Yesterday I installed the Ubuntu Linux distribution on my Kohjinsha. Spent an hour trying to get it to boot correctly from an USB stick, then gave up and bought an external DVD, which worked right away. So now it’s running Ubuntu, boots up at 10 seconds or so (to login screen), and is way faster than Vista Home which was on it from the start.
However, the problem with Ubuntu, and all Linux distributions, is that they lack hardware support out of the box (or Live CD…). These things still don’t work:
- Wireless internet was a bit tricky to get online, but it’s there now.
WPA still isn’t working though.Got it working using these instructions, and the Rutit interface. - The touchscreen. Haven’t fiddled with it yet.
- The launcher, shutter, rotation, and enter buttons to the right of the screen. I’ll have to map those to something suitable.
- Changed keyboard settings to Swedish, but it’s not 100% since it’s a Japanese keyboard. Will have to edit the keyset, also, there are several buttons that don’t do anything at all, so I’ll have to map them to something cool.
- It won’t wake up from hibernation.
I am, however, impressed by the fact that all Fn functionality, such as wireless on/off, supposedly Bluetooth, PgUp/Dn etc. are working right out of the box, as is the touchpad, extra mouse with buttons beside the screen, the scroll button, and so on.
Linux in general, and Ubuntu in particular, have come a long way since I installed the first Fedora distribution on my old Acer laptop. In most cases, Ubuntu will work out of the box. Problem is, whenever you’ve got special stuff, or an unique brand that isn’t widely used, you’ll have problems. Like the Kohjinsha, released in Japan and Korea only (?), that’s certainly a problem. Luckily, there’s a great community backing Ubuntu, so I won’t give up yet.
After all, it’s actually really fast, and an ultra-portable laptop should be a greased lightning machine!
Before you acquired the laptop did you know you were going to put Linux on it? The problem is not that Linux doesn’t have all the drivers, it’s that hardware manufactures don’t provide binaries or specifications so developers can incorporate the drivers into the kernel. Linux actually has better driver implementation Windows.
I did acknowledge the possibility of putting Linux on it, and the problems I have run into were no surprise to me, although some proved more difficult to handle than others. I certainly agree that hardware manufacturers should release more specs, but that’s really beside the point. It just doesn’t change the fact that it’s something that’s making Linux a lot less accessible.
As for Linux having better driver implementation than Windows, well, that might be true theoretically, but I have yet to run into a PC not working with Windows in reality, so your point is a bit moot. But sure, I guess there’s a bunch of small systems that would work with Linux but not with Windows, something that’s pretty irrelevant for most of the users out there. After all, when it comes to actual success for the platform, it’s a lot more important that wireless works right away, than having support for some old Psion handheld.