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Can anyone recommend a good place to buy laptops that
a) come with linux installed, or;
b) are linux friendly?
also, just generally speaking can anyone recommend any particular places to find good deals on laptops (companies/vendors/brands). and as i shop, what should i pay attention to that might prevent me from running linux/cause problems?
i'd also appreciate it if y'all could point me in the direction of website that have pointers re: linux notebooks.
thanks in advance, dudes.
a) come with linux installed, or;
b) are linux friendly?
also, just generally speaking can anyone recommend any particular places to find good deals on laptops (companies/vendors/brands). and as i shop, what should i pay attention to that might prevent me from running linux/cause problems?
i'd also appreciate it if y'all could point me in the direction of website that have pointers re: linux notebooks.
thanks in advance, dudes.
posted by:
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SoMa
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Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, July 21, 2004 - 8:02 PMA co-worker of mine is quite happy with www.linuxcertified.com/linux_...ps.html but I have no personal experience with them. -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, July 21, 2004 - 9:19 PMI have had good experences with IBM, Toshiba and Dell with Linux onboard. I'm sure there are some who haven't as well. I bought and IBM once from Laptops USA online and helped a customer pick one up there as well. -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Mon, July 18, 2005 - 9:39 PMI have an IBM Thinkpad R40 2682 and have good experiences with it. Wireless is a bit nutty, but there's a PRISM2 driver you can get, but I forget where. I also had the iSeries at one point, and an R31, and they both worked alright. Wireless is always a bit tricky, but everything else is good. SuSe has pretty good power management. -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Mon, July 18, 2005 - 10:27 PMIBM Thinkpad X40. I put Ubuntu on it with this usb image I made:
aj.daisho.us/ubuntu/
I am very happy with this laptop.
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Unsu...
Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, July 21, 2004 - 10:06 PMMy Toshiba Satellite took a little bit of hacking on, but once I got Debian going, it was great. The only thing that doesn't work is the modem, and that's something to do with the lack of a module for the 2.6 kernel and an LT chipset I think. I use a spare 56k PCMCIA modem as a work around.
I would have recommended an Element Computer laptop, but something odd seems to have happened with their site / business model.
Emperor Linux might be an option, but may depend on your budget.
So help me, if I find a Sony Picturebook with a Transmeta chipset on eBay.
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Re: Linux Laptops
Thu, July 22, 2004 - 11:33 AMHere's an IBM ThinkPad T22 for $599 (low end, but cheap!)
www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...tails.asp
Anyone have recomendations on getting Linux running on a ThinkPad? -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Thu, July 22, 2004 - 4:00 PM
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Re: Linux Laptops
Fri, July 23, 2004 - 11:06 AMI've had a T21 (with 384M ram) for about a year now that I never even booted into windows. In fact, I took my previous drive, dropped it into the T21, booted and reconfigured a few things and it worked without any issues. I had SuSE 8.0 on it and have since done two online updates to SuSE 9.0. It'll boot off the CD and the SuSE configurator discovers everything without any problems.
I love mine and use it as my primary workstation.
** Martin
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Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 8:06 AMHi from Spain.
Nowadays i'm using an old Dell Latitude C610 with GNU/Debian Linux (Sid) and all works fine. Sound card, ethernet, touchpad,...
Dell laptops are usually gnu/linux friendly but there's a problem, here in Europe, Dell Computers forces you to buy MS Windows with your laptop, it comes preinstalled, so you pay for something you won't use.
Hope this help. :)
:: luis :: -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 8:26 AMIn general, the older the laptop... and the more recent the Linux distro combine to increase the support of the model. :)
Take a machine that is at least one year old... and a recent distro and you're pretty sure that most stuff will work.
Things to keep in mind:
1) Power management isn't always standardized. Toshiba ACPI BIOSes have had issues. Make sure you update to latest BIOS on, for example Toshiba Tecra S1 (I have one of those with Mandrake Linux 10.1).
2) Centrino WiFi chips. The official driver for Linux is still work in progress. Depending on your distro, it could come with bundled drivers... which might not support features like WEP... You could have to look towards Linuxant for DriverLoader which enables you to use Windows XP drivers to run ANY WiFi adaptor on Linux (I use that for my Centrino 2100 and for a Linksys 54G PC-MCIA card)... www.linuxant.com/
3) Strange hardware like SD/MMC controlers... or WinModems... Drivers are not always available for Linux. Case of CB710 SD/MMC controler from ENE Technology, or Intel 82801DB AC softmodem chips. This might not work.
Most network controlers (10, 100 or 1000 Mbps) will work.
Most graphics accelerators will work. ATI and NVIDIA now have proprietary drivers which will give full OpenGL performance on 32 and 64 bit linuxen for all their recent (i.e. less than 10 year old) chipsets.
Some chipsets which aren't supported on Windows XP anymore will work on Linux (Sony jog dial, some graphics accelerators like older NeoMagic - who don't publish drivers on their site - they only sell OEM)... so my old Sony PCG-Z505 laptop works great with Linux.
In general, nowadays, "it just works". Try a recent distro like Mandrake Linux (there's a tribe for that here too)... release 10.1 really rocks. Free downloads at : www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3 but they also sell high end versions with a lot of bundled stuff. :)
Go for it. Have fun.
Gilles.
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Unsu...
Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 9:37 AMI just got a new dell ( cheap ) and fedora core 3 went on it seamlessly.
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Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 9:30 PMi'm in the middle of getting debian to work on my IBM t42. Sarge works pretty well from the start. Good video support, GL, sound, ethernet. The only things I have to hack on are ACPI and the NDIS wrapper for 802.11. It's a mini-pci wireless card so it could be swapped with something more linux friendly but that would probably void the warranty. the t42 is nice in linux cause the drivers (thinkpad and tpctl packages) exist and because most of the function buttons (like volume and brightness) are independent of the OS.
If i were lazy i would just install knoppix. it's pretty much debian and the acpi/wifi would work right off the bat. -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 10:26 PMFrom what I've read and if you have the money, the IBM t4x series laptops are the way to go for portable Linux. -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Tue, March 1, 2005 - 1:58 AMI'm running on a t40. Slackware 10 with 2.6.10, runs pretty nicely with sound and wireless goodness.
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Re: Linux Laptops
Tue, March 1, 2005 - 12:49 PMI just picked up a Dell Inspiron 8000 about a month ago and Ubuntu installed very well.
The only thing that wouldn't work is an acx100 driver wifi card and it's highly experimental. An Avaya card with Hermes Drivers works just fine though.
Win Modem was recognized but I have not messed with it other than to check lspci for it's existence.
The resolution is a trip! 1600x1200 and thats it. I'm not complaining but it does mess with some web pages when the browser is maximized. Text is readable and smoothly rendered.
Power mgmt. is screwy, when you take power away from it (unplug it) the desktop locks up and I cannot access any other consoles.
Finally the piix module tries to load a second time on boot throwing an error but there seem to be no consequences from it.
From a hardware standpoint the damn touchpad is sensitive to pressure on the chassis. If I flex the chassis much the cursor wanders all over the place but settles down with further flexing (for crying out loud!). I have researched this and it is fairly common with the 8000 so beware! I have tried disabling the bugger in BIOS but it sometimes ignores this fact! With some guideance I think I'll split the chassis and disco the touchpad as I use a USB mouse (works great) or I can use the trackpoint thingie.
Overall I'm pretty happy with it. -
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Re: Linux Laptops
Tue, March 1, 2005 - 3:42 PMI'm using a Dell Inspiron 8500 and everything works good under Debian. I'm using NDISwrapper to use the 802.11g miniPCI wireless card that came with the laptop, and the sl-modem-* packages and kernel module to deal with the built-in modem. I do like the resolution, and works well when trying to explain to someone that not everyone uses the same screen resolution for which they designed their web page. =-)
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Re: Linux Laptops
Fri, October 21, 2005 - 10:41 AMRunning an old Toshiba with Zenwalk linux it now. Previous had SUSE installed. I guess some toshibas could get hinky with their pwer management, but most newer distros seem to handle it just fine.
I've also heard very good things about installing linux on IBM (well, i guess lenovo now) laptops.
Check out www.emperorlinux.com/ for a vendor that sells laptops with linux preinstalled. However your best bet is to just grab an older IBM or Toshiba and a newer distro. Most of the current batch of distros have excellent hardware recognition.
