Recommended Laptop?

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Oubipaws · Post by **Oubipaws** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:14 pm

It's been a long time since I've really been involved in the Linux (mainly Gentoo community) due to alot of reasons. I'm back in again, ready to jump in head first, and I'm not a linux beginner, it's just been a matter of work required Windows so it's sadly been my life for over a year.

Now I'm looking for a new laptop for school/work for under 1000 dollars that will work well with Gentoo. Not worried about Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc, just Gentoo. I love Gentoo for it's ease of use with Portage and I think it's a excellent distro. I am not interested in being able to play games, just being able to have a stable Gentoo install with all my development tools, wireless working, DVD+RW support, etc.

Do you guys have any recommended laptops? I was looking at the Dell Inspiron 6400 with 1.6ghz Duo Core, 1gig of ram, 100gig hard drive. Also was looking at Macbook Pro, but they are pricy and I haven't seen a whole lot of linux support for them, plus I'm a intel kind of guy.

Thanks in advance guys, and I look forward to jumping back into the community again.
-Nick

djpharoah · Post by **djpharoah** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:18 pm

nothing beats an IBM Thinkpad for support. However for $1000 you can probably get a nice T41p from ebay.

gl

dol-sen · Post by **dol-sen** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:22 pm

I'm not familiar with the offerings, but there are several laptop recommendation threads I've seen recently and are probably still very relevant. Try a "Quick Search" on laptop recommendations. It should give you some good reading material.

Oubipaws · Post by **Oubipaws** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:31 pm

djpharoah wrote:nothing beats an IBM Thinkpad for support. However for $1000 you can probably get a nice T41p from ebay.

gl

I'm willing to pay a little more if it's worth my money. I would prefer to go ahead and buy something new.
I'm use to playing with linux on desktops, so laptops are new to me.

Archangel1 · Post by **Archangel1** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 4:20 am

Dell tend to have some pretty decent machines for that kind of price, and they don't normally have any nasty hardware surprises.
Of course you don't get the world's flashest laptop, and you may have to contend with their tech support (ugh...), but I don't think there are a lot of better options for what you want to spend.

shickapooka800 · Post by **shickapooka800** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 4:29 am

oddly enough, my old roomate had a really solid gateway laptop (who knew!)

it was running fine (although overworked and under aprecieated) until some strangness started happening.

he called gateway, and 1 short backup and <2 weeks later, he had a brand new computer (!). i was really impressed with how they handled him.

I have an older dell laptop that just wouln't quit. I have spray painted it, taken it apart, installed gentoo (several times -- it was my gentoo "learning" machine), and even dropped it countless times. it is a latitude Dsomething i forget, its not infront of me.

kg4ysy · Post by **kg4ysy** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 8:26 pm

I have a Toshiba A40-S161

They don't sell this model anymore, but instead of looking at specific laptops, look at specs. Check out the wireless card to check its compatibility. Lookout for ATI Video Cards, Nvidia seem to be preferred. I have Intel and a few things don't work, but it is still a decent video card. Specs like hard drive/ram/processor don't really matter when it comes to installing Linux on a laptop. I would however recommend a 32 bit processor. It can be done on a 64 bit but from my experience, a 32 bit is just easier. Basically any laptop will work, but I would try to stay away from ATI and 64 bit processors. If you can, get a wireless card built in that will work either natively or through ndiswrapper.

That is just my two cents. Everyone thinks differently.

--Jim

Archangel1 · Post by **Archangel1** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:02 pm

kg4ysy wrote:That is just my two cents. Everyone thinks differently.

Indeed, I haven't had any problems with my amd64 desktop. AFAIK Intel's 32-bit laptop chips are still superior to the Turions for battery life though, so I'd still avoid them, but for a different reason

I'm fond of the ipw wireless cards; Intel's done some good work with the drivers.

mjrosenb · Post by **mjrosenb** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:40 am

I was able to get a IBM thinkpad z60m for just under $1,000. I decided to get 2Gb of corsair rather than anything above the baseline from IBM. I haven't found anything that doesn't work (I haven't tested the modem, ir irda yet), but it does have a pretty good resolution(1280x800) and a 15.4 inch screen. Good Luck

chiwi · Post by **chiwi** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 2:57 pm

i've got Gentoo installed on an IBM Thinkpad t42. I just love it. Havent' had the time to make power management like suspend or hibernation to work, but the rest was very easy to configure. If i had the money, i'd defenetely buy a thinkpad...

maltheus · Post by **maltheus** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:36 pm

I've gotta be another to chime in with Thinkpad. Don't know about them since IBM sold them off, but the R51 I have now has served me much better than any other laptop in the past. EVERY other laptop I've had has had serious problems. But I haven't had a single one yet with the Thinkpad and it get more use than any of the others ever did, being my primary work computer for two years now.

chiwi · Post by **chiwi** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:52 pm

what do you guys think about the Vaio ?

shickapooka800 · Post by **shickapooka800** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:11 pm

chiwi wrote:what do you guys think about the Vaio ?

I think they are some sexy machines, but I have read that they have some prety special hardware (CAN have special hardware I guess). as in configureing a kernel might be a week long slug fest.

if you've got a thinkpad, I don't think you can get much better than that. and by the way, last time i tried to "suspend to RAM" my computer took a massive dump (dell latitude). although suspend to SWAP worked fairly nicely (but not too useful). In may opinion those features are not worth it.

My only problem with toshiba laptops is that the DEL key is in the wrong place (near the right-hand CTRL somewhere!). I cannot live with such avant gaurde keyboard layouts :)

at240 · Post by **at240** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:23 pm

chiwi wrote:what do you guys think about the Vaio ?

A lot of people disapprove of them, but I've had mine for about three months now and I've not encountered problems. All of my hardware is well supported. The display quality on some of the vaios is excellent (especially when you have a nice nvidia video card too

). I guess it depends what you're using it for. I do a lot of desktop work on mine, so I value the quality of the display.

Lokheed · Post by **Lokheed** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 9:19 am

Oubipaws wrote:Also was looking at Macbook Pro, but they are pricy and I haven't seen a whole lot of linux support for them, plus I'm a intel kind of guy.

They run on Intel DuoCores

tylerwylie · Post by **tylerwylie** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 11:58 am

I run Gentoo on an Alienware, got a good deal for mine though. Won't find that much often with Alienwares.
No wierd hardware problems, the only semi-problem I encountered was finding the right wireless card driver, which I fixed in about 2 minutes after a google search.
Nowadays though no reason to buy an Alienware over a Dell...
Stupid Dell

uxbod · Post by **uxbod** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 2:16 pm

Hi,

sorry for yet another laptop recommendation thread ! but I am looking for a specific type of system. I am after a AMD64, either single or dual core, NVidia, and built in WiFi, GB LAN, and Bluetooth. I am away contracting for the next six months so need something that I can connect to just about anything with, play the odd games and DVDs.

Any suggestions ?

TIA

uxbod · Post by **uxbod** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 5:19 pm

I have been looking at the AlienWare systems and they look pretty cool. If somebody has one, have you got the Wifi and bluetooth working okay with Gentoo ?

nixnut · Post by **nixnut** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 5:37 pm

Merged above two posts here.

drutten · Post by **drutten** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 5:49 pm

i found a used thinkpad t41 for ~$700, would you say it's worth it?
i could get some other brand new for about the same price or a bit more, but are there many new ones in that price range with good linux support?
i want my laptop to be 100% working in gentoo, or as close as possible.

on the t41 there's a radeon 7500 mobility, you think there'll be any problems with that? i've read that you're supposed to use the open drivers for that card, are those any good?
i'm not much for gaming at all, but would like to be able to watch dvds and such.

all comments are welcome!

/andré

~L~ · Post by **~L~** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 6:20 pm

I have T42 with radeon 7500. No problems at all with DVDs. And if I hook up an external bigger display I can watch movies also without any problems.

~L~

tylerwylie · Post by **tylerwylie** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 6:36 pm

Alienware wifi cards work fine, just be sure to know what kind you have ahead of time.

Omega21 · Post by **Omega21** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:02 am

Toshiba > * > Gateway > Acer

DukeofMilan · Post by **DukeofMilan** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:30 pm

I've been rocking an ASUS A6U with the new AMD Turion 64 chip in it - so far no hardware complaints, and I was able to buy the system for a very good price given the specs (2GB RAM, MT-37 chip) without the "Windows tax" and customize it - it's primarily for scientific programming or calculation work (ROOT, Geant4, JAS3, etc) - but its just as useful for communication and basic computing needs as well as I am currently abroad. Wireless is easy (Intel), haven't tested the Bluetooth support yet, and I haven't played with the built-in webcam/microphone, so I can't speak to those parts, but the important hardware runs without a flaw (just built on the basic SiS chipset, so nothing fancy, but easily upgradeable.

Sachankara · Post by **Sachankara** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:23 pm

HP (Compaq) NX6110 costs around $500-700 and is Linux certified by Redhat and Novell. I got one myself and I love it. Everything works...

Also worth noting, in certain countries/states, one can buy the NX6110 without a Windows licens.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm ... 49877.html

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