Linux compatability of a couple of laptops?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>

|   My old netbook appears to be dying, with spontaneous freezes, taking
| multiple attempts to reboot, etc.  I like the netbook form-factor, but
| not the crippled hardware.

As Tyler said, the problem may be fixable.  The longer you put off a
purchase, the better the purchase will be.

Except: netbooks are dying.  They are not being made any longer.
So: maybe you can get a deal NOW, as they are being cleared.

|  For potential replacements, I'm looking at
| 
| 1) An ASUS machine (AMD)
| http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_577_367&item_id=046492

This is a netbook.  It would hope that you could find a less expensive
one.  This isn't much better than an Acer Aspire One 522 that I bought
a year or two ago for $229, new.  It is a bit better:

- C50 vs E450 processor (perhaps 50% faster, but same chip)
- 1280x720 vs 1366x768 screen  (note: Win8 supports 768 but noto 720!)
- 10" vs 11.6" screen (I prefer smaller)
- nasty keys vs possibly OK keys
- USB2.0 only vs some USB3.0

| 2) An Acer machine (Intel with HM77 Express chipset)
| www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_577_367&item_id=054900

Nicer machine, almost 50% higher price.  Creeping into Ultrabook price
range.  I suspect Ultrabooks have been a bit of a market failure so we
might see some discounting.  If you like netbooks, Ultrabooks are even
better except for the ridiculous prices.

I kind of like the idea of a touchscreen, if it is cheap enough.  You
may not use it, but you might.  I know that I didn't use my Thinkpad
x61t's stylus much.

This seems similar but with touch screen.  Slightly inferior CPU.
Half the RAM -- I'd see if that can be fixed before I'd buy it:
<http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=77123&vpn=X202E-DH31T-CA&manufacture=ASUS&promoid=1292>
Note: I didn't look hard for this.  It is not a Hugh Certified Deal:-)

|   Any linux compatability gotcha's?  The Intel video driver appears to
| be open source http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_hd4000_linux37&num=1
| but the AMD appears to be proprietary.  The Intel has twice the ram and
| a larger hard drive.  Any comments/experiences?

These AMD chips have been around for quite a while.  The kinks have
mostly been worked out.  One annoying one was AMD didn't release specs
for how a driver could enable sound over HDMI.  Intel has been really
good about video driver support (although there have been bugs early
in KMS).

All notebooks have kinks.  Most are surviveable.  An exception: see
earlier posting about how Linux bricks Samsung notebooks using UEFI.
Turns out that (mostly) Samsung is to blame.

AMD chips are just not as good as Intel chips at the moment.  AMD has
not been able to catch up.  They seem to have missed a generation.
The good news is that they discount them to reflect this.  The Brazos
chips are better than Atom chips, but they do burn more power.

If you really want to be daring, go for the $250 Samsung Chromebook.  Not
much "disk" space.  A bit of hacking to get Ubuntu or Fedora on it.
But cheap and light and solid state.  Not available in Canada for some
reason:
<https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/landing.html>
This Arm-based device has reasonable processing power.  Not up to
level of the other machines we've mentioned.
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