In the market for a new laptop....what is buggy?

[theEclipse]

I am going to be in the market for a new laptop this summer and I am hoping to get one that has hardware that is easily compatible with most distros. Right now I have a gateway with an intel 855 graphics card, and although I have tried several distros I cannot get any of them to display anything above 800x600.

I am trying to push further and further to convert my lifestyle to linux for many reasons and would like to be able to tell the laptop manufacturer that I dont need the copy of windows with the laptop.

Are there any hardware devices that I should avoid like the plague? Right now my top choice is a Twinhead Durabook of
some variety.

Also, what about the processor? AMD or Intel? 64-bit or wait for better support?

Robert Carpenter
Remember....eternity is much longer than this ~80 years we will spend roaming this earth.
ô¿ô

http://www.robertcarpenter.net

 

[stefanwagner]

HP announced 4 of their laptops last year to be optimized for linux-compatibility.
i.e. here:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-89315-321838-f33-395654.html

But I guess if you don't need open-source 3d-Support, most Linux distros will run on most laptops.
WLAN, internal modems, manufactor specific keys and acpi are often hard to make work.

On linux-on-laptops.com you will find a lot of reports.

Taking a live-cd (ubuntu i.e.) to the shop might be an option.

seeking a job as java-programmer in Berlin:

http://home.arcor.de/hirnstrom/bewerbung

 

[xwb]

AMD tends to be cheaper and faster than Intel. Many of the AMDs are ready for 64bits. You also have to make a decision of whether to go dual core or single core.

You also have to make the decision of wide or normal screen. Not sure which distros support widescreen.

The strange thing about widescreen laptops is that they have enough space for a numeric keypad but they still plonk the keyboard in the middle and you have to resort to the Fn key to get at the numeric keypad.

Also check for the position of the backslash/vertical bar. For some stupid reason, there is no standard position for a backslash. It can be

1) on the left of Z
2) on the right of ]
3) the most annoying of all: on the left of the spacebar
4) 3 to the right of ;
5) to the right of the space bar (quite rare)
6) 3 to the right of 0

1, 2 and 3 are the most common but this appears to be regional. You won't find option 1 if the laptop is manufactured for the far east market. If you do a lot of programming in C/C++, you wouldn't believe how much you use the backslash or vertical bar (or symbol). Check the keyboard and make sure it is in a decent place. I made the mistake of getting a second hand one without checking and I just can't use it for programming of any sort. It is just soooooo annoying. This one had option 3 which, strangely enough, is favoured by many laptop manufacturers nowadays. However nice a laptop is, I will not be tempted by one with a backslash next to the spacebar. It just causes so much grief.

Many of them don't come with serial/parallel ports or PS2 connectors for mouse/keyboard. They just come with 2 USB ports and possibly one firewire. If you want an external mouse (a must for Unix if you are using middle button for drop), you will have to get a USB mouse. You will probably need a powered hub to connect more stuff to it.

Most of them don't have floppy drives so if you want one, you'll have to get a USB floppy drive. I don't know if the distros will boot off a memory stick like they would an emergency floppy.

That's my two pence.

 

[pansophic]

I've been running Linux on laptops since the late 90s and I can tell you that the thing that you want to avoid is shared audio and video RAM. That is probably the reason that your Gateway will only run at 800 x 600.

If you make sure that your laptop has independent audio and video RAM you shouldn't have a problem. My last 3 Dell Inspirons have supported better than 1600 dpi horizontal resolution, with the current one using 1920 (on a 17" display). It is a beautiful thing!

An external mouse is not required, nearly all distributions support "chording" so you can press the left and right buttons simultaneously to emulate the center button.

That said, I got a USB wireless keyboard and mouse with my 8600 and they work amazingly well. Really nice when I am working at home with the laptop.

WinModems (installed in all laptops that I have seen) are problematic at best. I've also had trouble with several of the integrated wireless NICs, but NDIS Wrapper has solved that to a great deal.

As far as CPUs are concerned, I've used AMD and Intel, but all of the high-end Dells come with Intels. I was really interested in getting an AMD 64-bit processor with the last laptop that I bought, but I wasn't willing to give up a WUXGA display to get it. More desktop is more important to me than more horsepower.


pansophic

 

[xwb]

Re rodents: it depends on how often you use the middle button and what you use it for. You will need it to move the scroll bar on an xterm and for X windows copy and paste. As I use it a lot, chording is not an option for me as the lower arm starts to hurt after a while. Also, with a touch pad, holding down 2 buttons and moving the mouse gets to be a two handed operation. I have managed it with one hand with a joystick on the older Dells which had both joystick and touchpad but controlling the joystick with the middle finger is quite something else.

Some applications support the MS copy and paste with ctrl C/Ctrl X and Ctrl V.

Also, on installing: select the correct mouse otherwise the drivers go crazy. They allow you to move the mouse to the centre of the screen and then jump back to bottom left. It then randomly clicks and dialogs start appearing all over the screen and your task bar moves to somewhere inaccessible. When this happens it is nice to have a reset button. Some have a little hole where you can insert a paper clip to reset. Most modern laptops do not have this so the only choice is to cut the power source and remove the battery.

 

[pansophic]

All modern laptops can be shut down by holding the power button down for about 10 seconds. But it is usually easier to shutdown X windows simply by pressing Alt-Ctrl-Bksp. If you haven't set runlevel 5 to be your default runlevel yet, you get dumped back to a command prompt. Otherwise you get a fresh X windows login (or your desktop reopened, I can't remember). Just unplug the unruly rodent, press Alt-Ctrl-Bksp and you should be back in business (assuming that you installed without the external rodent).

I take your meaning on the rodent third button issue. I personally really dislike rodents and have learned keystroke sequences to perform most functionality, so I don't use the rodent nearly as much as most people. So for me, chording makes the external rodent a non-issue.

I do have a few apps that simply don't perform correctly from the keyboard, so I must use rodent occassionally.


pansophic

 

[theEclipse]

shared audio memory?

I didnt know that sound cards required their own memory .....

I have been thinking about the location of certain keys on laptops....the backslash (vergual?) key is pretty much top importance.

pansophic-

As far as the NDIS wrapper, are there any compatible problems with integrated Wifi?

Robert Carpenter
Remember....eternity is much longer than this ~80 years we will spend roaming this earth.
ô¿ô

http://www.robertcarpenter.net

 

[pansophic]

I know that I have seen some reports of drivers not working in the NDIS Wrapper, but I don't recall whom's. Most of the reports that I have heard are positive, so there may well be no requirement for a Linux driver for your integrated WiFi. The only bad experience I know of second hand is a friend who couldn't get his PCI WiFi card working. All of the integrated ones that I know of worked.


pansophic