Re: [LAU] Linux Laptops?

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 04:11:38PM -1000, david wrote:
> Ken Restivo wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 03:29:52PM -1000, david wrote:
>>> Ken Restivo wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 04:41:25PM -0600, Josh Lawrence wrote:
>>>>> Hey all,
>>>>>
>>>>> After getting scorched by purchasing two laptops with almost zero
>>>>> Linux support (battery status? what battery?), I have decided to
>>>>> go
>>>>> looking for a laptop that is sold by a company that supports
>>>>> Linux. I'm looking for any pointers to companies that sell Laptops
>>>>> that run Linux here in the US. (I'm already familiar with
>>>>> System76.) Bonus points if you've done business with them and have
>>>>> praise or warnings to go along with the pointers. Feel free to
>>>>> shill for your own company if you want, just make sure if you
>>>>> recommend a laptop that Linux can read the damn battery status. :)
>>>> I bought an Asus laptop (Core 2 Duo, 2.33Ghz) 4 years ago and it is
>>>> still my main audio production station on Linux. There was some
>>>> weirdage with the ATA support; a SATA drive would have been a better
>>>> choice, but that wasn't their fault, it was mine in configuring the
>>>> machine.
>>>>
>>>> I also have an Asus EEE in which everything "just works", better than
>>>> any hardware I've ever had... probably because Asus used to actually
>>>> ship the EEE with Linux.
>>> A friend of mine's family has a number of Asus EEE PCs, they all work
>>> very nicely with Linux.
>>>
>>>> I have used ThinkPads before, and they do indeed work well on Linux,
>>>> but I absolutely HATE HATE HATE that damned nurple. I will never buy
>>>> a Thinkpad again. Gimme a trackpad or trackball or a real mouse any
>>>> day, and please, no nurple.
>>> Decades ago, at a previous employment, I borrowed a Thinkpad laptop to
>>> take notes at a meeting. It had the IBM Trackpoint in the keyboard. I
>>> used the laptop for about 45 minutes, went back to my desktop machine
>>> (also an IBM, but no Trackpoint in the keyboard) - and found my fingers
>>> automatically reaching for the Trackpoint. They are incredibly
>>> efficient. Sorry you didn't like it.
>>
>> I guess some people actually do like it.
>>
>> ThinkPad + focus_on_mouse + typing anything with a 'g' or 'h' in it == TROUBLE.
>
> Didn't have any trouble typing those letters. What do you mean by
> "focus_on_mouse"?
>

I have for the last decade or so set whatever window manager I've used to focus on mouse. Every window manager I've seen on Linux has this as an option; although I'd have to go back probably 20 years to find one that had it as a default (Sun OpenLook? HP CDE?).

Focus on mouse means that, wherever the mouse is over, that window is where whatever I am typing is going to get typed. I don't have to click on a window (or bring it to the front, if it is a non-tiling window manager) in order to switch from one window to another. This makes it very fast and easy to switch between windows. In ion3 I can also do it with key commands as well.

Anything that moves the mouse while I am typing, screws me up massively. I end up with stuff typed in wrong windows. It sucks a lot. ThinkPad nurples do that to me, hence I don't use them.

To be fair, the trackpad on the EEE does this to me occasionally too, since my palm will occasionally contact the trackpad and move my mouse around, causing me to exclaim "AARRRGHH!!". I dislike that a great deal. But it happens far less often than with the IBM nurple. Also, trying to do any kind of fine graphic manipulation (i.e. GIMP, or even selecting text in an xterm!) with a nurple is beyond frustrating for me. Trackpads and mice can do fine manipulatinos with a lot more coarse movements.

-ken
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Received on Wed Feb 16 08:15:02 2011