Best Laptop for Linux

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Simon <simon80-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
| 
| He hasn't had it for long, but my dad recently bought an Averatec
| AV-1050 laptop from Best Buy when it was on sale for $700.

Are you sure that it is a 1050 (Pentium M)?  I paid that price for a
1020 (Celeron M) from Best Buy.  They didn't seem to carry the 1050
(Futureshop did, but for twice the price).

|  Ubuntu
| hung on boot when there was an MMC card in the built in reader (it
| resumed when I unplugged the card), so that may be a problem,

I haven't tried to MMC card.

| but
| everything else (graphics, wireless), works out of the box.  The
| wireless is a Ralink RT2500 chipset, fyi.

I think that means 1020 -- I think that the 1050 uses an Intel
wireless chip.

I have not got the wireless going under Ubuntu, but have perhaps not
tried hard enough.  Or too hard.  Kismet is working, so the actual
driver is going.

|  The laptop itself is the
| size of a sheet of letter size paper, and Windows estimated that it
| would have 4 hours of battery life when I unplugged it and hovered the
| cursor over the battery applet.  All in all, I'd have bought one if I
| could justify it at all, but I can't really.. :(

The display is small, but it has a fairly standard number of pixels:
1280x768.

The brand hasn't got a great reputation.  For example, there has never
been a published BIOS update (and not because it is bug free -- there
are some ACPI bugs).  I just hope I don't need support.

My current belief is that notebooks with Intel chips are the best bet.
Intel has been pretty good releasing open source drivers (wireless,
video, etc.).

AMD doesn't make chipsets (unless you count ATI as part of AMD) so
AMD-based notebooks are a grab-bag of chips, only some of which are
decently supported.  The newer the chip, the less likely that support
has flowed into standard distros.
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