By Mirko Dölle
Linux users often suffer several rounds of patching, tweaking, and troubleshooting to install Linux on the highly specialized and under-documented hardware of a portable computer. If you've ever put Linux on a laptop, you've probably dreamed of the day when vendors will simply solve all the problems for you and sell you a ready-made, Linux-compatible system.
Veterans of these late-night notebook configuration sessions will be pleased to know that Hewlett Packard has teamed with Ubuntu Linux to produce a series of Ubuntu-friendly portable PCs. Ubuntu are even working on a special, customized version of their operating system to support these HP notebooks. Ubuntu say the customized version supports "nearly 100%" of the hardware for HP's NC6120, NC6110, NC6000, NX6110, NC6220, and NC4200 portables, although a few features, such as the SD-card reader, aren't supported yet. You'll find more on Ubuntu's HP notebook support, as well as information on the customized version of Ubuntu, at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/custom/hplaptops.
We tried out the customized Ubuntu on HP's NC4200 portable, and we found much to like about this small, Linux-ready notebook.
The Centrino-certified NC4200, which is about the size of this magazine, is equipped with a Pentium Mobile 1.73 GHz, 512 MBytes of RAM, and a 40 GByte hard disk. Travelers will appreciate the small size of the NC4200, but one disadvantage of the size is the lack of space for extras. The notebook does not have an optical drive, or even a simple drive bay. The US version of the display can be rotated through 180 degrees and placed face up on the keyboard, turning the notebook into a tablet PC with a touchscreen. (The touchscreen is not supported by Ubuntu.) The European variant has a standard 12.1 inch display and a resolution of 1024x768 pixels.
If you decide to put Linux on your NC4200, your first problem will be the lack of a built-in CD-ROM drive. Without an external USB CD drive, there is no way to install Linux. Luckily, the brand of the CD drive doesn't matter; a standard DVD writer in a cheap USB 2.0 housing will work without fuss.
Though there is no optical drive, the notebook is equipped with a complete set of connectors. Besides three USB 2.0 ports, a PCMCIA slot, and a SD/MMC flash slot, the HP NC4200 has a modem connector, an Ethernet port, and a VGA and PS/2 socket on the rear side. In line with the Centrino standard, the HP notebook has a 54Mbps Intel WLAN adapter and an IrDA interface for wireless connections. The Bluetooth module, which was installed in our test notebook, is available as an optional extra. Both the WLAN adapter and Bluetooth can be disabled and re-enabled by pressing a small button on the left side of the notebook (Figure 2) without rebooting.
The battery, which can store about 50 Wh of energy, lasted for more than three hours during the test. Because the battery supplied with our test system was about 12 months old, we did not perform the normal runtime test but you can expect a new machine to run for about three or four hours without a power cable.
The notebook was reasonably well built - there was no rattling or oversized parts. The keyboard comes with an action point and, as a mouse replacement, HP enclosed a track point with two mouse buttons along with a touchpad.
HP installed a Bluetooth adapter, along with an IrDA interface, for mobile phone connections. Both come pre-configured out of the box. The notebook has a few special buttons on the left side. You'll find buttons for volume and mute. Another button known as the info button launches the Gnome help browser when you press it. The only problem with the info button on the machine we tested was that it tended to jam from time to time, causing Gnome to launch more and more help browsers until the machine ran out of memory.
You can map the special keys to individual commands because every key produces normal scan codes, which can be re-mapped via System | Settings | Macros.
The NC4200's touchpad is a very good mouse replacement. The touchpad has a groove pattern on the right (see Figure 3) that emulates a scrolling wheel. This grooved area is also capable of serving as the middle mouse button of a three button mouse, which should eliminate the problem of having to press the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously to emulate the middle button. Unfortunately, a right-handed person might touch the scroll area unintentionally by simply dragging some icons around.
Intel's Penium Mobile power saving modes are accessible following a standard Ubuntu installation. The only mode not working with the pre-production notebook is suspend to RAM (S3). When we tried forcing the notebook to the S3 state, which is listed as available in the file /proc/acpi/sleep, the notebook went to sleep but failed to wake up again. According to HP, this feature should be available with the next Ubuntu release, which will include more improvements and better support for HP portables.
From the widely used Centrino components and convenient details, such as the programmable special keys, the hardware of the HP Compaq NC4200 is well supported by the customized version of Ubuntu Linux. Other Linux distributions will probably also work with the NC4200, but you may encounter some of the problems typically associated with putting Linux on portable hardware.
Due to its small size, the NC4200 has some limitations - the unit has no internal optical drives, a second battery pack has to be connected externally, and the system only supports small, 12.1 inch square displays with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. Despite these problems, the system offers some significant benefits, and the laptop-ready, customized version of Ubuntu makes the NC4200 a perfect fit for many Linux users. If HP can get the suspend to RAM feature or the SD/MMC flash reader working under Linux, the NC4200 will be an excellent Linux notebook.