TuxMobil recently announced the publication of 7,000 Linux installation and configuration guides for laptops and notebooks on its Web site. The number of free guides and how-to's available through TuxMobil has more than doubled in less than three years.

In the Linux community, it's common tradition to help other members by publishing free guides on many different aspects of the open source operating system. These guides and how-to's are suitable for newbies as well as experts. Most of the guides are in English, but special TuxMobil sections are dedicated to other languages.

TuxMobil indexes the guides by manufacturer and model as well as by processor type, display size and Linux distribution. Almost any laptop manufacturer (more than 220) is covered. All major Linux distributions (Redhat, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Novell/SuSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Knoppix) and many not-so-well-known distributions are present. Besides Linux, the site includes sections that cover other Unix derivatives like BSD, Minix and Solaris.

Tablet PCs or WebPads are special types of laptops that are built either as slates without a keyboard or as convertibles. Both kinds require a sophisticated configuration. Linux installation guides for Tablet PCs and a survey of suitable drivers and applications like handwriting-recognition tools are described in a separate section.

A great number of accessories and gadgets for laptops and notebooks are compatible with Linux. TuxMobil provides details about Linux hardware compatibility for PCMCIA cards, miniPCI cards, ExpressCards, infrared, BlueTooth, wireless LAN adapters and Webcams.

Laptop development paces quickly, and new approaches to WLAN standards, power management, graphics chipsets or CPU features come up every few months. Linux development also is fast, so the need for current Linux laptop installation guides will not diminish in the near future. TuxMobil encourages its users to write their own guides to help.

Laptop manufacturer support for the Linux operating system is still in its early stages, although some third-party companies offer professional support or allow users to purchase a laptop with Linux preloaded. TuxMobil provides an international survey of vendors dedicated to your free operating system of choice, which offer pre-installed Linux laptops, notebooks, mobile phones and PDAs for sale, as well as accessories that are compatible to Linux.

About TuxMobil

Starting with an installation report about Linux on his first laptop, published by founder Werner Heuser, TuxMobil has been online for 10 years. It has become the biggest online resource about Linux and mobile computers. The name TuxMobil is an abridgement of the words "Tux" and "mobil". Tux is the well-known name of the Linux mascot and "mobil" is just a shortcut for mobile.