacturer and confidence in the quality of the assembly, of course, the recent problems with the batteries that “exploded” somewhat spoiled the impression, but the situation was corrected by the company and, therefore, this did not affect the choice.
I can’t give direct links to descriptions of laptop models because the dell site isn’t currently available for anything.
According to the technical specifications, all the selected models were suitable, but the XPS 1330 looked most preferable. One of the key factors was compactness, 13 inches screen, with excellent those. characteristics. The price for this “baby” was biting, and finding a version with preinstalled linus in the city and in Russia is very problematic if you do not order directly in the west.
After reconnaissance at nearby retail outlets, this model turned out to be quite rare and was mainly offered to be delivered to order in about a week. In connection with the circumstances, there was almost no time, and if possible, it was necessary to buy a laptop in a short time. It was decided to try to look for an alternative to XPS 1330.
In the process of surfing the net and in real life on the “points”, I chose acer 2920z, affordable, powerful enough, a gain in price of about 10k and all that was required was on board. Together with him, memory was bought in 1gb, as it turned out, despite the assurances of sellers in the basic assembly, both 2x512 memory slots were occupied and I had to tinker a bit so that the store put two 1gb dice instead of the base. The laptop was purchased, which means I started the next step - the creation of a “mobile office”.
2. Selecting the Linux distribution version
Vista was preinstalled on the laptop, which I must say, it slowed down the system quite strongly and, with some gestures, it crashed or crashed safely, and there was no need to talk about holes and compatibility issues with software. But since by default there is a backup section for emergency recovery, which even had to be used by the end of the first day of testing the machine, it was decided not to burn the bridges completely and leave this “reserve fund” when formatting.
Being a supporter of Ubuntu for a long time and naturally decided to install it, it was also UbuntuAs you know, it was preinstalled on a number of laptops recently, including Dell and Acer of some models, of which, by my logic, it should have been compatible with laptops and such pleasant little things as Fn shortkeys and network management service keys, etc.
But after installing Ubuntu and then Kubuntu, it turned out that I was very mistaken. Ubuntu did not recognize add. The keys are not fn functions nor even a network card. It is through that, knowing in advance about the problem in the base system with wifi, I wanted to work with the network until I set everything up.
After a little digging, he decided that these are unnecessary difficulties and, if possible, they should be avoided, at least 95% compatibility should be at the iron level.
When looking for another distribution, I primarily relied on my own experience, and he was in Mandriva , openSuse , * Ubuntu. The first was not for me, it was very windows-oriented, with the second I worked relatively little, because somehow it didn’t work out at the beginning of my acquaintance, and then I worked as needed. I decided to go on a proven path and looked distrowatch where I was surprised to see that the once unshakable leader was pressed by some unknown person, and as it turned out later, not only me, but also a lot more - PCLinuxOSthat's exactly what I decided to try it, the benefit of the channel was somehow magical these days naughty and instead of the speed declared at the provider with the provider of 128kbs, it gave out 1mb (with varying success it jumped and still jumps to 512-1200kbs). I downloaded livecd, ripanul loaded - an error, the video adapter and monitor were not recognized, the suspicion crept in that the distrib was generally poorly acquainted with laptops, rummaging through console applications it turned out that he was familiar with them firsthand but didn’t want to recognize mine again. And again I wandered sadly back to the net, in search of happiness.
And here there were several strange and, as it turned out, successful coincidences. The next number I started to ship fedoraand then suddenly the speed of the channel dropped sharply so that the process dragged on to the already unusual ones - the clock. While waiting for the download, I was struck by the openSuse 10.3 distribution which, after some doubts, decided to install it.
This distribution kit did not have livecd and, accordingly, at least some possibility will make sure in advance that the equipment I need on this system is working.
To my surprise, compatibility with a laptop can be said to be ideal, all additional functions work, the web camera was adequately recognized (I read about a lot of problems with the same Ubuntu), wifi immediately ran to look for the grid, all the keys on the keyboard were detected correctly except that by default in the Russian layout, the dot and the comma ended up on digs 6 and 7, respectively, but this is easily fixed if necessary.
On this, I want to end the first part of my story, and if the article seems interesting to you and is interested in its continuation, write comments.
Further I would like to highlight:
- Laptop selection
- Choosing a linux distribution version
1. Choosing a laptop
- Maximum balance of performance and compactness
- The presence of a web camera and wifi
- Memory 1-2gb
- Linux-converted, preinstalled or fully compatible with representatives of this OS.
I am a broad-profile designer by profession, so for my work I needed a computer that was quite powerful in its characteristics. The purchase of a laptop was primarily associated with the possibility of free work everywhere: in a cafe via wifi, on vacation via Bluetooth, in the office and in negotiations. In this regard, increased mobility was required.
Now I live and work in Novosibirsk, and I work mainly with Moscow and St. Petersburg, where I lived for a long time before that. Initially, I opted for Dell laptops of the inspiron 1501/02 and XPS 1330 series. This choice was explained primarily by personal warm feelings for the company to the manufacturer and confidence in the quality of the assembly, of course, the recent problems with the batteries that “exploded” somewhat spoiled the impression, but the situation was corrected by the company and, therefore, this did not affect the choice.
I can’t give direct links to descriptions of laptop models because the dell site isn’t currently available for anything.
According to the technical specifications, all the selected models were suitable, but the XPS 1330 looked most preferable. One of the key factors was compactness, 13 inches screen, with excellent those. characteristics. The price for this “baby” was biting, and finding a version with preinstalled linus in the city and in Russia is very problematic if you do not order directly in the west.
After reconnaissance at nearby retail outlets, this model turned out to be quite rare and was mainly offered to be delivered to order in about a week. In connection with the circumstances, there was almost no time, and if possible, it was necessary to buy a laptop in a short time. It was decided to try to look for an alternative to XPS 1330.
In the process of surfing the net and in real life on the “points”, I chose acer 2920z, affordable, powerful enough, a gain in price of about 10k and all that was required was on board. Together with him, memory was bought in 1gb, as it turned out, despite the assurances of sellers in the basic assembly, both 2x512 memory slots were occupied and I had to tinker a bit so that the store put two 1gb dice instead of the base. The laptop was purchased, which means I started the next step - the creation of a “mobile office”.
2. Selecting the Linux distribution version
Vista was preinstalled on the laptop, which I must say, it slowed down the system quite strongly and, with some gestures, it crashed or crashed safely, and there was no need to talk about holes and compatibility issues with software. But since by default there is a backup section for emergency recovery, which even had to be used by the end of the first day of testing the machine, it was decided not to burn the bridges completely and leave this “reserve fund” when formatting.
Being a supporter of Ubuntu for a long time and naturally decided to install it, it was also UbuntuAs you know, it was preinstalled on a number of laptops recently, including Dell and Acer of some models, of which, by my logic, it should have been compatible with laptops and such pleasant little things as Fn shortkeys and network management service keys, etc.
But after installing Ubuntu and then Kubuntu, it turned out that I was very mistaken. Ubuntu did not recognize add. The keys are not fn functions nor even a network card. It is through that, knowing in advance about the problem in the base system with wifi, I wanted to work with the network until I set everything up.
After a little digging, he decided that these are unnecessary difficulties and, if possible, they should be avoided, at least 95% compatibility should be at the iron level.
When looking for another distribution, I primarily relied on my own experience, and he was in Mandriva , openSuse , * Ubuntu. The first was not for me, it was very windows-oriented, with the second I worked relatively little, because somehow it didn’t work out at the beginning of my acquaintance, and then I worked as needed. I decided to go on a proven path and looked distrowatch where I was surprised to see that the once unshakable leader was pressed by some unknown person, and as it turned out later, not only me, but also a lot more - PCLinuxOSthat's exactly what I decided to try it, the benefit of the channel was somehow magical these days naughty and instead of the speed declared at the provider with the provider of 128kbs, it gave out 1mb (with varying success it jumped and still jumps to 512-1200kbs). I downloaded livecd, ripanul loaded - an error, the video adapter and monitor were not recognized, the suspicion crept in that the distrib was generally poorly acquainted with laptops, rummaging through console applications it turned out that he was familiar with them firsthand but didn’t want to recognize mine again. And again I wandered sadly back to the net, in search of happiness.
And here there were several strange and, as it turned out, successful coincidences. The next number I started to ship fedoraand then suddenly the speed of the channel dropped sharply so that the process dragged on to the already unusual ones - the clock. While waiting for the download, I was struck by the openSuse 10.3 distribution which, after some doubts, decided to install it.
This distribution kit did not have livecd and, accordingly, at least some possibility will make sure in advance that the equipment I need on this system is working.
- During the installation process, he immediately discovered my network card, which was the first good sign.
- Having set up the connection and allowing the installation from additional repositories, as it turned out later, I extended the installation several times, but I must say that it was faster and much more adequate to restore Vista from the “reserve fund”.
- After a couple of hours everything was installed.
To my surprise, compatibility with a laptop can be said to be ideal, all additional functions work, the web camera was adequately recognized (I read about a lot of problems with the same Ubuntu), wifi immediately ran to look for the grid, all the keys on the keyboard were detected correctly except that by default in the Russian layout, the dot and the comma ended up on digs 6 and 7, respectively, but this is easily fixed if necessary.
On this, I want to end the first part of my story, and if the article seems interesting to you and is interested in its continuation, write comments.
Further I would like to highlight:
- Selection and installation of professional software.
- Features of the "mobile linux office"