Slashdot Mirror
Laptops That Support FreeBSD/Win/Linux/Solaris?
whirred asks: "I often hear about certain laptops being particularly bad or ideal for particular operating systems. I want to purchase a laptop with around 30 gigs of hard drive space, and when I do, I want to be able to use FreeBSD, Linux, Win32, and Solaris on Intel. I would also like to possibly install BeOS or OpenBSD. Not being an expert on any of these operating systems, is there a laptop out there that has hardware that is supported by all of these operating systems?"
Laptops are always nightmares. They contain a great deal of hardware, typically customized in proprietary, non-public ways, that can NOT be swapped out or changed. To make matters worse, Microsoft, being the evil money-grubbing bastards they are, now encourages (or is that requires) laptop manufacturers to distribute win98 (or whatever they are up to now) in a completely-wipe-and-rebuild-the-entire-system cd. So forget about installing windows after reformatting/partitioning the drive. Even if you have a different copy of windows, you'd still be missing all the customized drivers.
All that said, Linux on a laptop is incredibly, unbelievably useful. My recommendation is that you check out http://www.linux-laptop.net/. They are one of the best sources for getting Linux up and going on your laptop.
One or two other pieces of advice:
To get both win98 and Linux on my laptop, I needed to clean-wipe-and-reinstall win98, then BEFORE booting into win98 for the first time, resize the windows partition, and create the linux partitions. Win98 wanted to create a swapfile at the end of its partition, which prevented the partition from being resized. My friends in the windows world tell me there's an easier solution. I just needed to buy certain additional software programs. But, as seldom as I use windows, I was damned if they were going to get any more money out of me!
Installing Red Hat 6.2 locked up my laptop's keyboard whenever I hit the second stage install. (I tried every option from ftp to nfs to floppy to cdrom boot.) Solution: In BIOS, I set closing the case lid to suspend the computer, booted Red Hat off cdrom, closed the lid when it froze, reopened the lid, which unfroze Red Hat, and continued the install. Only problem: Forgot I had set this "feature". Later on, tried to ssh into the laptop after I had closed the lid....
If you want to spend the money, www.emperorlinux.com has a selection of pricey laptops with Linux preinstalled. They do offer custom partitioning so you could probably have them leave space for you to add other OSs.
Forget about the inexpensive laptops you see at Circuit City or similar stores. I don't know whether those won't run Linux, but emperorlinux.com doesn't offer anything under $2200-$2400 and those look a bit weak from a purely numbers perspective.
right here is a list of things to check
/DVI and good X surport
because EACH model will be differant
--- Video chipset --- the most important thing as interface can be a hard without good support check that it can do nice Frame buffer and X as well as good vesa for nice text mode (the rage128mobility has good support)
---Keyboard --- yes i know but people fail to realize that in the intrests of space they put the windows key where the ctrl key should be check that the keyboard does not put ctrl or alt in strange places
--mouse --- check that it is supported (all I know are but all I know use synaptics or IBM )
---PCMCIA --- check that the root controller is well supported their arnt many so it useally is but some old cheap ones are still sold that are broken and wont work with linux (all the TI ones have worked for me an cirrus one did not though)
---USB --- check what kind of root controller it is and wether it is suported (only intel and apple/LSI ones I have work with 2.4.x)
--eth0/networking--- all built in come from 3com or intel and should work if its not one of these be warey (my advice is get one built in as you only have to buy a PCMCIA one anyway)
--- modem ---- SOFTWARE modedms are presant on most built in to laptop the only ones that I could get even hafe working was the IBM thinkpads from their softmodem project check the lists (get a real oneI dont use a modem much anymore and have a old PCMCIA 3com wich works well )
what do you want from the laptop ?
power house development ?
processor matters as well as memory
presentation ?
PDF
or cool tool to annoy people on trains ?
touch screen a must
regards
john jones
QLITech out of Moline, Illinois recently acquired the Laptop end of Tuxtops.
They have a nice system the "Emperor" which is the same hardware, and built by the same manufacturer that builds Dell's Inspiron 5000e.
So before going with Dell, and their "piss-poor" Linux Support give these guys a shot.
There was a big announcement here on slashdot awhile back regarding the acquisition too!
*(Normally I don't plug too many companies, but these guys are the real deal.)
"Fortune, Fame, Mirror Vain, Gone Insane..... But The Memory Remains...
"Fortune, Fame, Mirror Vain, Gone Insane..... But The Memory Remains...
I've had good luck with the 505 series from Sony, however, to say their customer service sucks is the understatement of the decade. I bought my and pretended I didn't have ANY support; it's easier that way. That said, they run well, get decent battery life, and don't weigh too much.
Others had had good luck with the IBM Thinkpads. I also hear good things about the G3 Apple notebooks, but I don't know about the new titanium G4, it's a little bit, ugh, large for my tastes anyhow.
Someone, pretty please, release linux on a HP Jornada 720.. :)
..don't panic
I just ordered an IBM X20 for work. I wanted the lightest one I could find. One thing that LinuxCare offers is their labs where they test systems for Linux compatibility. If they have to do anything special, such as compiling a new kernel or using a non-provided driver, they tell you exactly what they did and where they got it.
It definately helped me pick out my new Thinkpad.
another word: PowerBook.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Dell sells laptops preloaded with Linux. Loading Windows would be trivial, but im not sure about Solaris. See http://www.dell.com/html/us/segments/bsd/choose_in spn_8000l.htm.
Solaris 8 has very minimal support for graphics cards. You'll almost certianly want to replace Xsun with XFree86. Do a search on Google for "solaris xfree86" and you'll find several useful HOWTO-type documents.
I'm not sure what the exact model and make of the laptop was, but Neal Stephenson might be able to tell you. Try sending Neal an email.
Keeping