Laptops that work well with *nix?

[VinylxScratches]

Anyone got any suggestions? I'll be needing to get a new laptop soon... I currently use a Macbook and it is by far the best user experience I've had. I'm not sure I want to pay the money for one again but at the same time I don't think I can find a laptop out there that will get the same battery life etc...

Anyone here have any suggestions? I have used a new Dell 4550 from work and a W500. I am not that impressed though....

 

[postmortemIA]

Linux catches up quickly with new hardware. I'd try to get intel WiFi because those are very well supported from start.

 

[JD50]

If you use something like Fedora or Ubuntu you shouldn't have very many problems. Once you settle on a model I'd suggest googling the model name and "linux" or "fedora" or "ubuntu".

I've had no problems with ASUS and Lenovo. FWIW Red Hat issues out Lenovo laptops to their employees.

 

[joetekubi]

I just got a HP dm4 i5 laptop - it loaded Ubuntu 10.04 very easily.

 

[VinDSL]

Anyone here have any suggestions? I have used a new Dell 4550 from work and a W500. I am not that impressed though....

I haven't found any laptop on which *nix doesn't work well.

I have an ancient Fujitsu Lifebook (designed for Windows ME - Celeron/64MB RAM) that runs great on Puppy Linux.

I also have a Toshiba Satellite lappy and Asus EeePC netbook that run Linux Mint nicely.

Really, the task becomes finding a *nix distro that works well with your laptop -- not the other way around.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Heh ...

 

[KeypoX]

i have a dell that works great with ubuntu. Even suspend works. Everything works, has intel, chipsets, processor, & graphics.

btw, it cost $400 (refurb) 1.5 years ago, with C2D 3GB ram, 320GB HD, led backlite screen, 9 cell battery and still gets more than 4 hours life. More in windows though. I could prob sell it today for about the same i paid.

 

[cKGunslinger]

I just picked-up this Acer laptop at Wal-Mart on Sunday and installed Linux Mint 9 with 0 problems and 100% hardware compatibility, including video, sound, 3D, webcam, and wireless.

:thumbsup:

 

[VinDSL]

Yep, works great on everything!

Laptops, netbooks, smart phones, routers, doorknobs, you name it...

 

[Crusty]

I've got an Inspiron 1525 that runs Ubuntu nicely. Suspend has worked just fine in my limited testing, even with with my Win7 dual boot.

I haven't gotten around to testing the HDMI port in Linux, but I doubt the audio pass-through works as it does in Windows.

 

[Kirby]

i'm typing this on a hp pavilion dv6 with mint 9.

 

[LCTSI]

As a rule of thumb, don't get anything released within the last 6 months.

Other than that, Thinkpads have done well.

Google ThinkWiki

 

[MichaelD]

Linux n00b here. I loaded Ubuntu 10.04 (all by myself!) on my Asus 1005HA netbook. The only thing that doesn't work is "FN/volume up/down" key combo. No biggie; I just adjust the volume w/the on-screen volume slider at the top of the screen. The brightness key combo works, as does wireless, sound, LAN, card reader, etc. It all ran right from the get go. FYI.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Linux n00b here. I loaded Ubuntu 10.04 (all by myself!) on my Asus 1005HA netbook. The only thing that doesn't work is "FN/volume up/down" key combo. No biggie; I just adjust the volume w/the on-screen volume slider at the top of the screen. The brightness key combo works, as does wireless, sound, LAN, card reader, etc. It all ran right from the get go. FYI.

You can add those key combinations in without much problem

OP, despite what everyone says, things are not all hunky dorey with Linux. The best advice I can say is to stay away from Intel Integrated Graphics. They are constantly being blacklisted and the driver support is really quite terrible. ATI wasn't the greatest with the Linux drivers; however, upon releasing their source code to the open source community, they have gotten better. Nvidia has always had good Linux driver support though.

Laptops that use an "integrated" RAID solution are also unlikely to work properly. While Linux is very good at discrete RAID/SCSI cards, the solutions on the Motherboards are kind of hit or miss (At least in my experience a while back).

As others have said, sticking with Intel Wireless is a fantastic idea as it always has good support.

-Kevin

 

[Satyrist]

Generally, if the cpu/chipset is Intel, you're relatively safe, barring bizarre bios lockouts or similar obstacles.

*shrug* So far as Intel video, I'd suppose it has to do with what you're looking to do with it, I had fewer problems getting Linux Mint to work on my Thinkpad X61 w/integrated graphics, than an ATI card on an older Thinkpad X23, with the same distro. Nvidia usually works best, and without the need to be tinkering too much.

It gets more difficult if you're dealing with AMD...Not necessarily because of the cpu, but the wireless/wired network interfaces can vary tremendously from vendor to vendor. Usually, going with Atheros for wireless is a safe bet. It's not so simple with Broadcom/Realtek sometimes.

Thinkpads have generally done very well with Linux compatibility over the years, perhaps moreso with the likes of Redhat/Ubuntu, but it's well supported overall nonetheless.

 

[LCTSI]

Usually, going with Atheros for wireless is a safe bet.

I say that about Intel's wireless. I went from a working Ath5K driver in Ubuntu 9.04 to a broken Ath5K and inexistent Ath9K in 9.10, so Atheros gets trashbinned around my house.

A while back, Centrix had their 3945ABG pulls for $5, so I loaded up. Replaced the crapbox Atheros with the 3945ABG and everything worked great.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I run opensuse 11.3 on my ul30vt. Seems to work quite well, after a little tweaking.

The hybrid graphics required some trickery. I just disable the nvidia gpu with nvidia_g210m_acpi. It'll be nice if/when hybrid graphics are properly supported.

Then I wrote some custom acpi event handlers for the display brightness. Got my fn keys working, brightness changing via the ac-plug, etc... I think the webcam shoots upside-down right now, and I've seen a module patch to fix it...but I'll probably never use it anyway.

Aside from those few issues, I think it works great and I should get some decent battery life.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Well, as a test since I have 2 work laptops now. I am trying to setup CentOS on the w500. Debian worked but flash was crap and sleep wasn't working.... I don't think this is gonna bold well with CentOS either .

I might just stick with Mac laptops, less of a headache and I can still fulfill unix type stuff at my level but I really want to move away...

 

[VinylxScratches]

CentOS seems to work "out of the box" a lot better than Debian. Oh well. Gonna give it a go but it's complaing about flash needing to be updated so I tried via browser it installed and it still complains

Intel card seems choppy too sigh.

 

[LCTSI]

W500?

check this page out:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:W500

 

[Paperlantern]

Yep, works great on everything!

Laptops, netbooks, smart phones, routers, doorknobs, you name it...

I actually have a doorknob at home running damn small linux! *highfive*

Well, as a test since I have 2 work laptops now. I am trying to setup CentOS on the w500. Debian worked but flash was crap and sleep wasn't working.... I don't think this is gonna bold well with CentOS either .

I might just stick with Mac laptops, less of a headache and I can still fulfill unix type stuff at my level but I really want to move away...

CentOS, to me, is more of a SERVER type OS, not desktop. Go with Mint or Ubuntu, much more "out of the box" compatibility and more stuff will be able to just WORK.

 

[electroju]

Any Linux distribution will work for any notebook computer, but only if the distribution is using a kernel version that supports your hardware. These days all of them do. The problem comes up for power management. Linux is still not good for power management. Also Linux RAM to Disk or hibernation modes does not always work.

For any notebook computer, upgrade the WiFi to Atheros or Intel.

There is nothing wrong with a notebook that uses AMD processors. They usually come with ATI graphics which has very, very poor support from ATI. A third-party driver developer like Xorg is best when using ATI graphic cards.

I suggest trade in your Macbook and buy a new Macbook.


I use Gentoo Linux on my Dell Inspiron 1520, but power management sucks. I despise using Windows, so I use Linux on it on a daily basis. I am not thinking going to Mac, but planning go to the Mac side for mobile computers and HTPC. I will then use Linux as a file server because it is meant to be used as a server. IMHO, the cost of Macs and stuff working most of the time out weighs the price of Macs. Also Macs work better than Windows and Linux when dealing with desktop and notebook computers.

 

[VinylxScratches]

electroju, I agree, I may just get another Mac. It has the best of both worlds in my opinion. I am still trying out CentOS. I crashed it on accident and since I didn't split up the partitions it was taking forever to force scan. I split it up now.

I do not like Ubuntu or Mint, there's too much added on... LCTSI, I will check that page out.

 

[Nothinman]

Get a Mac and put Linux on it if you like the hardware that much.

And what's added on to Ubuntu that you can't remove?

 

[lxskllr]

And what's added on to Ubuntu that you can't remove?

Or Debian... You can start with almost nothing, and add exactly what you want.