Best Laptop for Linux

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Wed Aug 31 14:59:03 UTC 2005


On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 06:20:10AM +0000, Muhammad Imran wrote:
> <DIV class=RTE>I am buying a Laptop for Linux. If anybody bought a laptop recently that works fine with Linux (without lot of trouble), please let me know which one.</DIV>
> <DIV class=RTE>I am thinking to buy Dell Inspiron 6000 or Sony VAIO FS645PH. has anybody tried linux on these?</DIV>
> <DIV class=RTE> </DIV>
> <DIV class=RTE>any thoughts....</DIV>
> <DIV class=RTE>thanks guys.</DIV>
> <DIV class=RTE> </DIV></div></html>

Turn of HTML please.

In my experience, Dells are often the most painful things you can
install linux on.  I have yet to get X running properly on my Boss's
Dell, because it has one of those stupid ATI mobile chips which ATI
doesn't currently support.

It also has an SATA HD stuck in emulation mode, which requires the
kernel to have the unfinished ATAPI SATA supported compiled in or you
can only see the HD or the DVD but never both at the same time.  Of
course they offer no option to switch to native mode in the SATA/IDE
controller because then they might get support calls from people trying
to reinstall XP going "it won't see my hd, and I can't load a driver
from disk because I have no floppy drive".

Sony's I have very little experience with.  I remember in the past
reading about many very odd proprietary things in them that was causing
a lot of headaches for getting linux on them.  That may have changed.

I have had very little trouble installing onto my wife's Compaq R3240
(Athlon 64 Mobile 3200+ with nvidia MX 440 video).  Main problem was the
broadcom wireless which requires ndiswrapper to operate with linux.

Lennart Sorensen
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