Comments on: Intel’s ultra-thin, ultra-light, ultra-everything, the “Metro” mobile

By: Rob Dunn

Rob Dunn — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:39:51 +0000

True, but the ingenuity that is abundant in the Linux crowd cannot be denied, if there is potential in the hardware, then driver developers (OEM or 3rd party coders) will jump at the chance to get this gem running a Linux distro ASAP.

If you can ‘nix an Ipod, then surely, this laptop will be a piece of cake.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Mon, 28 May 2007 05:32:30 +0000

Anyone who’s used Linux for a while knows that “Intel CPU” isn’t the only requirement (isn’t even a requirement as there are Sparc, PPC, mips, amd64, arm, hppa, and quite a few other architectures supported…I only listed about half of Debian’s supported ones). Assuming Intel uses their own wireless cards, it’ll be easy to get wifi. Assuming they use their own graphics instead of getting Nvidia, the graphics will work fine and have 3D acceleration with open source drivers, but not really be all that great. If it’s Nvidia graphics (I doubt it’d be ATI since AMD owns them), there are sometimes problems getting them set up with 3D acceleration. I believe there are still issues with JMicron chips on certain mobos, and I’m not sure ACPI problems on Core 2 Duos have been worked out yet (suspend/hibernate/CPU throttling)–they’ve just recently been worked out for Core Duo. I would hope there’s not a Marvell Yukon NIC (the driver for it is terrible and dies at high throughput, I have that NIC), and also that it has a real modem (not a winmodem). And if it has a built-in Texas Instruments card reader, Sony Memorystick and xD cards don’t work on those yet (only through USB readers).

By: Kiltak

Kiltak — Sat, 26 May 2007 04:33:57 +0000

Thanks Paico, fixed

By: Paico

Paico — Sat, 26 May 2007 00:20:54 +0000

Hey, fyi: the wikipedia link for WiMax is broken, check it out.

By: Rob Dunn

Rob Dunn — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:28:16 +0000

It is an Intel-powered PC, so my expectations are that, yes, this will be able to run Linux, and in style, at that!

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to the keyboard question, but if I had to venture a guess, I would expect that it uses the same type of kb tech as other ultra-slim models. Since there are no moving parts, most of the higher-profile components will probably sit under the wrist-rest (all this is conjecture, though!), leaving enough room for the buckling springs…?

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:16:43 +0000

2 Things I want to know:
1. Is it Linux compatible?
2. Does it have a proper keyboard? I doubt you can get buckling spring keys into something so small (unfortunately), but something with a similar feel (ex Thinkpad keyboards) would be nice.