Linux Laptop Recommendations for 2002? 69
ocasek asks: "I have been looking into buying a laptop again and one of the requirements I have is that it will be able to run Linux with all features turned on (i.e. suspend, APM, etc.). I used to own a Dell Inspiron 8000 that I had Mandrake 8.0 configured and running on, and aside from the wonderful BIOS hooks for PCMCIA that never worked completely, it was a good laptop.
My question to the /. Community is, in your opinion, what is the best laptop out there to run Linux? I would be interested to hear what OS's you are running on what brand of laptop."
iBook (Score:3, Interesting)
Debian Woody on an iBook 500. Everything works, once I compiled a kernel [ibooklinux.net] from Ben H.
Re:iBook (Score:2)
Re:iBook (Score:1)
Me too, but... (Score:1)
Screen is brilliant though
Running Debian Woody - install's a bit dodgy on the snapshot CD I tried but after that it worked like a charm.
Michel
This is a good topic. Any Linux Friendly Laptops? (Score:2)
Everyone knows that Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers colaborate on BIOS hooks and drivers, does anyone know if any laptop makers have made an effort to be so friendly to the Linux kernel and utilities?
I saw a wonderful laptop here in Tokyo a couple months ago, DVD, CD-RW, 1280x1024x32, 1Ghz Athalon, 20GB... but I realized that it's totally designed around Windows, and I'm not going to spend that kind of money on something I cannot utilize in its entirety.
Bob-
Re:This is a good topic. Any Linux Friendly Laptop (Score:1)
TiBook + Yellow Dog (Score:4, Interesting)
Neat hardware stuff? USBview works as advertised, wireless networking took 30 minutes to setup, and firewire is the only main peripheral without robust support, something you're not going to find on any platform.
Price? TiBook is 400 mghz budget special (you can find them for $1600 these days)overclocked to 500mghz.
The main downside is that all of the RPMs out there are x86. Upside is that rpmfind.net has plenty of YellowDog rpms and Ximian's Red Carpet works great with it. If you want details on my setup, email editor@macgimp.org
Re:TiBook + Yellow Dog (Score:1)
Re: powermanagement on tibooklinux (Score:1)
Re:TiBook + Yellow Dog (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TiBook + Yellow Dog (Score:2)
Check the online Apple Store [apple.com]'s refurb section. ("Special deals" at the bottom of the left side.) Some really sweet deals in there.
Linux laptops (Score:1)
Emperor Linux [emperorlinux.com] sells a wide range of laptops preloaded with Linux; I don't have any direct experience with them, but it appears that they make a point of getting everything working under Linux.
They did get the camera in that Sony VAIO ultralite working, though, so they seem okay.
IBM T-series (Score:5, Informative)
I have an IBM T21 that I'm very happy with. Pretty much everything just works, and there are even tools to manage some of the Thinkpad-specific settings (tpctl). I've been running Debian Sid on it for over six months now and everything works, including the Lucent Winmodem, USB, PCMCIA, sound (using the cs46xx OSS driver in the kernel), IR, APM (suspend works great, but I haven't fiddled with hibernate), and XFree86 4.1 includes an okay driver for the Savage/IX video card. I don't know if Ultrabay hot swapping can work under Linux, although I have used the Ultrabay to put a second hard drive in at boot time.
I do have some video-related problems, though. One annoying, but not really limiting, problem is that the text mode display gets corrupted when X runs. That means I can't Alt-Shift-F[1-6] to virtual consoles after X starts up (well, I can, but I see blinking, flashing fruit salad). This has only caused me a problem once when X locked up and I wasn't on a network where I could SSH in from another box to restart it, so I had to hit the power button (which isn't too bad, since I use a journaled FS). When I shut down I see the same garbage. The others are that the DGA2 support has some issue that blanks the screen when VMWare from goes into full-screen mode, and also seems to cause some occasional lockups for the StarOffice 6.2beta (yes, it's somehow related to the video card), but you can define a certain environment variable to get rid of the StarOffice problem. Since I work for IBM I've talked to various people in the Thinkpad support organizations and they say they're working with S3 to get better Linux drivers made available, so soon I expect even my minor problems to go away.
It's also small, light, fast, runs relatively cool, has a big, bright 1400x1050 display and has the always-excellent IBM keyboard.
I have an A20p (Score:2)
.. And it works pretty well. I inherited it from my boss (he bought an A30p). We're both running Red Hat 7.2. He constantly used to gripe about the A20 freezing up in X. After having it for a couple of days, I determined that SpeedStep was somehow causing the problem.
Without SpeedStep my battery life is about 30 minutes, but that's not a major issue for me. The A30p seems to be stable even with speedstep turned on.
No X probs with my a20p (Score:1)
My out-of-date review is here [nightsong.com].
Re:No X probs with my a20p (Score:2)
You can turn SpeedStep features off in the BIOS,the OS doesn't matter much...
Re:IBM T-series (Score:1)
Re:IBM T-series (Score:2)
Hey Shawn, my keyboard sucks! The T series keyboard seems to be much less substantial than the 700 or 600 series keyboards were. My cusor keys have this stange behavior that I would proudly demonstrate to you one day. I have used a bunch of other T21s and they do not exhibit the problem mine has. Of course, I am often unlucky.
Regardless, I prefer my T to the 600, which was itself a very nice machine.
Now if I just had a T23......
ps I also work for IBM. Comments are mine, obviously not theirs.
IBM X-series (Score:1)
I had problems with the T-series choice of graphics and sound chips which needed drivers that were not on the RedHat CDs. This is in my view relatively minor, and not the reason I returned it -- if I had more free time this spring I would have kept it.
Re:IBM T-series (Score:1)
Re:IBM T-series (Score:1)
Scrollbar? (Score:1)
BTW, is that scroll bar just equivalent to a mousewheel, or is it something else?
I love my T20, they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
Re:Scrollbar? (Score:2)
I just use the scroll button as a middle button. I like having a three-button mouse.
Re:IBM T-series (Score:2)
I said that I expected my video problems to go away soon, well, they have. Tim Roberts released an updated driver for the Savage/IX video card, available for download from his S3 Savage for XFree86 4.[12] page [probo.com]. With the new driver, text mode no longer gets trashed and DGA2 works fully.
Thanks Tim!
Partial solution to garbled screen... (Score:1)
HTH
Michel
Major releases (Score:2, Informative)
portable unix? (Score:1, Insightful)
You can be all political if you like, but the simple fact is that IE and office are the best applications in their class. So, while you think you're appealing to a higher power, I'm quitely getting work done without hassle.
Have it your way.
Re:portable unix? (Score:2)
M$ won't wait that long. As part of Mac shipping IE as the default and not allowing Netscape on the first boot desktop, M$ supports Office and Outlook for Mac until August of this year. That is right - the guarantee of continued support that was discussed in the antitrust trial ends in 5 months.
Be interesting to see the response of M$. MAc is going to seriously start eating into their desktop advantage with OSx - better multimedia, and just as good (or better) for Office and IE.
Re:portable unix? (Score:2)
That's only true if:
I withheld the need to use GUI text editors for a long time. vi has everything I need and with tools like ispell, I was fine. My first GUI office suite was StarOffice. I've been using it without problem since 1998.
I tried using MS Office XP recently for work and found it was difficult and hard to use. Why? Because I know StarOffice and I keep thinking in terms of StarOffice. Since MS Office doesn't act the same, I don't like it.
Where am I going? There is no truth to the statement that MS Office is the best. It may be the best for you, but not for everyone. I'm personally waiting for OpenOffice to get the Mac OS X version ready so I can ditch MS Office.
Armada M700 (Score:3, Informative)
All I had to do was insert the install CD, and everything worked perfectly from then on. Autodetected my video, sound, network, APM, etc. No error messages, no troubles with anything. After the install, everything was still running perfectly. None of the problems that a previous poster has with the text mode after starting X. The sound works (does not break, etc). Power management works too, I just have to figure out how to set it up properly, so that it actually does what I want it to do.
Now I know that this is not a brand-new model (at least not with these specs), but you can get the latest one, with pretty much the same base components. They are flawlessly supported in RedHat, even from the very start.
On top of that, Compaq business support is great. I needed a new LCD for it, and they 24/7 phone support, free overnight shipping to and from ther service centres. And everybody I talked to was very polite, knowledgeable. But always deal directly with Compaq, I had some problems with their authorised service centres.
All in all, I strongly recommend the Armada M700 series.
sony vaio pcg-fx-405 (Score:1)
all the apm stuff seems to work fine as well.
came bundled with XP as standard, i've left it running and am dual booting with debian.
Ibook 600MHZ (Score:2, Interesting)
Dirk
dell inspiron 8000 (Score:2)
Inspiron 8200 (Score:1)
Dell Inspiron 3800 && SuSE (Score:1)
Digital Networks United Kingdom (Score:2)
The only thing that doesn't work is the internal winmodem (although they will sell you and pre-configure a pcmcia modem) and the TV out. The box is 1G PIII and can be supplied with up to 1G of memory and has a very pleaant 1400x1024 TFT screen. My workstation has been sitting in a cupboard for some time now...
Re:Digital Networks United Kingdom (Score:2)
DNUK have a good rep. but they aren't the cheapest.
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Re:Digital Networks United Kingdom (Score:1)
Re:Digital Networks United Kingdom (Score:2)
For more info, check out DiscountLaptops [discountlaptops.com] and PowerNotebooks [powernotebooks.com]. It's a shame that laptops are much more expensive in the UK and that our Tier 3 vendors only seem to sell ASUS (in the case of Hi-Grade) and Clevo. Both of which are OK, but it'd be nice to have a few alternatives.
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Re:Digital Networks United Kingdom (Score:1)
HP Omnibook 500 (Score:2, Informative)
The omnibook500 is 3.5 lbs and one inch thick. the 12.1 inch screen is perfect for me. The USB is great, and powers some high-current USB devices from the laptop battery for 2 hours. I get 3.5 hours normally.
Debian works like a charm, recognizing every feature that I have cared to try. Best of all, you can find them starting at $1000 for a 500MHz model, up to 2400 for a 750MHz model. I recently bought a second one for $1600 w/ 700MHz and a base with CDROM. This does make the debian install much easier. (Previously I had to take the hard drive out and with a special cable, put the tiny IDE drive in my tower computer to start the install, and then slap it in the omnibook at that point in the Debian install where you reboot and continue the installation)
The only drawback is it uses a Mobility M1 Rage from ATI which doesn't have any 3D X support. (It doesn't even do OpenGL very well in the first place) I still prefer it to the latest and greatest Geforce 2go and related laptops from Toshiba. The quality and style of the HP Omnibook 500 is just right for me.
-Jim
Old Gateway 9150 300MHz (Score:1)
Panasonic Toughbook CF-47 (Score:1)
In other words -- fully supported except for my add-on Hauppage Wintv+FM board which i use win2k for.
Make sure you get a WARRANTY though -- very few people repair toughbooks and they are fairly rare. The fantastically mindblowing construction (its incredible to see how well they're made when you open em up and see the titanium housing, gell mounted spring loaded hard drive and mobo enclosure etc etc) makes up for it.
Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 (Score:2)
AFAIK, they've sold out of a lot of places now, but you might still find them (at clearance prices, natch!) in the shops. Almost everything works; the exceptions are the modem (AMR Lucent/Agere controllerless) and power management (only APM power off and DPMS seem to work).
Red Hat 7.2 needs to be setup in text mode and the nVidia driver added post-install to support the geforce 2go (even TV out works). The built-in ethernet is an RTL8139. USB works out of the box.
Infra-Red also works and I have it happily talking to a Nokia 6210.
One potential 'gotcha' is that there are no PS/2 or serial ports. Depending on your intended use, this may be something of a showstopper as serial PC-cards are quite expensive and USB serial adaptors aren't reputed to be terribly compatible with all serial devices.
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any experience with qlitech? (Score:2)
SW Technology has Linux Laptops too. (Score:1)
Apple iBook (Score:1)
Now the bad news - the PPC distributions of Linux are not nearly as good as the x86 ones at making things "work". Plan on having to swap kernels and do a lot of tweaking to get everything working. If that's not your thing, stick to x86.
I could easily recommend this laptop once Yellow Dog or Mandrake gets their act together. It's my belief that a PPC-centric distro should at least have Airport and sound working after the install. To my knowledge, no current PPC distro will do that.
Mandrake 8.2 PPC final seems pretty close, maybe it will solve some of these problems.
Inspiron 8000 (Score:1)
I'm running SuSE 7.3, vanilla kernel 2.2.17 -- later added on the premptible kernel patch.
My beef is my 3-year support contract will run out later this year. Taught me: always buy the 3 year on-site service contract. It is worth it. I had hinge problems so bad on my 7500 that they upgraded me to a 8000 for free since they were paying more to service the bad hinge design on the 7500 than I paid for it. The 'send-in' warrantee would have been worthless.
Only problems since then...um 1 disk replace (backups are good). And the "mode" keys (shift, ctl), seem to send stray mouse clicks/motions when held down). This happens in both Windows and Linux, so it may be a HW or BIOS problem.
Anyway -- right now, in their 2-3K price range their top of the line is little better than I have now, so it's a bum to think about upgrading.
Haven't found any laptops with memory >512M, nor multi CPU. Simply wanked up processors (which wouldn't even get me 2x and marginally larger HD's (40-50G I think is the range now, but I haven't checked their site in a while.
I think all their laptops are made in China and rebranded -- forget the company name though.
Linda
Re:Inspiron 8000 (Score:1)
I concur on the Inspiron 8000. I am running Red Hat 7.1 and have been very happy with everything except for the teeth I had to pull to get Dell to support problems on the system. The system is the older type, with the ATI graphics chip---the newer ones have GeForce2Go.
Since my laptop was shipped with Windows ME (the cheapest alternative---Linux, as now, was not available), technical support has twice insisted that I "need to reinstall the operating system that is shipped with the system and then run Dell Diagnostics for verifying the hardware". I left Windows ME on a very small partition, so it isn't that difficult to do this, but it is annoying to have to do this for every little problem. So if you decide to go with a Dell, set some HD space aside for emergencies---I think the diagnostics may run under FreeDOS.
Ditto for the mouse problem. It seems to be application/desktop-specific, though.
So, I had a bad DVD drive. It was replaced with little resistance. The track point wandered, but this was fixed by a BIOS upgrade. The last thing that happened (source of the caveat above) is that the lower-right touchpad button died intermittently---a technician replaced it this week.
Ditto the 3-year support contract suggestion. Good luck.
Re:Inspiron 8000 (Score:1)
IBM T-23 (Score:2)
Re:IBM T-23 (Score:1)
Portable Caldera (Score:1)
Fujitsu Lifebook P Series (Score:1)
Fujitsu-Siemens comes with Linux preinstalled (Score:3, Informative)
My mother wants a laptop, and I think one of these will be the choice.
However, I want built-in Bluetooth support, and a Crusoe and DDR RAM would be nice too.
Try Here (Score:1)
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/
another good method to determine Linux compatibility is to search for "Linux and the model number of a laptop" that you are interested in, using Goggle
Laptop 2002 (Score:1)