Mobile office on Linux
I want to tell you about my experience of creating a designer / programmer office from scratch on a mobile platform under linux.
1. Choosing a laptop
By profession, I am a wide-profile designer, so for my work I needed a computer that was quite powerful in its characteristics. Buying a laptop in the first place was associated with the possibility of free work anywhere and everywhere: in a cafe via wifi, on vacation via Bluetooth, in the office and at negotiations. In this regard, increased mobility was required.
Now I live and work in Novosibirsk, and I work mainly with Moscow and St. Petersburg, where I lived for a long time before that. Initially, I stopped my choice on Dell laptops of the inspiron 1501/02 and XPS 1330 series . Such a choice was explained primarily by personal warm feelings for the manufacturer and confidence in the quality of the assembly, of course the recent problems with batteries that "exploded" somewhat impaired the impression, but the situation was corrected by the company and, therefore, it did not affect the choice.
It is not possible to give direct links to descriptions of notebook models as the site dell is not available from something at the moment.
According to the specifications, all the selected models were suitable, but the XPS 1330 looked most preferable. One of the key factors was the compactness, 13 inches screen, with excellent technical features. characteristics. The price for this "baby" was biting, and finding a version with a pre-installed Linux in the city and in Russia is very problematic if you do not order directly in the west.
After conducting exploration in nearby retail outlets, this model turned out to be quite rare and basically it was offered to deliver to order approximately within a week. Due to circumstances, there was almost no time, and, if possible, it was necessary to buy a laptop in a short time. It was decided to try to look for an alternative to the XPS 1330.
In the process of surfing the network and in real life I chose acer 2920z , which was available and powerful enough, about 10k in price, and all that was required was on board. Together with him, the memory was purchased in 1gb, as it turned out, despite the assurances of the sellers in the basic assembly, both 2x512 memory slots were occupied and I had to tinker a bit to put two 1gb dies instead of basic ones in the store. The laptop was purchased, which means I proceeded to the next stage - the creation of a “mobile office”.
')
2. Choosing the Linux distribution version
The laptop was preinstalled with Vista, which must be said to slow down the system quite a lot, and with some movements it crashed or crashed, and there’s no need to talk about holes and software compatibility issues. But since by default there is a backup section for emergency restoration, which even had to be used by the end of the first day of testing the machine, it was decided not to burn the bridges completely and leave this “reserve fund” when formatting.
It has long been a supporter of Ubuntu and naturally decided to install it, besides, Ubuntu as it is known preinstalled on a number of laptops from recent times, including Dell and Acer some models, from which, according to my logic, should be compatible with laptops and such pleasant trifles as Fn shortcuts and network service keys, etc.
But after installing Ubuntu and then Kubuntu it turned out that I was very wrong. Ubuntu did not recognize the add. The keys do not have fn functions or even a network card. It was through which, knowing in advance about the problem in the base system with wifi, I wanted to work with the network until I set everything up.
A little digging decided that it is unnecessary complexity and, if possible, they should be avoided, at the iron level there should be at least 95% compatibility.
When looking for another distribution, I first of all relied on my own experience, and he was in Mandriva , openSuse , * Ubuntu. The first was not for me, it is very windows-oriented, with the second I worked relatively little so somehow at the beginning of the acquaintance did not work out and then I worked as needed. I decided to go through a proven path and looked in distrowatch where I was surprised to see that some unknown leader had been squeezed by some unknown, and as it turned out not only for me, but for many more - PCLinuxOS was the one I decided to try, since some magic channel In these days he used to play pranks and, instead of the speed specified in the contract with the provider, 128kbs gave out 1 mbs (with varying success, 512-1200kbs was still jumping and jumping). I downloaded the livecd, I downloaded it - an error, the video adapter and monitor were not recognized, the suspicion crept in that the distrib is generally poorly familiar with laptops, after digging into the console applications, it turned out that he didn’t know it well, but he didn’t want to recognize me either. And again I sadly wandered back to the network, in search of happiness.
And here there were some strange and as it turned out successful matches. I started loading the fedora with the next number, and then suddenly the speed of the channel dropped dramatically, so the process dragged on to the already unusual - the clock. While waiting for the download, my eyes hit the openSuse 10.3 distribution, which after some doubts and decided to install.
This distribution did not have a livecd and, accordingly, at least any opportunity to make sure in advance that the equipment I needed on this system was working.
To my surprise, compatibility with a laptop can be said to work perfectly all the additional functions, the web-camera was recognized adequately (I read about a lot of problems with the same Ubuntu), wifi immediately ran to search for the grid, all the keys on the keyboard were defined correctly except by default in the Russian layout and the comma was in digits 6 and 7, respectively, but this is easily corrected if necessary.
At this point, I want to finish the first part of my narrative, and if the article seems interesting to you and interested in its continuation, write comments.
Next I would like to highlight:
- Laptop selection
- Choosing a version of the linux distribution
1. Choosing a laptop
- Maximum balance of performance and compactness
- The presence of a webcam and wifi
- Memory 1-2gb
- Linux-converted, pre-installed or fully compatible with representatives of this OS.
By profession, I am a wide-profile designer, so for my work I needed a computer that was quite powerful in its characteristics. Buying a laptop in the first place was associated with the possibility of free work anywhere and everywhere: in a cafe via wifi, on vacation via Bluetooth, in the office and at negotiations. In this regard, increased mobility was required.
Now I live and work in Novosibirsk, and I work mainly with Moscow and St. Petersburg, where I lived for a long time before that. Initially, I stopped my choice on Dell laptops of the inspiron 1501/02 and XPS 1330 series . Such a choice was explained primarily by personal warm feelings for the manufacturer and confidence in the quality of the assembly, of course the recent problems with batteries that "exploded" somewhat impaired the impression, but the situation was corrected by the company and, therefore, it did not affect the choice.
It is not possible to give direct links to descriptions of notebook models as the site dell is not available from something at the moment.
According to the specifications, all the selected models were suitable, but the XPS 1330 looked most preferable. One of the key factors was the compactness, 13 inches screen, with excellent technical features. characteristics. The price for this "baby" was biting, and finding a version with a pre-installed Linux in the city and in Russia is very problematic if you do not order directly in the west.
After conducting exploration in nearby retail outlets, this model turned out to be quite rare and basically it was offered to deliver to order approximately within a week. Due to circumstances, there was almost no time, and, if possible, it was necessary to buy a laptop in a short time. It was decided to try to look for an alternative to the XPS 1330.
In the process of surfing the network and in real life I chose acer 2920z , which was available and powerful enough, about 10k in price, and all that was required was on board. Together with him, the memory was purchased in 1gb, as it turned out, despite the assurances of the sellers in the basic assembly, both 2x512 memory slots were occupied and I had to tinker a bit to put two 1gb dies instead of basic ones in the store. The laptop was purchased, which means I proceeded to the next stage - the creation of a “mobile office”.
')
2. Choosing the Linux distribution version
The laptop was preinstalled with Vista, which must be said to slow down the system quite a lot, and with some movements it crashed or crashed, and there’s no need to talk about holes and software compatibility issues. But since by default there is a backup section for emergency restoration, which even had to be used by the end of the first day of testing the machine, it was decided not to burn the bridges completely and leave this “reserve fund” when formatting.
It has long been a supporter of Ubuntu and naturally decided to install it, besides, Ubuntu as it is known preinstalled on a number of laptops from recent times, including Dell and Acer some models, from which, according to my logic, should be compatible with laptops and such pleasant trifles as Fn shortcuts and network service keys, etc.
But after installing Ubuntu and then Kubuntu it turned out that I was very wrong. Ubuntu did not recognize the add. The keys do not have fn functions or even a network card. It was through which, knowing in advance about the problem in the base system with wifi, I wanted to work with the network until I set everything up.
A little digging decided that it is unnecessary complexity and, if possible, they should be avoided, at the iron level there should be at least 95% compatibility.
When looking for another distribution, I first of all relied on my own experience, and he was in Mandriva , openSuse , * Ubuntu. The first was not for me, it is very windows-oriented, with the second I worked relatively little so somehow at the beginning of the acquaintance did not work out and then I worked as needed. I decided to go through a proven path and looked in distrowatch where I was surprised to see that some unknown leader had been squeezed by some unknown, and as it turned out not only for me, but for many more - PCLinuxOS was the one I decided to try, since some magic channel In these days he used to play pranks and, instead of the speed specified in the contract with the provider, 128kbs gave out 1 mbs (with varying success, 512-1200kbs was still jumping and jumping). I downloaded the livecd, I downloaded it - an error, the video adapter and monitor were not recognized, the suspicion crept in that the distrib is generally poorly familiar with laptops, after digging into the console applications, it turned out that he didn’t know it well, but he didn’t want to recognize me either. And again I sadly wandered back to the network, in search of happiness.
And here there were some strange and as it turned out successful matches. I started loading the fedora with the next number, and then suddenly the speed of the channel dropped dramatically, so the process dragged on to the already unusual - the clock. While waiting for the download, my eyes hit the openSuse 10.3 distribution, which after some doubts and decided to install.
This distribution did not have a livecd and, accordingly, at least any opportunity to make sure in advance that the equipment I needed on this system was working.
- During the installation process, he immediately discovered my network card, which was the first good sign.
- By setting up the connection and allowing the installation from additional repositories, I later turned out to be able to extend the installation several times, but I must say that it happened faster and where recovery of Vista from the “reserve fund” was more adequate.
- After a couple of hours everything was set.
To my surprise, compatibility with a laptop can be said to work perfectly all the additional functions, the web-camera was recognized adequately (I read about a lot of problems with the same Ubuntu), wifi immediately ran to search for the grid, all the keys on the keyboard were defined correctly except by default in the Russian layout and the comma was in digits 6 and 7, respectively, but this is easily corrected if necessary.
At this point, I want to finish the first part of my narrative, and if the article seems interesting to you and interested in its continuation, write comments.
Next I would like to highlight:
- Selection and installation of professional software.
- Features of the "mobile office linux"
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/20567/
All Articles