LinuxWorld’s senior editor James Turner reports this month on what he calls The State of Laptop Linux in 2005 and says it’s a lot better than it was in 2004, but adds after conducting his own new test to see if any Linux distro is yet really laptop-ready: “What’s needed to make things better? Well, the Linux community needs to address the device driver crisis.” Turner acknowledges that binary-only drivers are a sore spot with free software purists, but says he’d “rather have a fully functional, if closed, Nvidia driver than a reverse-engineered one that limps along.” Overall though he concludes that widespread laptop Linux is much closer now.

Case in point: I downloaded the newly released Ubuntu 5.04 this morning. Installation took about 30 minutes, and here’s what I’m left with:

• Boots off CD and installs like it should? Check.
• Detects all hardware devices during the installation, even the wireless card? Check.
• Sound works? Check.
• Video works? Check minus (see below).
• Power management works, meaning sleep and suspend to disk (hibernate) work flawlessly and CPU speed throttles correctly? Check.
• Modem works? Who cares!
• Bluetooth works? Probably, but I don’t have any BT devices to check it with.
• IBM’s Active Protection System works to protect the hard drive? Nope.
• All function buttons for sleep, suspend, brightness, volume, etc. work? Yup.

So, I’m sitting here with a notebook that by current standards is running pretty darn good under Ubuntu, with a very small amount of manual configuration necessary to get this far. What’s holding Linux back from running as nicely as Windows on the ThinkPad?

The video is the biggest problem. Ubuntu installs DRI drivers by default, which work pretty well, but lack 3D acceleration support. I can install the ATI binary drivers with a few simple commands, but they break suspend/resume functionality, which is arguably more important for most notebook users. I also won’t be able to use the nifty ThinkVantage features on my expensive ThinkPad, like the Active Protection system.

So notebook users have a dilemma: do the Right Thing and handicap your system by installing Linux, or stick with the factory installation of Windows where everything Just Works. The never-ending battle of Morality vs. Functionality rages on.

(For those with the same/similar ThinkPad, see my guide for more detail.)