Good laptop with complete linux support

ewaller · Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:42 am Post subject:

I love my HP DV4 1227
Optical drive, web cam, 4 gig ram, 250 gig disk, SD card reader, IR remote control, media keys, HDMI video and audio out -- all perfect.

winModem -- nope.
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d2_racing · Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 4:57 pm Post subject:

WinModem, I don't even know how to make that working on a Linux box

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alienjon · Veteran Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1503

ewaller · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 5:03 am Post subject:

alienjon · Veteran Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1503

Still no beans on a google search, but I looked at HP's main site and it looks as though there are other, similar models (ie: they dont list dv4, per se, but dv4i and dv4t. Might it be regional? I'm purchasing in the US. Also, do you know what graphics card you have in the laptop? If it isn't nVidia, what was your experience with getting it to work?
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keet · Guru Joined: 09 Sep 2008 Posts: 330

I have three laptops: a Toshiba Tecra 8100 (PIII Coppermine), a Fujitsu Lifebook C2010 (PIV Prescott), and a Panasonic Toughbook CF-51 (Core Duo Yonah). I'm very impressed with the Toughbook -- it runs KDE 4.3 with the visual effects enabled, and it's smooth and compiles things quickly, even though it's four years old.

I just ordered a real hard drive for it -- I'm booting it using (alternately) an external U.S.B. hard drive and a 16GB flash drive because it didn't come with one.
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flaZh · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Jun 2003 Posts: 86

Gonna try on the new Acer emachine (I think it's EM250) I just got. I tried to search but couldn't find anything about it. Hope it works..
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figueroa · Apprentice Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 196 Location: GA-USA

This thread sure looks dead, but I can't help myself.

I've had a really easy time getting everything working under Gentoo with several recent eMacine's (by Acer). For the most part, everything just worked, wireless, web cameras and all. The most recent of these was an eME527. I believe I had to manually fetch some firmware for the wireless - but after that, perfect.

Most recently, I set up two Gateways (also by Acer) and everything worked easily. The most recent was a Gateway EC1440U and before that an EC1803u (same computer, different CPU) which is no more than a rebranded Acer. Both of these also worked with no tweaking at all with Linux Mint 9.

For about three years I've been tweaking a Sony VGN-N250E. Over time, almost everything works. What's caused the most trouble is are the special Fn keys. At one time I had all those working, but after some kernel upgrades, they don't work anymore. But, most of the functions do work with applets on the XFCE4 taskbar. I can't recommend Sony laptops. My experience seems to be fairly common.
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s0be · Apprentice Joined: 23 Nov 2002 Posts: 221

Lenovo W510 here, build actually feels more solid than my friends W7xxds or whatever, and better than my alienware 7700 it replaced.

Summary:

I've not gotten working: Screen Calibration Sensor, Fingerprint reader. I also haven't tried to get either working.

Works fine:

Webcam (generic UVC video device)
Touchscreen (Wacom Tablet driver)
RFKill Switches (Hard and Soft)
Multitouch Touchpad (two finger scroll is all I use)
GPS (Shows up as /dev/ttyUSB2 with kernels > 2.6.37)
Wimax (Scans, Wimax not available in my area, so connectivity untested)
Wifi (I got the intel abgn)
GSM Radio (Detects towers, not subscribed)
Intel VT-x works (runs windows 7 x86 and x64 just fine in virtualbox-ose)

Bonus: Has 4 ram slots, I put 16GB in it 'because I could'.

Small nitpicks:

the bios doesn't export a few acpi tables that it could (Could, not should)
The NVA5 graphics chip is not yet stable with nouveau (frequent crashes), but works great with the blob.
REALLY slow to get to grub, on the order of 16 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBfC9WN_qdc my w510 booting
No Hardware Serial/LPT ports (Ordered this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TLT982/ref=oss_product )

Feel free to ask any other detailed questions about this system.

appleknight · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2013 Posts: 1 Location: Indiana

I use an Acer D257 netbook,currently triple boot, win7 lion and gentoo, works great, and very portable! the only thing i cant get working is the sdcard reader, on gentoo or mac but other than that its as if it were meant to be!