Re: Which laptop for Linux.

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 06:02:04 -0800, wexfordpress wrote:

I need a laptop with the following specs: Will run Slackware or Debian
Linux
Will do screen zoom with <ctl><alt>+
Will work in wi fi mode under Linux. This is essential! Big screen.
Decent keyboard.
Given the above constraints, low price.

All replies appreciated.

John Culleton

Look for Intel WiFI, that will guarantee that it will work, if it's a
house brand of WiFI it's a Broadcom which is crap. Note: Dell's Ubuntu
Studio laptops have Broadcom WiFI so it doesn't work out of the box with
other distros. There is some sort of Broadcom support in the kernel now
but it requires some binary blob and I've heard that it doesn't work very
well. Intel is committed to Linux and all of their hardware has true open
source drivers.

I've just ordered an HP Dv5t, I'll let everyone know how I like it when I
get it. To make my decision I put Fedora 10 on a USB key and took it
around to Costco, Staples, Best Buy and Circuit City where I booted a
bunch of laptops to see how well they worked, here is what I found,

HPs were all perfect, in Staples they had a live WiFI network, F10 Live
automatically found and configured the WiFI.

Lenovo Sl500, couldn't boot from the USB key. The LED on the USB key
didn't light until it was in Vista. The BIOS didn't see the USB key
either. So Lenovo was out.

Dell XPS had a Dell WiFI which F10 didn't find. So Dell is out.

It's possible to buy a Dell XPS with Intel WiFI but not the Studio 15
which only has the Piece of *** Broadcom chip. Dell has also decided to
skip the Centrino II generation so their laptops are limited to 4G and
they are using the 65nm processors, the HPs will handle 8G and use the
45nm processors. Dell's big advantage over HP is that they offer Linux on
consumer laptops and they are doing a much better job of it lately then
they did in the past. HP offers FreeDOS on their business laptops but
those are much more expensive then the consumer laptops. The business
laptops don't offer disks larger than 250G which is another strike
against them. 8G capability was an absolute requirement for me so HP or
Lenovo were the only possibilities, Lenovo's bad BIOS put it out of the
running and the FreeDOS HPs were about $400 more expensive then the
consumer HPs so that led me to order the HP DV5T. Unfortunately that
means that I've paid for a useless copy of Vista which I'll have to
delete but there wasn't any alternative.

.