Advice for Linux on a Laptop?

Trillian_1138 is seeking your advice on the following: "So I'm looking at replacing my aging laptop. I have a desktop running Ubuntu, which I use as a primary, and it is more than adequate for my needs. However, I'd love a small, portable laptop to use in class and on trips. I've been looking at the MacBook Pros and, more recently, the MacBooks, and was almost ready to buy the low-end MacBook and be done with it. I liked its ability to dual-book to Windows for a couple of school-related programs, but the more I thought about it the more I like using Ubuntu at home and the less reason I saw to buy a Mac if I could use Ubuntu on a laptop. This brought me to the idea of buying a laptop to use as a dual-boot Linux/Window machine, either with Linux or Windows pre-installed, and setting up a dual-boot with the other OS. Might any of you have advice, anecdotes, success stories, horror stories, or general input?" "Please note I am not looking for a discussion on whether Linux is 'Ready for the Desktop'. I switched over to Ubuntu earlier this year and haven't looked back. As far as I'm concerned, Linux is ready for *my* desktop, which is all I really care about. This laptop is for me, not my mom. I'm not a command-line guru by any means and likes having a nice GUI, but am comfortable Googling when my DVDs stop playing after an update or poking around in configuration files to get things working. What I'm now curious about is what to expect - positive and negative - with Linux on a laptop.

I know a quick Google search yields lots of information on laptops running Linux, and I am continuing to use Google to look at information on running Linux on laptops which came with Windows, buying OS-less laptops, and buying laptops with Linux pre-installed, but I'm curious what the Slashdot crowd thinks. Is it even worth the bother? Would I be better off buying a Dell and installing Linux or buying a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed from somewhere like system76.com or Linuxcertified.com?"

Comments

Advice

[WilyCoder]

Advice: MAKE SURE you get a wifi card compatible with linux. I got lucky with the intel 2200; at first it had no support, now its in the kernel :)

Re:Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much any wifi card is supported now, though. There are four main cards out there: Prism (supported in-kernel), Broadcom (an experimental driver exists that is constantly improving, and you can always use ndiswrapper), Atheros (madwifi driver), and Intel (supported in-kernel). The most popular is Broadcom, though. You are better off with an Intel card. The Broadcom driver was reverse engineered from the firmware of a Linksys router and the PowerPC driver, so the Intel drivers are better quality.

Re:Advice

[ottothecow]

Just get a thinkpad.

IIRC they dont ship anything that has any problems with linux that arent easily fixed. Add to that the fact that they are just damn good laptops.

Re:Advice

[ryanov]

This is not so true. Cards based on Atheros, while "well-supported" can be flaky to say the least. Mine resets for no reason, the madwifi-ng driver seems to be in flux (and for me, doesn't work when installed), and has generally been a pain in the ass. Thankfully, this card is an eval from a co-worker.

Re:Advice

[Bert64]

It seems to depend upon the cards too...
There are a large number of cards based on atheros chipsets, i have several myself...
My experience is that the d-link one (650G or something, i forget the model number, it has 802.11a disabled) is very flakey, while my cisco cards (also based on the same atheros chipset, but with 802.11a still enabled) work perfectly.

If you ever want to do anything "dodgy" with wireless, like sniffing or packet injection, atheros cards are the ones to go for and i would recommend the cisco ones.

hw

[goarilla]

avoid ati mobiles gpu's
if you need good 3d performance go for nvidia
if 3d gaming is not what you need go for intel integrated graphics as they
have released their drivers opensource iirc and it's in the kernel as we speak

Considerations:

[slashbob22]

ACPI - For battery life (It's getting better, but there are some units which still have problems)
Wifi - Both card and encryption mechanism. (Again, this is getting better and WPA support is becomming well integrated)
Graphics - Mobile Nvidia usually has better support then ATI.
Function Keys - There is fairly good toshiba support for function keys, but it's always nice to have the LCD bright/dim, mouse lock, etc. work correctly.

I've it easier

[jsse]

I boot it with Knoppix Live CD

Better yet, a live Knoppix DVD.

Unless, of course, you're a perfectionist that you believe Linux must be installed natively, but I beg you try it and examine its features before judging it. There's no harm in trying.

And you'd find it surprisingly featureful.

Re:vmware

[breadbot]

Yes, VMWare, a thousand times yes. All you need is enough memory to run both OSes. First, the bad news:

• Linux (which I am assuming will be the guest OS) will run more slowly than normal. The slowdown will depend on the software; more system calls will mean more slowdown. I've seen a 10% to 75% slowdown, but normally I would guess (without any real measurements) around 30%. But very usable.
• No native accelerated graphics in Linux. Still pretty fast, but I don't think you have a chance of getting a decent framerate in Half-Life.
• You'll want to suspend Linux before you suspend the laptop. VMWare doesn't play nicely (or it didn't when I last tried it a year ago) with sleep etc. But don't worry -- suspending a VMWare image is trivially easy and very quick.

Now, the good news:

• Both OSes at once! No dual-booting!
• No special Linux lappy configuration -- no wireless networking, no ACPI -- just plain vanilla drivers. SCSI, even :)
• Not just one but lots of Linuxes! You can run several machines. Your own network! For me that's nice, since I do a lot of integration projects, but it may not matter for you. You can start with a base config and clone it. Etc.
• Portability and backup -- your main machine will be virtual (your Linux VM image). Just back up the image (you can pause it, back it up, and unpause it without rebooting it) periodically and, if your shell machine (Windows) dies, which laptops are wont to do for a thousand reasons, you can migrate your Linux VM to a new host. Isn't there a Star Trek race like that in DS9?
• VMWare (at least one version) is free now. I use VMWare Workstation, which is $115 (academic), but that may not be necessary with the recent changes.
• Chicks! Ha ha, just kidding. I wouldn't know. I'm married, I use Linux (and Linux hosted on VMWare itself running under Linux), and my wife insists on staying with me anyway. So maybe it's true.

That's my suggestion. It may sound weird if you're used to a one-OS-at-a-time machine, but I swear, once you try it you'll never go back.

advice

[itzdandy]

my advice is as follows. know that i have 4 laptops running linux and have been through just about every issue out there.

first,
avoid GPUs for power management. i have a radeon x1400 in one laptop but when i use accelerated drivers my power management doesn't work. if you want a laptop to just work get an inbuilt intel chipset. neither the ati or nvidia GPU have good power management in linux at this point.

know that your disk drive will be slow and choose packages and distros carefully based on the hardware specs. I use (k)ubuntu and am up-to-date with dapper6.06 and everything works very well on my dell 600m. suspend to ram works well and hibernate works well also, both with some tweeking.

wifi is quite easy now. many devices have inbuilt drivers in modern kernels or can use ndiswrapper and the windows drivers. configuring wireless networks has not gotten as easy as windows on all distros but in *ubuntu it is quite easy. 'network manager' programs makes it EASIER than windows in my opinion.

most newer laptops are linux compatible as far as the other hardware. i have 2 machines with memory card slots and they work well, also pcmcia devices work very well as long as the device is supported.

really, you should have no problems if you buy the right hardware.

i know that:
dell 600m
dell e1505
compaq m2000
emachines/averatek m5105

all work well. the m2000 does not like suspend to ram though.

good luck

Re:ThinkPad, ThinkPad, ThinkPad

[thedave]

Oh, yeah. One more thing.

EmperorLinux specializes in configuring Linux laptops. And, they maintain a good stock of IBM's.

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.