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Posted on Saturday 17th of March 2007 at 13:42 in Linux

The quest for a Windows free notebook (and changing how I review distros)

Upon my last review of Ubuntu 7.04 someone commented that the review wasn't in depth enough to be useful so I decided to re-evaluate how I actually review distros. What I need to do is actually put myself in the shoes of someone moving from XP to *said Distro* so there's no better way than installing it on a machine as the sole Operating System.

Resources currently available
I have my desktop (which I don't want to risk dual booting non-final releases) which I use for all my work, development, gaming etc. Currently my reviews are done in a VMWare session which isn't ideal at all. I did have a dedicated Linux box running Ubuntu (which died unfortunately as I discussed at the end of September). Since then I've been without a dedicated box. I have a laptop but it's a bit old, a bit slow and demoted to playing Family Guy while I lie in bed.

Obtaining hardware
I'm currently on a mission to source a new notebook/laptop without Windows... I've pinged Dell an email questioning whether they'll be able to sell me a notebook without the price of Vista Home Basic bundled in there. I intend on discussing the notion with other suppliers too but Dell were the first name to pop into my head. If you have a good idea of where I could get hold of a Laptop without an OEM Windows bundled into the price then please let me know.

Looking for new hardware aside - I'm changing how I review Linux distro's from now on to a more useful format...



Because I review on the premise that I'm a native XP user moving onto *insert distro here* then I feel I should cater the review more towards how easily you can get started... Therefore I'm thinking about moving to the following format:

Networking
Installed on the notebook / separate machine I intend on using the NTFS R/W driver to access the shared items I have available on my Windows network.

Media
As far as normal usage goes I'd weight watching video and listening to music really high - so I will watch a video of my choice on the machine. This means networking with my Windows machine, grabbing the file and watching it (including the installation and correct use of codecs... sound drivers etc). Playing an MP3 shouldn't be an issue on any distro...

Internet browsing
Fairly obvious, network the machine and go and browse the website, this does actually lead onto the final point...

Write the review ON that machine
A nice test as far as I'm concerned. I need to play videos and do the normal stuff the average user would expect (and to be fair, installing codecs is normally a pain at the best of times) but I also need to actually write the review ON that machine ON that distro. This means that the article will be written, edited and posted live direct from the review-system. I think this is a nice touch.

1: Find a Windows-free notebook. 2: Download and install the distro. 3: Review it from the test-install.



Please please give me your feedback on this because I want to change how I handle the reviews to make them more useful for prospective first time users. Also if you have any thoughts on locating a brand new Notebook without the extra (compulsary) cost of an OEM Windows install then please either email me or throw them in a comment. I'd like to hear some thoughts on this.

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Comments

Showing most recent 2 of 2 comments [View all comments]

Please, please: understand that you do *NOT* need any kind of special ntfs driver at all to access network samba shares - smb handles the files, and to the client it is an smb file system, regardless of the real filesystem behind.

To prove that: share any kind of files of your Linux machine (which certainly uses a file system which cannot be read by WinXP), and access the share with your Windows machine - it will work although WinXP cannot talk to ext3 or any other file system besides NTFS and FAT.

So: for *all* your reviews the presence or absence of any ntfs capabilities don’t make any difference!
Notthistime

You can get Windows-free laptops from here: http://www.system76.com/

But some may consider it "cheating" since they’re already quite GNU/Linux friendly thus you’ll probably avoid some of the Linux driver quirks you may get with some hardware. Anyways; check it out! :-)
eivind // norway


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