Didn't Get That Linux Laptop for Xmas?

cvbear0 writes: "You didn't get the laptop you wanted for Christmas, did you? Well, surf on over to the Linux Laptop SuperGuide. The guys from the Linux Hardware Database and ZDNet have build a list of Linux-friendly laptops. Users can also post their comments about their experiences with certain model. Send back those 15 sweaters you received, and find the Linux laptop of your dreams!" My wish is that power management under Linux would be fully supported. Getting four hours battery life under Windows and two hours under Linux is disappointing.

Comments

Various responses

[dillon_rinker]

My wish is that power management under Linux would be fully supported. Getting four hours battery life under Windows and two hours under Linux is disappointing.

INFIDEL! MISCREANT! Pustulent bootlicking LAPDOG of WILLIAM HENRY GATES III! Knowest thou not that the WRATH of the PENGUIN shall fall upon thee? May thy hard drive CHIP and SHATTER!

Those who would trade security and essential freedoms for a little power deserve not security, freedom, or power.

D00D! 11|\|UX R00lZ! J00 AR3 A 5UCK0R A|\|D 1 0\/\/|\| J00!

What sort of loser hacker are you? Just buy a bunch of AA batteries at the airport or K-mart or wherevery you are and solder them in series/parallel to meet your laptop's power specs. If you can't get it exactly, try combinations of NiCad and regular batteries, as the .3V differential helps to meet the odd voltage specs. Or just carry around a few car batteries, a 12V cigarette lighter socket wired to some alligator clips, and one of those car adapters for your laptop.

Similar site for FreeBSD laptops?

[espo812]

I'd like to run a FreeBSD laptop. Does anyone have a good site for FreeBSD laptop compatiblity?

Re:Similar site for FreeBSD laptops?

[DrWiggy]

Try the PAO distribution. There is a special distro knocking around for laptops of FreeBSD called PAO available at http://www.jp.freebsd.org/PAO/ which is a Japanese site. The only problems I've ever had with the BSDs is PCMCIA ethernet cards when I'm trying to install over the network. Apart from that, they're great. I had OpenBSD on an old cruddy AMD X5 latop for years, and that same machine is now running NetBSD perfectly. ;-)

With PAO in particular, a lot of the work is now going to go into developing the FreeBSD PCMCIA framework, so eventually, no special distro required - just wack in the CD and 20 minutes later boot into 5.x-STABLE! ;-)

Is power management a Linux-wide problem?

[Russ Nelson]

The Compaq iPAQ handheld also overuses its batteries. I wonder if power management isn't a problem across all Linux architectures?
-russ

Sony VAIOs make good Linux-retrofitted laptops.

[AFCArchvile]

Since they use the Intel 440BX chipset, there's no problem with compatibility. The F and XG series laptops are the best (except for the F-630 which runs on a K6-2 and obviously doesn't have a BX chipset). Of course, why buy from Sony, the near-monopoly of the movie industry? So you can screw them over by not registering or using their provided software.

As far as the other brands, stay away from Toshiba; they're the manufacturer of the cheapest (and shoddiest) laptops around. HP isn't much better. Only the Compaq Armada series is worth retrofitting with Linux. All Dell systems should work out fine. As for Gateway, those laptops are worth their weight in cow pies.

Re:Sony VAIOs make good Linux-retrofitted laptops.

[11223]

Excuse me? While I don't own a Vaio, several friends do, and their units never work quite right. Between the cheese-o battery life, the incredible PC Card problems (does your PC card slot work right under Linux?). Even tho they use a BX chipset, they use Yamaha sound chips, which are a pain to get working properly.

On the other hand, my Gateway works just fine. I don't know what it is you're talking about, but Sony laptops are the biggest peices of linux-incompatible cow pies that I've ever seen.

May I recommend...

[11223]

The Gateway Solo 1100 (oops, now it's the 1150)? It's cheap ($999 to $1299), and every feature except the winmodem works like a champ. Including the power management. Including the PC card. Including the USB. Including X, with an Xrender-supported NeoMagic chipset for your antialiasing needs. Including the sound, if you use ALSA. It's never failed me. Heck, it's even mostly supported by Plan 9 from Bell Labs (power management doesn't work, but oh whell!)

You don't need to spend $2000 on a laptop to get one that works with Linux or other free OS's.

The Definitive Guide to Linux on Laptops

[�nubis]

While the ZDNet site is nice, you should definitely check out the Linux on Laptops site at:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-lapto p/

Not only does it have a laptop compatibility list that is twenty times larger than the ZDNet one, but it also has howto's, discussion forums, and much, much more.

Re:Cheap Laptops

[Tin Weasil]

Getting an inexpensive used/refurbished laptop is not very hard to do. There are plenty of places on the Internet and elsewhere to find your hardware needs.

Dollar Computer, a frequent advertiser in the back of Computer Shopper, has made finding a laptop in your price range rather simple. Just go to their site and input the price range that you are willing to pay. I did a search for models costing between $0 and $150 and came up with three (one 386 and two 486s).

The minimum requirement for running Linux is, of course, a 386. I would suggest, however, that if you are going to run Linux on these low-end machines, that you do so without X. X Windows is a big time resource hog that you can live without so long as you are willing to "go primitive" and use a command line. There a solitare games that can be played in text mode and SVGAlib, so you have alternatives to going with a full GUI environment.

Most of the old hardware will be supported under Linux, but you might want to look at the Linux Laptop pages before you buy.

I hope this helps.

Thinkpad anyone

[jsse]

Installation of Linux on IBM ThinkPad is pretty painless. IBM is well known for his support to Linux community, and it reflects on every model of its ThinkPad.

There are ThinkPad Configuration tools if you are interested

Above all, ThinkPad is reliable. You can see from the fact that second hand ThinkPad sell at pretty good price at Ebay.

Disclaimer: I'm an ex-employee of IBM and I really hate IBM but I still think ThinkPad is a great product.

What about PowerBooks?

[jspectre]

No mention of Apple PowerBooks on that site. LinuxPPC runs fantastic on many of them!

Definitive guides on Linux/BSD laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, here are the links you'll need when picking out a free software laptop:

Linux:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-lapto p/
http://www.linux.org/hardware/laptop.html

FreeBSD:
http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~dkulp/fbsd/laptop.html
http://www.jp.freebsd.org/PAO/LAPTOP_SURVEY/index. html

OpenBSD:
http://www.openbsd.org/i386-laptop.html
http://www.monkey.org/openbsd-mobile

NetBSD:
http://www.reedmedia.net/misc/netbsd/laptops-and-n etbsd.html
http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/netbsd/

X window system LCD configs:
http://www.sanpei.org/Laptop-X/note-list.html
http://www.sanpei.org/Laptop-X/Laptop-X/

Notebook survey for graphics/PCMCIA
http://hci.ucsd.edu/dsf/notebooks.html

If anyone has any other links for other free software OSes, please post them :)
--posted anonymously to avoid karma whoring.