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Here.

Not even a LMGTFY.

Note: I am not the grand parent poster.

Like it or hate it, Device Manager is a cake-walk to use and anybody can figure it out in a few minutes.

You get "Unknown device" in the device manager and you have no idea what it is or what driver or anything, you can't grab a driver from windows update, because windows update doesn't have it. The only way to know is if the driver is installed that you don't have installed because you don't know what driver you need which is fairly difficult if you're just given a machine, with no information as to what it's components are and expected to install a version of Windows with whatever drivers it needs without opening the case.

At least on Linux you can do a lspci and identify what hardware is there and what drivers you need to install. With stuff like "Hardware Drivers" (in Ubuntu) where you just point and click to install proprietary drivers when you want them, it's not really any worse than Windows at that point.

Is there a good resource for finding Linux friendly hardware?

Some Linux OEMs like:

http://system76.com/
http://www.dell.com/linux
http://www.hp.com/linux
https://www.avadirect.com/
http://cosmos.linuxbeach.net/
http://www.eightvirtues.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/

I have been looking for this because I am in the process of trying to build a machine that is Linux friendly and I have been struggling with this.

Linus uses Apple hardware at the moment to my knowledge.

Given that Apple is actively adding Secure Boot Chain to their own devices, I wouldn't place a bet on them as the safe hardware platform here. Normally I buy used Lenovo laptops to put Linux on them. If Microsoft's Secure Boot starts to be more of an issue, I'd probabaly switch to a Linux hardware rebranding company like Emperor Linux to make sure I didn't end up with a problem system.

Except for the fact that every non-Apple x86 computer sold has Windows preinstalled, and when W8 comes out

No that is not correct.

every non-Apple x86 computer sold will have W8 preinstalled, along with secure boot.

And that stops you from running Linux on it how? I don't think you know what secureboot is and just see it as a thing that locks out non-Windows OSes. If you have a key and a signed linux bootloader you install that key using secureboot custom mode, if not then you can't use secureboot and you just turn it off, very simple, not a hard concept to grasp.

http://emperorlinux.com/mfgr/dell/rhino/

Never had much use for Ubuntu personally, but a rhino running slack would be a very nice machine.

EL gives good Dell: http://emperorlinux.com/

Have you looked into some of the Linux computer suppliers? eg, Zareason, System 76, LinuxCertified, and EmperorLinux

If I'm not mistaken, some people have been able to get the Windows license fee dropped from their purchase. I don't know how much trouble it is to do that though.

Maybe someone else can comment on that.

I am really thinking the submitters should try out Emperor Linux. ZaReason might also be a good place to look, or possibly System76.

Yeah, it would be good to get it from a supplier who has actually heard of Linux. So System 76, or maybe Emperor Linux or The Linux Laptop or Linux-Certified or ZaReason etc.

It's pretty simple. Hardware vendors make sure their hardware works with Windows. Most hardware vendors don't care whether it's easy for people to make their consumer hardware work on Linux.

So what do you do? You do exactly what Windows consumers do. You buy your system from a system builder, only one that certifies their systems for Linux, i.e. you pay money for someone to make sure that your flavor of Linux works on your hardware, so that you don't have to do it yourself. These aren't old systems. They are current gen systems.

I don't have any affiliation with any of these vendors but it was easy to find them:
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
http://www.system76.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/

The best choice for you depends on what you want.

From what you are saying, you are a lawyer who wants to get work done with a computer; you just want it to work. That argues for Mac OS X or Linux, IMHO.

If you buy a Windows laptop, it will come with all the drivers you need, pre-installed, and dialed in perfectly. It will also likely come with a whole bunch of useless junk helpfully pre-installed. It will also come with antivirus and antispyware software, and that is essential. So you can ignore the useless junk or strip it off, and make sure to keep your virus definitions updated. In Windows, everything you install has its own update manager, so from time to time Windows Update will need to run, the antivirus updater will need to run, Java (if you have it) has a really annoying updater... And Heaven help you if your machine does get some sort of malware that copies confidential data off your computer. And, it's getting harder to get old reliable XP; if you want to run Vista, you need a seriously powerful computer. (It is probably possible to turn off some background processes and strip out some cruft to make Vista better; and Windows 7 may be better; but for now, Vista can make a decent computer run slow.)

Note that the worst case scenario for Windows is a laptop being carried around and used in lots of different locations (coffee shops via WiFi, etc.) without a hardware firewall; that is the most likely way to get your computer infected with malware. Do you do this? If so, that argues against Windows.

With Mac OS X, you pay a bit more but everything Just Works. Fit and finish are mostly excellent. Lots of little things annoy me, so it hasn't seduced me away from Linux; for example, the fonts seem blurry to me, the Finder doesn't seem as friendly as the file manager I'm used to (Nautilus in GNOME), etc. But if you want a computer that Just Works, and especially if you don't have good tech support, this is a great way to go.

With Linux, once the computer is correctly set up and working, you can just use it and use it and it Just Works. It may be some effort to get it there. But my wife is very much a non-techie, and she is perfectly content with her Ubuntu desktop that I set up for her. It really does Just Work.

So, if you are interested in Linux, one way to go would be to buy a complete computer with Linux pre-installed and supported by some company. For example, if you want a laptop, you could buy one from Emperor Linux. (I haven't bought from them, but they have been around for years, so they must be doing something right.)

The thing I like about Linux is that it always keeps getting better. It can be a rocky process (PulseAudio has had some serious growing pains, especially in my favorite distribution, Ubuntu) but overall it's working. Linux isn't getting slower as it improves; it stays the same or gets better, overall. (A modern distribution should run anywhere XP will run, and probably faster.)

So, get Linux if you like the way it looks and works (I find the GNOME desktop to be quite soothing and efficient and I love the virtual desktops feature). If you are a busy non-techie, get a turnkey pre-configured system, even if you need to pay more.

Get Mac OS X if you like the way it looks and works. It's not that much more expensive and it Just Works.

Get Windows if you don't mind having to do a lot of administration work (updating virus definitions, running virus scans, etc.). You are definitely swimming with the currents if you adopt the most popular OS available; you can get help and support anywhere. (But you are more likely to need that help and support, IMHO. I have friends and family who come to me with computer problems, and I don't much enjoy cleaning malware off an infected Windows computer, but I've had to do it plenty.)

Hope this helps.

steveha

And people expect an average computer user to want to use Linux when they have to make sure their kernel is compiled right to do basic power management?

I expect an "average" computer user to buy a laptop with its OS pre-installed. Like the offerings here and here. And I expect the vendors to proved a kernel compiled with the right options for power management.

I know when I was looking previously I stumbled upon some other options, such as http://www.emperorlinux.com/ which is still perhaps a viable route.

Ah, but what other distro can you get preinstalled and supported (for a very reasonable price) on a new ThinkPad?

*shakes fist at Lenovo*

I lived through some of the years growing pains of Linux on the desktop and am not willing to go through it again with a laptop. A bunch of people have posted how-tos recording how they "succussfully" installed Linux (notably Ubuntu) on their T61s, but when you read the details, you find out that none of them really got it working right. They're just enthusiasts who are willing to put up with a laptop that doesn't, say, hibernate, or let you adjust the screen brightness over the halfway mark, or some other thing that would be intolerable in the long term.

Emperor Linux sells T61s with what appears to be full hardware support, but they charge a hefty markup, which strengthens my suspicion that it's not a reasonable thing for one guy to try to accomplish in a weekend.

That leaves me with pre-installed OpenSUSE, but buying service from Novell leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

My company has ordered about four T60s so far. While we've never had a problem with an older T-series laptop, two of our T60s broke with questionable mainboard issues (mouse/keyboard use locks system, won't boot, batteries are bricks two months after warranty expires).

We now buy Dell. The D830 is roughly equivalent to the T60, or the D630 if you want the lighter widescreen. Dells use the NVIDIA Quadro graphics card, which makes Linux easier to use, plus it has very good support for dual-head (using either the dock or a GXM, which lets you go dual-1920x1200 or triple-1280x1024). I've found the Dell keyboard layout preferable to the Lenovo keyboard layout, specifically the placement of Ctrl vs. Fn and Esc vs F1.

I have always wondered why there are so many FOSS advocates who put up with Apple's DRM'd little empire. Somehow, if Apple does the same thing that Microsoft does, Apple gets a pass, but why? And perhaps, more important, what can the FOSS community do to move Apple in a more Free and open source direction.

Are people really happy with Apple's contributions to BSD and Konqueror code?

If people are willing to put up with lock down just because Apple products are slick, I have to ask, are Apple products really that much more slick than Compiz? Is slick performance alone enough of a difference that people will give a pass to Apple?

I am not someone who believes everyone must use gNewSense and use only Free Software, because that is inconvenient for most users. But can't we make a little more effort to support vendors such as HP, Dell, Zareason, TechCollective.com, Emperor Linux, and other similar vendors who offer decent hardware with a better balance of Free to non-Free software?

IMHO, desktop Linux is good enough that we should try to encourage people to give it a shot, rather than just putting up with tyrannical insistence on having everything his own way, including his own little DRM'd desktop. Why put up with a company that would resort to the DMCA to attack its own customers? I understand that there is a lot about the iPhone that is cool, and yes it is a nice platform to hack, but why go to such lengths to hack it when you can't share your hacks?

"Except if you're looking for FOSS OS laptop, where do you take it? Even most custom build places push Windows to every system"

Well http://emperorlinux.com/ of course...

And for as long as other companies take the 'Windows or nothing' approach, EmperorLinux will continue to be the exclusive distributor for the entire linux/laptop market sector.

http://www.emperorlinux.com/ ?

http://www.emperorlinux.com/ Sells a whole range of Linux laptops, granted I never bought any of them but companies selling Linux computers do exist.

> Linux offers dozens of distros and I've never yet seen a chart that shows the pros and cons of each one

I have seen a few, but they are rare. Most charts focus too much on completeness, which leads to a long long list of niche distros. Wikipedia is the perfect example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_d istributions . But then there are also good ones, like http://www.emperorlinux.com/quality/value/distros/ . That may not be complete, and not exhaustive, but it is at least helpful.

You have three options:

1. Buy off-lease.
2. Buy a Mac. You can dual boot with Windows or use Parallels or VMWare.
3. Buy a laptop preloaded with Linux. You can dual boot with Windows or use VMWare (VMWare Server is great for running Windows under Linux).

There's also a forth if you don't care if it's not legal:
4. Use an activation crack. There is a really good open source one that always works and gets past all validation checks.

For the second two, you could just pick up a copy of XP and stick on on. With the first option it'd be included, and you'd get real hardware (ie, no cripplons) at a much lower cost than you'd get something new. Hell, you can get a good off-lease desktop for the retail price of XP Pro.

For Christmas I bought a system preloaded with eComStation. I paid no Microsoft tax. All you have to do is support THE vendors of good quality products. Like buying high quality Snapper lawn movers instead the disposable Wal-Mart ones.
(The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html)

You can avoid the Microsoft tax too.

eComStation user group - http://www.os2voice.org/
eComStation - http://www.ecomstation.com/

eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm

Also Linux preloads
SUSE preloaded
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.html

Fedora preloaded
http://www.emperorlinux.com/

Most of the people who say this haven't actually looked at the price situation recently.

I'm one of the people who have, and I'll tell you he's right. I bought a Thinkpad X60 tablet directly from Lenovo back in December (and got it in February -- Lenovo's supply problems suck). Before doing so, I also checked Emperor Linux, Inc., which is the only one I've heard of that sells X60s with Linux. The specific configuration (high-res screen but otherwise low-end) I ordered is not available from them, but even their cheapest configuration is several hundred dollars more than I spent ($2300 vs. ~$2000). And if I had bought the SXGA version from them I would have had to spend $3500, which is a whopping fifteen hundred dollar markup!

I like Linux and want to support it, but I can't afford to support it that much!

if you feel comfortable sending 1-2 grand to some company you've never heard of i suppose system76 are the ones to beat. if you are interested in the peace of mind that comes with buying from an established vendor in the linux laptop space (like most people do with dell or HP), then you want an emperor and their prices start pretty much where dell's stop. with that said, system76 is a good find and i will definitely check them out.

a good part of this is MS's shinnanegans (giving deep discounts on the two products the buying public is pretty much guaranteed to be interested in if they drag their feet on supplying linux) and a small part of it is fear or ignorance on the part of the vendors themselves.

it should also be mentioned that open office installs on windows as well, and so does clamAV

http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/dell/
Several other good manufacturers, to boot.
Rock solid, hard drive laid out to your taste, including dual boot configurations with that lesser operating system.
My biggest quibble is they don't Gentoo, but if you're batty enough to run that (like me) you probably know what to do. ;)

I've been trying to buy a Linux laptop. Unsuccessfully. I'm looking for a low-end system, just enough to give presentations and access systems remotely. My main systems are desktops. I don't need to be able to play movies. I don't need dual boot. I don't need much compute power or a big screen. I do need WiFi capability to public access points, and VGA output to projectors. One would think this would be easy.

So first I try Fry's, which used to have Linux machines on sale. No more. Everything is Windows or Mac. I try Best Buy. No joy, even after a talk with the Geek Squad guy.

Online, we have LinuxCertified. No obvious business address on the web site, always a bad sign, and a criminal offense in California. Low-grade domain-only SSL cert. Phone number not answered during working hours. Not looking good.

There's an article about a $498 Linux laptop from WalMart, but it's been discontinued. WalMart no longer seems to have any Linux laptops.

There's EmperorLinux, but their laptops start at $1145 and go up to $6000. Their $1145 machine is a Dell 520, which Dell sells for $599. $400 extra for Linux?

So now we're down to the blogger/enthusiast sites. One guy has a list of Linux laptop vendors. Going down the list, it doesn't look good. The HP link is dead. The Dell link leads to Dell's French site, and even that's selling only Windows laptops.

But some of the links aren't dead. MGE PC Online will actually sell a Linux laptop. It's a bit overpriced; $805 for the cheapest Celeron machine. But you get Red Hat Fedora preloaded. ShopRCubed has Linux laptops that start at $840. Their advertising is deceptive; they advertise a model with "Intel Dual Core Technology" for $799, but in fact that's the price with an Intel Celeron. Adding WiFi and a Ubuntu install brings you up to $840.

There's American Computer, or ACC PC, or CompAmerica, or whatever. Very low base prices, but they don't install Linux; they just sell you a bare machine and claim "Also Certified to run the Linux Operating System."

Let's try Google's "Froogle" system. There we get some Linux laptops. There's a discontinued Acer model that's out of stock. There's a Pentium II laptop on eBay for $80. ("Boots Linux; some keys don't work") Nothing useful there.

Face it. There are no major commercial vendors of Linux laptops any more. There are a few resellers buying machines, adding Linux, and increasing the price. That's it.

Please do. I've looked long and hard for laptop OEMs and have only found a precious few. (Emperor Linux and Linux Certified come to mind, but I like to shop around.)

Principle? No way. If he cared about principle, he wouldn't be buying a Dell laptop which came preinstalled with Windows, and then demand a refund. He would buy a computer with Linux preinstalled, or buy a computer with no OS at all and then install Linux on it. That there are no Linux laptops available is a myth: see list at bottom of message. The best way to support Linux is to support Linux laptop builders, not to throw more money at Dell. Maybe the Dells are cheaper. Fine, then buy the Dell and throw the Windows away. I think it's ridiculous to buy the Dell and demand refunds. I don't smoke and have no gizmos, so I demand that Honda give me a refund for the cigarette lighter in the car. I don't need his and hers sinks, so I demand the home builder give me a refund for one sink in the bathroom. I don't need the knives in the silverware set I just bought, so I demand a refund from Oneida. I don't need the Print Screen or SysRq buttons on the keyboard, so I demand a refund for them. Ridiculous.

http://www.linuxcertified.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.shoprcubed.com/
http://www.kc-computers.com/

"At the current time however, there really isn't any way to build your own laptop...you have to buy a prebuilt one from a manufacturer, most of which are going to include Windows."

Apparently slashdot is stuck in a timewarp. Did you know you still have to compile your own kernel to get hardware to work?

Indeed it can. [shameless-plug] EmperorLinux offers the laptop pre-installed with any of the major Linux distros and full hardware support under the name Raven. [/shameless-plug]

Indeed it can. [shameless-plug] EmperorLinux offers the laptop pre-installed with any of the major Linux distros and full hardware support under the name Raven. [/shameless-plug]

I bought a Raven X60 from Emperor Linux this summer. It's a very nice machine and is just perfect for cafés where my nine pound Dell is inconvenient. Amortized over the last six months, my café drinks are down to less than $100 each!

Although Emperor Linux claims that they have many of the key laptop specific features working out of the box, I've found that not to be the case. Sleep, hibernate and dial-up modem capabilities never worked for me from day one. Also, you have to pay the Redmond Tax, so I had them not uninstall Windows XP and make it a dual boot machine. It's a good thing too, because it turned out to be the only way I could get online at some motels.

I've also run into problems with WiFi because one of my favourite coffee shops, Bluff City Coffee, because they provide access through a Cisco access point with WPA and a security protocol I'd never heard of before. It works easily with Windows, but it was tough to get it to work with Ubuntu. Evenutally we got it figured out, but it still blocks apt-get packages, so I have to download them manually, which isn't exactly a common thing for me to do in a café anyways.

I had been looking at the Lenovo tablet for some time, and one found an offering from Emperor Linux that supported several different distros on the Lenovo hardware (named "Raven"):

http://www.emperorlinux.com/systems/tablet/

They also have a new "Wasp" tablet using the Panasonic Toughbook series.
The pricing on these models is a little higher (especially with upgrades), but the warm fuzzy of not running proprietary software should be worth it.

A thinkpad or a toughbook? My money on the toughbook says thinkpads are pussies. Bring it on!

And in the U.S., you've been able to get them for years from EmperorLinux. (That's where I got mine.) That's still qualitatively distinct from having it come from the OEM.

I certainly am thinking twice about buying my Raven X60 notebook, which is just a Lenovo X60 Thinkpad renamed to 'Raven' and with Linux (ubuntu Dapper Drake in my case) pre-installed.

The ONLY reason I am not cancelling this order, is that I don't want to mess up the Emperor Linux folks who have already had to order the laptop on my behalf. They're good people and I don't want to jerk them around. However, if this had happened last week, I'd have saved myself a bundle and bought one of the cheaper 12.1" notebooks instead. When paying a premium for a luxury notebook, I don't want to be supporting a company (Lenovo) that has such a poor opinion of their customers choices. This will likely be my LAST Thinkpad purchase. Maybe I'll put a Tux sticker over the Thinkpad logo to hide my shame ;)

This turn of events is really surprising to me because, I thought that, part of the reason that IBM, sold off this division was because there was a conflict of interest with their Linux software consulting and the pressure that they had from Microsoft. I thought that a major part of the issue was that Lenovo would be immune to this pressure and be working in a country where the local consumers were more likely to purchase linux boxen than elsewhere because of the strong Linux push in China. Of course, this could be looked at another way by realizing that, while IBM couldn't knuckle under to the pressure from Microsoft without losing face, Lenovo could.

So, where are the IBM linux consultants supposed to get their Linux laptops from now?

I certainly am thinking twice about buying my Raven X60 notebook, which is just a Lenovo X60 Thinkpad renamed to 'Raven' and with Linux (ubuntu Dapper Drake in my case) pre-installed.

The ONLY reason I am not cancelling this order, is that I don't want to mess up the Emperor Linux folks who have already had to order the laptop on my behalf. They're good people and I don't want to jerk them around. However, if this had happened last week, I'd have saved myself a bundle and bought one of the cheaper 12.1" notebooks instead. When paying a premium for a luxury notebook, I don't want to be supporting a company (Lenovo) that has such a poor opinion of their customers choices. This will likely be my LAST Thinkpad purchase. Maybe I'll put a Tux sticker over the Thinkpad logo to hide my shame ;)

This turn of events is really surprising to me because, I thought that, part of the reason that IBM, sold off this division was because there was a conflict of interest with their Linux software consulting and the pressure that they had from Microsoft. I thought that a major part of the issue was that Lenovo would be immune to this pressure and be working in a country where the local consumers were more likely to purchase linux boxen than elsewhere because of the strong Linux push in China. Of course, this could be looked at another way by realizing that, while IBM couldn't knuckle under to the pressure from Microsoft without losing face, Lenovo could.

So, where are the IBM linux consultants supposed to get their Linux laptops from now?

http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/lenovo/raven/

although i don't know why anyone would want anything to do with a hardware manufacturer who makes exclusive deals with microsoft.

For servers and workstations, you can go with companies like Penguin Computing (there are many more of them) that put together machines out of Linux-compatible components, integrate it, preinstall everything, and ship it.

For laptops, there are actually plenty of Linux compatible laptops, but there is no single recognizable brand that is consistently Linux compatible, making the problem one of selection, not availability. Fortunately, a number of companies like Emperor Linux do the legwork for you.

With hardware virtualization on the new Intel mobile chips, using Windows or OS X as a "bootstrap loader and device driver" for Linux is another reasonable choice. That way, you get all the goodness of a Linux desktop environment on your hardware, but installation is trivial and you can strip down the host OS to its bare minimum.

I may be completely wrong here, because my newest laptop is from around 1998, but I don't really think that a brand-new machine should pose much of a problem for Linux. I've got a couple laptops, both running Linux, and most of the difficult setup work was mostly because of older ISA sound cards (probably nonexistent in modern machines).

Few quick tips from someone who's been there, done that:

• I'm not too sure about built-in wireless, but if you have an external adapter I find that NETGEAR makes pretty good ones. I just use the NdisWrapper module, too lazy to switch to anything else.
• The video card is likely to be the trickiest thing on newer machines. Try finding one with either an ATI or nVidia chipset, because they tend to be the best-supported on Linux; if the open-source drivers don't work, they have their own proprietary ones that will likely work.
• Sound shouldn't be too difficult; ALSA should have no problem.
• If the machine has a built-in Ethernet port, it should be fine, but beware of modems. Most of the modems sold these days are really cheap ones designed to work with Windows only, so I'd say try finding an older PCMCIA modem if your machine still has the slot. I recommend a Motorola Montana, my own 33.6k one is more than enough for when I'm traveling away from a wireless network.

You may want to try a few LiveCD's out on your machine; some distributions may work better than others – I recommend Ultima Linux, mostly because it's my distro, but others are good too. May also be worth checking out EmperorLinux, they sell laptops pre-loaded with Linux so they're practically guaranteed to work.

Personally, I think the hardest thing with new machines isn't the software, it's just re-adjusting to where everything is. I tend to like having the CD drive on the front, one of the "full-size"-ish keyboards that keeps that little block above the arrow keys intact, and the PCMCIA slot on the left hand side, but maybe that's just me.

Hope you find a machine you like :-)

sony vaio u101 (discontinued, import)
everything works out of the box(even rare
things like suspend and temp sensor) hardware
feels like it was meant to run linux,
including things like 3d accel, screen
brightness (better control than windows)
temp sensor, etc. this is my main laptop.

apple ibook g4 1.25ghz
also runs ubuntu, power management works,
but its not as nice. 3d does work. mostly
run it in os x for when i need a mac at
work, i like the u101 better.

fujitsu p2120
runs fine, couldnt suspend then, probably
can now. everything else works, but that
transmeta chip is slow...

thinkpad A21p ran ubuntu fine, everything worked.

compaq m700 everything worked out of the box in
debian, so ubuntu should be no prob.

the only things to watch out for are acpi (make sure
it can suspend if you care about that) and the wifi card,
unless you want to use a pc-card slot. ubuntu is
good about hardware support.

usually laptops are easier than desktops to run nix on
or at least look up. look up linux laptop sellers and
linux friendly ones ( http://powernotebooks.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/ etc) along with all the
sites dedicated to linux laptops. also good to check
bsd sites and see if anyone on #ubuntu is using / looking
at a laptop your interested in.

if you just need windows for a couple school apps,
you might want to use qemu or vmware(player and
server are free) qemus performance isnt bad with
virtualization, but you cant like watch movies
in it and stuff like with vmware. but anyway,
its pretty easy to manage a 3 gig win2k partition
and maybe a backup or two, or just run it in snap
shot mode with another virtual disk for data or
just using the included samba (both qemu and
vmware have this) on a host only network so
windows doesnt get exposed at all.

Their markup is a little high, but their support is excellent.

I haven't purchased from them, yet. But, I bought a support agreement and a depot install from them. I shipped them a latop, and they shipped it back with a fully configured Redhat. Very nice, very easy.

D.

PS - No, I do not work for them, and no they are not friends of mine.

Check out http://emperorlinux.com/ for a lot of options for pre-installed Linux on your laptop. You can order a notebook with dual-boot and they list all the devices etc. that are available to your Linux environment.

So why is the Linux machine ($824, monitor and burner sold separately) more expensive than the Windows machine if Linux is free software? And why are Linux machines available only from "small business" and not "home office"?

No, I can't: "This bundle is only available to UK customers." Any corresponding offer for people in Canada or the United States who cannot afford such a "business trip"? Which Google keywords should I try?

Are these boxes on display in the brick-and-mortar stores, or does one have to already know about the (poorly advertised) offer, already have a computer, and already have Internet access in order to buy one?

"My local market" doesn't seem to have a lot of entry-level IT job openings in careerbuilder.com. I've been looking for a job for three years; have I wasted three years of my life on the newspaper and careerbuilder.com?

You're aware that Dell makes some fairly small laptops themselves, right?

This sort of thing? I've just been looking at Dell systems, and they seem quite heavy and expensive compared to Sharp ones.

These are some of the smartest people in the world - they're not buying the Macs for the pretty colors.

I graduated from MIT. Sure there are smart people there, but there are plenty of clueless ones too. The smart ones are the ones who are capable of making informed decisions, aren't influenced by conformism or fashion, and don't automatically assume that what works for them is the perfect solution for everyone else.

That said, I agree with the grandparent. I've used OSX on an occasional basis, but when I need to get real work done, I use linux.I need an environment that can be configured the way I want. Choosing menu fonts and a background is what passes for "configurability" on OSX. When they start supporting multiple virtual desktops, focus follows mouse, and no toolbar (I want control of *all* pixels), wake me up and I'll take another look.

Also, Linux on laptops sucks. Power management support, fan control, wireless network support, sleep support, bluetooth, manufacturer-specific keys, none of those work. It may be possible, but it isn't pleasant.

Which is it? Either none of them work, or "it may be possible"?

This is what resellers like Emperor Linux are for. Just pick the laptop you want and have them get Linux installed with all the bells and whistles enabled.

Start by getting a properly small laptop, rather then the "luggable" computers Dell make, then you can put it in a normal bag with room to spare...

I build all my own machines from scratch, but what about laptop and notebooks? I've never seen a laptop or notebook that could be purchased without a Microsoft operating system pre-installed.

o rly?

Emperor Linux: $2750
Lenovo: $1,979.00

http://emperorlinux.com/systems/tablet/ I'd like to see more out there, though.