Almost, A Red Hat laptop for work

2009-07-28

Someone came to me today asking for a Red Hat laptop for a trip. I just installed Linux on my home laptop. Time not waisted because now I know what kind of speed bumps there are for such an adventure.

Ubuntu is good about installing on laptops and supporting a bunch of the hardware that is typical. The wireless connector on my home laptop is some goofy HP crap and requires a kernel patch in order to work. When the kernel updates I suppose you have to patch and build and install all over again. None of those steps is simple. One of the USB connectors is dead so hooking a wireless USB dongle is an option, but makes me worry for the health of the remaining USB plugs.

From all the forums I hit while trying to fix my laptop issues, I noticed the three top issues with Linux on Laptops. Sound, video and wireless. Functioning X11 is all we are worried about on the work laptop. Wireless and sound can take a hike if need be. I'd be pissed if all three just work out of the box in Red Hat on some random work left over laptop.

Alas, no dice. No laptop could be scrounged that did not have a higher priority purpose stamped upon its destiny. I was looking forward to it for a little bit. It would have made a fine experiment and a half decent blog post.