Best Gentoo Laptop

joseph · n00b Joined: 30 Jun 2007 Posts: 1

will gentoo work on Lenovo N-series (3000 N100)?

my laptop specs are:

512Mb RAM
80GB Harddisk
Pentium IV 1.66GHZ
CD/DVD BURNER
No Mouse ( only touchpad )

please also tell me where can i get cheap distribution through CD which I can order Online?
_________________
Free Video Hosting Best of google
How to earn money? Great blogs

BlueFusion · Guru Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 371

I have Gentoo running great on my ASUS A6Jc. Wireless, PCMCIA, MMC, Geforce Go 7300, FireWire, and the media buttons work great. Of course it took time to get it to work how I wanted but she runs great now.
_________________
i7-940 2.93Ghz | ASUS P6T Deluxe (v.1) | 24GB Triple Channel RAM | nVidia GTX660
4x 4TB Seagate NAS HDD (Btrfs raid5) | 2x 120GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD (Btrfs raid1)

pgolik · Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:14 am Post subject:

Let me join this thread with a kinda serious question about the viability of Linux (Gentoo in particular) on a laptop. This is not a troll but a technical question, and 'm not interested in non-technical advocacy (free vs. non-free, I don't care as long as it does what I want it to).
I've used Linux as my primary OS for the last 6-7 years, now (for about 2 years) it's Gentoo with KDE as the DE. I have very little experience with laptops, though. I'm about to move all my personal computing to a new laptop, and I narrowed it down to two options: either a Thinkpad T61 with Linux (Gentoo most likely) or a Macbook Pro with OSX. Windows is out of the question - I need an Unix environment. As I said, ideology is irrelevant, just the technicalities. I'm perfectly happy with my gentoo desktop, but I expect the laptop to provide me essential functionality and comfort. I don't mind tweaking the installation - compiling a custom patched kernel, downloading and compiling drivers, tweaking config files - I'm perfectly OK with that, as long as it can be done once and then it just works. Here's the things that I expect to work:

- power management & suspend. I close the lid and the laptop hibernates, I open it and it wakes up. No rebooting, no restarting X, no restarting services manually. Dynamic CPU scaling etc. It currently works this way on my dekstop.
- battery and AC configuration. I plug the AC in and it works at full specs, I unplug and it runs on battery with powersaving enabled. No rebooting with custom "battery" and "AC" runlevels, I want it to just work without rebooting.
- Multiple displays. I plug in an external display or a presentation beamer and set it to clone my desktop (for the beamer) or extend the workspace. It should work without having to restart X or reboot, I should be able to change the mode (clone or extend) and resolution for the external display on the fly. If I choose a T61 it'll have the Nvidia card, will nvidia-settings provide me with all that? Having to tweak the xorg.conf each time a new display is connected is out of the question. Presentations and external displays should jut work without handicaps (such as no 3D acceleration with multiple monitors etc.)
- Docking station (in the case of T61, the Mac has a built-in DVI-D port, which is enough). Docking and undocking without having to reboot (hibernating before undocking is fine). External DVI-D display on the docking station should work (see above), also USB keyboard and mouse.
-Switching network profiles and wireless networking. I want to swith between several wired and wireless network configs (some with a static IP, some with DHCP) with a simple tool (GUI preferred, like network-manager). No rebooting or manual profile tweaking each time I move from the home network (DHCP) to the workplace network (static IP). Wireless network discovery and connection with a GUI. Also, bluetooth with the cellphone as a modem, after the initial setting-up I wont it to work with a few clicks to connect.

I believe you have a general idea of what I need. Let me repeat - I don't mind spending lots of time to get it to work, I know it's the gentoo way, but once configured I want it to work with minimal hassle. Can Linux do that, or shall I have to go OSX? I googled a lot, but most pages are hopelessly outdated. I looked at the "working Gentoo laptops" thread, but it's full of posts like "it works beutifully, only I have no sound and the screen is blank upon resume, but other than that it's great" - this is not what I mean by "working".

andrewaclt · n00b Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 18

I had to make the same decision as you (Gentoo vs OS X) and in my eyes every issue you listed can be done with either Gentoo or OS X, assuming you get good hardware (assuming a t61 -- although I'm not entirely sure about docking). Of course with Gentoo, you'll have to work for it in some cases, which is perfectly fine.

I personally went with OS X on a MBP, and it should arrive Friday

. Of course, every other day I change my mind about my decision being a good one or not...

pgolik · Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:17 pm Post subject:

I'm leaning towards the MBP as well. After all, if I find myself hating OSX I can always install gentoo on the MBP, while it's much harder to get a working install of OSX on a thinkpad. And the price gap isn't as big as it used to be.

Evincar · Apprentice Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 217 Location: Madrid

I am going to answer you to the best of my knowledge...

Clete2 · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 4:13 pm Post subject:

My Dell Inspiron E1705 runs amazingly. The only problem I am having setting it up is the WiFi because I have the new Intel A/B/G/N card. Granted, I haven't tried to set it up, but still...

_________________
My Blog

Dirk.R.Gently · Guru Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 546 Location: Titan

The MacBook at first wasn't too awesome with Gentoo but now after a year and a half it's almost perfect. The only thing I'd have to complain about is the i810 driver which unfortunately after the 1.7.4 version introduced holes in security.
_________________
• Helpful Linux Tidbits

pgolik · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:31 pm Post subject:

merlijn · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 1:55 pm Post subject:

I had the same issue a year ago, when even less of the cool stuff on laptops was supported. I got a MBP purely for the sake of not donating a buck to M$ and because the design is wonderful.

OSX really is nice to work with, and for whenever I feel the need to have a more hardcore OS, I just boot up on of the parallels images with gentoo/freebsd and everything works like a charm. I feel like i couldn't have bought anything better than the macbook i have. Perhaps only the new ones with 1920x1200 *drool*

Cheers,

theethicalatheist · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:53 pm Post subject:

My ThinkPad R52:

Pentium M 1.73Ghz (frequency scaling works)
Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG (works great, WPA/WEP)
Broadcom Tg3 Gigabit Ethernet (works fine)
Synaptics TouchPad works
Display brightness toggle keys work (controlled by BIOS)
Volume keys work (controlled by BIOS too i think)
ATI Radeon Mobility x300 (works with the "fglrx" driver, as well as the open source driver)
Power Management works with the "thinkpad_acpi" kernel module
Intel ICH6 audio works

Haven't bothered to configure the modem or bluetooth. (they are supported AFAIK)
_________________
"Be excellent to each other" - Bill & Ted

marcus0263 · Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 6:32 am Post subject:

I'm currently running Gentoo on a Fujitsu, I'm really not that pleased with it. The SIS chipset is pretty buggy with ACPI and it's a beast at over 10 lbs, so after having it for a couple of years I'm going to end up giving it to my Niece.

Anyway as far as laptops I've been checking out Mtech http://www.mtechlaptops.com/

What I like is the ability to order what you need/want and can get it without an OS.

Anyone have experience with them?
_________________
Reject The Herd
"Where Thought Crime is Committed"
www.rejecttheherd.net
Gentoo Powered

lordll · n00b Joined: 11 Nov 2006 Posts: 4

Give zepto.com a try

However, take a look at the T61 Lenovo Thinkpad, too!
(http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Lenovo_Thinkpad_T61)

IF I had money, both would be mine

St3v3 · n00b Joined: 20 Jun 2007 Posts: 25

a5friemen · n00b Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 21

I've got Gentoo running on my HP dv9335nr. Works great!

Gentoo 2007.0 worked almost 'out of the box' with the text installer.
Uses intel 3945abg no trouble, and nvidia-drivers for the gforce go 7600. Beryl runs no trouble.

One new horrible new problem from HP... HP claims that you void your warranty if you install any other operating system other than the factory installed Vista. You cannot even install Windoze a different way.
_________________
Running on a ...

Pentuim MMX
64MB ram
VGA Console

I LOVE Linux!

Kollin · Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 9:49 pm Post subject: Re: buyer beware

CommanderHammilton · Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:17 am Post subject:

I'm currently running Gentoo 2007 on a LENOVO R60 Works great!

Kernel 2.6.22-gentoo-r5 ( genkernel : )

Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo: 2x T5600 1.83 GHz
2048 MB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM FSB: 667MHz
120GB Serial-ATA
15 Zoll SXGA+ TFT 1400x1050
ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 / 128MB GDDR RAM / PCI Express ---> A mess until it runs
_________________
gentoo - compile your own world

dah · n00b Joined: 10 Apr 2006 Posts: 30 Location: Boulder, CO

I've been running Gentoo off and on for 3.5 years, I've been a UNIX user almost 8 years. I've run Red Hat (way back when..) on P2 laptops, I ran Debian on an iBook G4 and this february my company chipped in for a MacBook. I was lucky enough to get a Core2Duo revision right after they came out and so far I love it. I set it up to dual boot OS X and a Linux OS (I've got an odd curiosity for OSs and I like to try as many as I can). I ran Fedora Core 6 for a while which was super easy to install but didn't end up running too well.
For the past month I've run Gentoo and I love it. It took a bit longer to install but I haven't had any major problems. The wireless card is supported by madwifi now and (aside from security holes in drivers) the Intel graphics chip has been great. I've been a big fan of ATI cards in my desktops for years and you shouldn't have too much trouble with the Macbook Pro's.
The biggest difference I noticed when switching from an iBook G4 to the MacBook was the battery life. In my experience it has been even better in Gentoo than OS X. I've never really hit a point where I need more power (I don't do any gaming or work that requires huge calculations on here).
The only thing I think I may change is to buy more RAM; but that's still up in the air as I'm still running without swap.
_________________
Macbook Core2Duo 1GB/120GB SATA - Gentoo/OS X
AMD Athlon64 3000+ 1GB DDR400 1.5TB - Gentoo
Intel P4 3.0GHz, 1GB DDR400, .75TB - Gentoo
Sun Netra t1 500mHz UltraSPARC IIe - Gentoo
3 x SGI Indy R4600 - Irix 5.2 / Gentoo

SkeptikeR · Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:54 am Post subject:

i generally think that thinkpads are one of the best laptops and specially linux support is great, as long as i know.
i am running an Fujitsu Siemens Tablet PC T3010D and nearly everything works. the 2 things that dont work are:
the 4 button synaptics/alps touchpad(only 3 buttons are working and i think its enought ^^) and the tabletpc Buttons. The wacom pen works great after the bug in wacom-0.7.8_p2 was patched. i think the tabletpc buttons could work but i am more a newbe to gentoo even if i use it for nearly 3 years now.
my next one will probably be a ibm thinkpad x60/x61 except the next TabletPC series will have a Nvidia graphics card ;-)

.
thats my opinion
i have to edit, that the tabletbuttons work! after i read about linlap i visited and found a howto about the t4010 where the fsc-btns project was linked. I easily installed, and everything was working fine!

Thanks
_________________
Mobile: FSC T3010D(TabletPC) | Centrino 1,4Ghz | 1GB DDR
60 GB | suspend-2.6.21-r7 | Intel 855Gm | Wacom TouchScreen

fran_vnzla · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:43 pm Post subject:

thinkpad.

nwmcsween · n00b Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 41

The Toshiba A210 is nice and it doesn't cost your first born. I Picked up one for 499$ CAN about $250-300 EU. Everything runs nice on it except for a few bios issues with lapic which should be solved with a bios update.
Toshiba A210
AMD TK-55
2GB RAM
200GB HDD
15" screen
etc
_________________
Vanilla kernel without PITA

Aquiles · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 7:33 am Post subject:

I'm going to score again for the thinkpads. Here in my company everybody uses thinkpads. They get a whole lot of hard use everyday (SAP consultant speaking) and very rarely one of them malfunctions in some way after four or five years. They are wonderfully crafted I think. Not the best design though...
_________________
Aquiles

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:10 pm Post subject:

Yeah in fact, I have a T23,T43 and a T60P at work, and I didn't have any crash at all in more then 7 years. They are not pretty but the are awesome and very solid.

ylonghome · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2008 Posts: 2

i like ThinkPad Z61P

k.wandowicz · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 30

Gentoo works perfectly on my Pentium III 850Mhz, 256MB RAM Compaq Evo N400c.