All EmperorLinux systems come with a custom kernel (download) specially tailored to support all the exotic hardware on your system. We start with the latest sources from kernel.org, add patches and tweaks to get the ever-changing hardware working, and roll it all up into a nice portable empkernel RPM (or DEB). We then throughly test it on all our systems and all our in-house laptops. (Yes, it's still open, and you get all the sources.)

People often say that Linux installation on a laptop is difficult and this is true. However, many people think that the difficult part is configuring the X server, but that is just the beginning. Just because you have X running on your laptop, doesn't mean that you're done.

Are you using the kernel that came with the stock distribution (that big hog)? That kernel was specially designed by the distribution authors to boot almost every Intel-based system on the planet, and almost half of it is stuff that you don't need. Planning on using RAID on a laptop? SMP? SCSI drive support? Want to make it your router? Highly unlikely.

Also, there are some very important things for laptops left out of typical distribution kernels. Many distribution kernels have very poor PCMCIA, USB, wireless, and ACPI support. Full support for FireWire, newer 802.11 cards, LCD brightness control, hibernate, and other exotic devices may not exist at all.

• power management (both APM and ACPI are supported)
• automatic CPU throttling (frequency scaling) improves battery life
• Linux P-n-P enabled
• DMA access to the PCI bus (including exotic laptop controllers)
• full TCP/IP networking (including all 802.11 a/b/g WiFi chipsets)
• PCMCIA and CardBus card support
• SCSI module support
• USB support and IEEE-1394 "FireWire" (i-Link) support.

We supply kernels with the smallest possible base image that will support all of your notebook's hardware and modules to support every conceivable peripheral you would ever add.

While our kernel gives the hardware support, you'll want to take a look at the manual to get an idea of how to use all these goodies in your daily Linux work. Current customers can download kernel updates and more by going to downloads.emperorlinux.com.