Linux compatability of a couple of laptops?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 09:02:53PM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   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.  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
> 
> 2) An Acer machine (Intel with HM77 Express chipset)
> www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_577_367&item_id=054900
> 
>   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?

I would certainly avoid ATI/AMD video chips for linux use.  Intel is
generally not a problem (with the poulsbo exception for recent issues).

Wifi can still be a hassle, although if you get intel wifi it generally
just works.  That's why my laptops are custom ordered thinkpads.
My current one is a thinkpad W530.  It does have nvidia and intel graphics
and hence the optimus issues, but it works with the intel drives and at
some point I will play with bumblebee to enable the switching between
the two video chips.  The intel 6300 wifi works very well.  The intel
1000 in my wife's ideapad Y470 also works perfectly fine in linux.

I don't buy Acer stuff because their purpose for existing is to make
cheap stuff.  Asus and Lenovo are the two brands I would buy for laptops
as they are among the best in reliability out there.  I tend to go for
the lenovo option because I can actually customize what I get in my
machine and pick the most linux compatible parts that way.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists