Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The little Fujitsu just keeps on going. It's my favorite confuser to bring on work trips due to its small size. I access my corporate VPN easily using a java client, and it works seamlessly on both Damn Small Linux 4.2.5 and Puppy linux 4.0.

The machine is currently triple-booting Puppy, DSL and Wolvix, though Puppy is my everyday favorite. It's fast, easy to use and hassle free. DSL 4.2.5 is certainly more user friendly than earlier versions, but still lags behind Puppy (and it's half the size!) Wolvix is really nice, but definitely puts more strain on the modest hardware of the B2131. Wolvix also has some odd shortcomings, for example it lacks a graphical search tool and for the life of me I can't get the screen to lock.

In fact, I like B2131 so much, I decided to get a B2630 from eBay. Same form factor, more power and built in wifi. It didn't go quite according to plan - for some reason Fujitsu messed with the keyboard layout. Some keys were moved around, and the B2630 didn't have the Page-up and Page-down keys on the B2131. I really missed them. Add to that, the B2630 I got must have had some kind of hardware fault, as it would reboot randomly and with no warning. So, after some protracted wrangling with an unhappy seller, I was eventually able to return the B2630.

I've decided that for now the B2131 does everything I need while on the road. It doesn't have the power of a EeePC processor, but the screen is bigger. For everyday computing tasks like web browsing, accessing my corporate VPN, word processing and spreasheets - Puppy on the B2131 does everything I need.

10 comments:

Sal said...

i just got one of these 2131s. Did you get it to boot to external cdrom or did you take the HD out and put in another machine??

Sal said...

ah, i just find my answer in another one of your blogs...

Yangmusa said...

Hey Sal,

Yes, I put the HD in another machine - this must be the easiest way to install. The only thing to be aware of is not to save changes on this other machine. The first time I booted with the HD back in the B2131, the xconfig file was set up for the other machine. It took some head-scratching before I worked out how to re-run the xconfig script.

Sal said...

did you get wifi to work in DSL? I have never been able to get WPA to work in Xubuntu.

if so any pointers?

Yangmusa said...

Wifi works fine. I checked the list of known good cards, and picked one up on eBay for $15 - it was recognized and worked right away. I use WEP, both at home and work, so haven't needed to try getting WPA to work. Your best bet is to check the DSL forum for this question.. (If you haven't tried Puppy, I really recommend giving it a try too!)

Sal said...

Thanks. I tried putting Puppy but I get a pup_400.sfs not found when booting from the CD.

I put DSL on it. Thank again!

Robert McLean MD PhD said...

Does your touch screen work?

Yangmusa said...

@Bobby Mac

I've never made a concerted effort to get the touch screen to work. In a previous version of Puppy it kind of worked out of the box, but mostly not. I just don't have a use for it, so haven't persevered.

There are several pages explaining how to do it though. See here: http://synth.no/~henrik/b2131/ and here: http://www.akos.uklinux.net/biblo-linux/ and here: http://conan.de/

The last one may be a good point to start.
Good luck!

Unknown said...

Hi.
I got one of those too. Still working after I bought it used in 2003. They must be incredibly sturdy. Made for Windows 2000(tm)! Might try Linux...

Yangmusa said...

I'm now running Puppy Linux 4.3 pretty much full time. Puppy keeps getting better and better! http://www.puppylinux.com/

More info and reviews here (Puppy now ranks #7 on Distrowatch, up there with the big dogs!) http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy