July 27, 2009 @ 22:03
Don’t buy Linux laptops (atl1c fail)
Friend of mine bought Acer Aspire 5810T with big sticker advertising Linux support on it. After installing Fedora 11 on the laptop the “fun” started. He had constant issues and we talked for some time over the phone… and all that time I thought it was only a new user error.
After he brought it to me and after some investigation I saw that the issue is with ethernet card driver. Ethernet card uses atl1c module from companny called Attansic that has been bought by Atheros. For details on the issue you can look at Fedora and Ubuntu bugs.
But the moral of the story is that if you want to run Linux don’t buy laptops that have stickers advertising Linux support on them, and don’t buy Acer laptops!
UPDATE: This Acer laptop came with Linux pre-installed. My friend called me and asked what should he do after after laptop boots and shows him “root:#” prompt! I told him to type startx but it seams that it came without any GUI or Window Manager! Then I told him to install Fedora 11.
Also there is a big sticker on the laptop exclaiming “8h battery life”, but after installing Fedora 11 Gnome battery applet displays only 4h of battery life! Any comments? Maybe they tested battery performance with that pre-installed Linux – they leave it at root prompt and do nothing for 8 hours :)
I send mail to atl1c developers at Atheros and props to them – they replied almost instantly and sent the source of correct driver. I tried compiling module on my machine and it works, I’ll try it on friends machine today and report back. So we are making some progress.
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Posted by Peter
July 27, 2009 @ 22:51
Interesting. The eeePC has that same nic and it worked fine for me when running Fedora 11. Since upgrading it to rawhide the latest kernel has a dma issue on link up (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=511988) but still seems to work OK afterwards
Posted by Dylan McCall
July 27, 2009 @ 23:01
The best part is yet to come:
When your friend finally settles on the fact that the hardware is not worth his time and manages to return it, Acer will spin it into the pile for their “Linux has more returns” story.
Some manufacturers just have terrible engineers (or lots of PHBs) and for some of them I sincerely doubt that they test half their product lines (let alone the individual units). Case in point, my HP netbook (which all get modelled on the same chassis) whose power adapter doesn’t fit in all the way. They are still in denial, though.
Posted by Martin
July 28, 2009 @ 1:05
Seems like the driver is in the 2.6.30 Linus kernel, but it looks like it might be in a questionable state.
http://lwn.net/Articles/318972/
http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v2.6.30/drivers/net/atl1c/
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux%2Fkernel%2Fgit%2Ftorvalds%2Flinux-2.6.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=commit&s=atl1c
http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/ATL1C.html
Several distros report issues with this ethernet controller. But it seems to be worked on.
Posted by Alex
July 28, 2009 @ 5:10
Hmm…a particular Acer laptop that claims to support Linux does not work properly due to a faulty Linux driver (in a particular version of the Linux kernel), so that means that we should avoid laptops that advertise Linux support? How does that make any sense?
Posted by rbhkamal
July 28, 2009 @ 5:24
I agree, I had exactly the same problem with DELL.
They found the crappiest hardware on the planet, made a laptop from them and then shipped it with Ubuntu…. I returned the laptop and lost $50… big mistake!
Posted by pootzko
July 28, 2009 @ 7:53
well, you can’t generalise about all acer products on such level just because one model of acers laptop does not work as you want it to… :P
Posted by valent
July 28, 2009 @ 9:12
@pootzko: I know you had some fun times with your Acer ;)
Posted by valent
July 28, 2009 @ 9:13
@Martin: We are also compiling new 2.6.30 kernel and will report back, also the Atheros guys sent me the correct source for atl1c module, so keep watching…
Posted by valent
July 28, 2009 @ 9:15
@Peter: eeePC has same manufacturer but different model of network card and uses different module. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.
Posted by Calin
July 28, 2009 @ 10:35
I also had problems with Linux on some platforms due to the drivers and I understand you, but from there to the point where we are not buying laptops with Linux stickers, there is a big step. Let’s not forget that many notebooks have a sticker with Microsoft, and people are still buying them. The only difference is that from Windows you expect a lot of crap.
Personally I would prefer to buy the laptop without anything been installed on it, but I cannot find this to often in stores (at least in Europe…)
Posted by valent
July 28, 2009 @ 10:44
@Calin: I understand you, but what I’m trying to say is that we should not buy laptops from crappy vendors that don’t actually test their hardware on Linux but just slap the sticker on as an marketing afterthought! There are lots of laptops components that work great on Linux but they choose other components that are crap. Also there should be some standard that makes vendors more responsible. Making possible to install Linux kernel and get bash running doesn’t meet the conditions of what a “Linux laptop” should be able to do.
There are lot of vendors and small laptop companies that do Linux justice – like System 76. It they say their laptops run Linux they do 100%.
Posted by Anon
July 28, 2009 @ 14:22
My Acer laptop came with Linux pre-installed too. A command line minimal installation of a distro called Linpus, given that I would reformat the disk anyway with Windows, I thought that Linux pre-installed meant out of the box hardware support. Unfortunately, back then there was no wireless driver available for Linux, I had to install ndiswrapper and use the windows driver.
It doesn’t make sense, why not just slap FreeDOS on the thing if they just want to skip Windows?!
Posted by Caitlyn Martin
July 28, 2009 @ 19:11
My Sylvania g Netbook Meso came with Ubuntu Netbook Remix preinstalled and everything worked perfectly right out of the box. I’ve tried a bunch of different distros with it (I have the system setup to boot three distros at the moment) and most just work.
A blanket “Don’t buy Linux laptops” statement or headline is ludicrous. Some work very well indeed. Oh, and yes, that includes some Dell models.
@Anon: Linux preinstalled should ALWAYS mean out of the box hardware support if the manufacturer does it right. Which wireless chipset are we talking about? Linpus Light (which Acer uses) is nearly two years old. A modern distro with an up-to-date kernel likely would have had proper native support for the wireless chipset in the laptop. The fault here is Acer’s, not Linux in general.
If you were going to reformat with Windows anyway (complete with the virii, malware, spyware, and ultra-slow performance) then why do you care about Linpus? BTW, Linpus has a GUI and it shouldn’t have booted to the command line. Sounds like a flawed installtion to me.
Your question about FreeDOS tells me you have no idea about what Linux does or what it’s capabilities are.
Posted by Bill Davidsen
August 15, 2009 @ 22:26
Of course this is one user’s opinion. I have had 4-5 Acer laptops and all ran Linux just fine. This laptop came with Linux. Perhaps the better advice is to avoid kernels where the drivers have been “updated” rather than “improved” or whatever. I believe the original kernel from FC11 initial release works fine, or so several people have said.
Posted by Salvadesswaran Srinivasan
August 28, 2009 @ 14:28
My Samsung R418 has Atheros ethernet adapter, and Fedora 11 runs without a hiccup. Wonder why acer is so bad. The keyboard has really small arrow keys and many typos occur cos of that, the touchpad is downright useless. My notebook has no issues on Fedora 11, it didn’t have any OS when I bought it.