Laptop recommendation
Owen Heisler
It would be really great if it was fully supported by the Linux kernel
(maybe even video acceleration as well? Is there such a thing?),
without all the annoying fiddling.
Next, I don't know if it is really possible with laptops, but one that
is friendly where hardware replacements are concerned. Like if the hard
drive or DVD drive goes bad, that it is relatively simple/cheap to
replace them. In fact, I'd like to find a laptop that is a bit bigger
and heavier and bulkier and whatever in order to get a little bit more
friendliness with hardware and heat problems and whatnot.
Last: are there any laptops with 2 hard drives?
Obviously, I want to run Debian on this laptop. It'll probably be Etch,
if not the next one (testing after Etch is released).
Perhaps linuxcertified.com is a good place? Oh, and maybe I should
mention that price is a concern, $3000 seems like a lot to pay for a
laptop...
Thanks lots for your help; I'm new to the laptop arena.
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Florian Reitmeir
On Die, 17 Okt 2006, Owen Heisler wrote:
> I'd like to get a laptop, but don't know where I should look...
get a Thinkpad..
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
--
Florian Reitmeir
Owen Heisler
> On Die, 17 Okt 2006, Owen Heisler wrote:
> > I'd like to get a laptop, but don't know where I should look...
>
> get a Thinkpad..
>
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
Okay, I wondered if I'd hear about Thinkpads, as I've seen them
mentioned a lot here on debian-laptop.
Thanks, and for the link too
Antonello Moneta
And of course if you already have a idea of which laptop you want to by you can check in google if there is information how to config it and which problems it can have.
best regurds Antonello
SIAMO NOI, SIAMO NOI, I CAMPIONI DEL MONDO SIAMO NOI!!!!
Micha
While TP are well known for good battery performance and solid
hardware crafting (but Lenovo may level the niveau now, probably
even IBM would have been urged to do so), many people are looking
for a desktop replacement which mostly is on main power and has
good multimedia capabilities, and a wide screen. Ideally, something
in the way of a Apple Powerbook....
It's no bad idea to also look up what machines are shipped with
preinstalled Linux. For example, http://www.emperorlinux.com/ offers
Thinkpads, Dell Latitude, Sony Vaio, and Sharp Actius; some of these
with WUXGA (1920x1200) wide screen. I'd recommend a dual-core
CPU in any case, if only because they produce less heat and should be
more quiet, under comparable load. Tuxmobil maintains lists at
http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html and
http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_manufacturer.html
(some links are obsolete as it's a rapid marked anyway).
Rather icky seemed to be, at least in the past, Acer for their
special BIOS features, perhaps someone can confirm that.
Micha
> Next, I don't know if it is really possible with laptops, but one that
> is friendly where hardware replacements are concerned.
I think most vendors recommend their specific stuff, or maintain
a certification list like Lenovo. It's just not the same as with PCs.
There are parts which are rather easy to exchange (like RAM) and
others which often are not (like batteries or drives) though it's not
impossible if you do some research to find out the excact specs.
OTOH Lenovo does BIOS whitelist checking (but of course even that
can be hacked). You'd loose any waranty then, if you throw in 3rd party
units, that's worth a thought if you plan to buy a new machine.
> drive or DVD drive goes bad, that it is relatively simple/cheap to
> replace them.
Drives and batteries usually are inserted into bays as compact modules,
so mechanically the replacing is very easy. The problem is even if a piece
has the right connectors and would fit into the slot it needs to have the
exact specs, internally, like voltage or controller BIOS. Since this is a
real FAQ I'd be happy if someone with more experience in this filed could
drop a few words here !
> In fact, I'd like to find a laptop that is a bit bigger
> and heavier and bulkier and whatever in order to get a little bit more
> friendliness with hardware and heat problems and whatnot.
You may also consider a barebone then, with Mini-ITX boards.
They are under rapid developement for multimedia stations.
Many of these beat Laptops in the same price segment.
They need external monitor, that's the only reason why they aren't
as portable, IMHO.
> Last: are there any laptops with 2 hard drives?
For many models you can get a second drive which gets inserted
in the CD/DVD bay. Another option is to connect an external USB drive,
which is much cheaper (or has more GB per $) and has some advantage,
in my eyes, for example you can use it with your next Laptop, too, or connect
it to any PC around. Think of it as a huge USB stick :)
It's a very common thing nowadays, and well supported by Linux.
m°
Yoanis Gil Delgado
> While TP are well known for good battery performance and solid
> hardware crafting (but Lenovo may level the niveau now, probably
> even IBM would have been urged to do so), many people are looking
> for a desktop replacement which mostly is on main power and has
> good multimedia capabilities, and a wide screen. Ideally, something
> in the way of a Apple Powerbook....
>
> It's no bad idea to also look up what machines are shipped with
> preinstalled Linux. For example, http://www.emperorlinux.com/ offers
> Thinkpads, Dell Latitude, Sony Vaio, and Sharp Actius; some of these
> with WUXGA (1920x1200) wide screen. I'd recommend a dual-core
> CPU in any case, if only because they produce less heat and should be
> more quiet, under comparable load. Tuxmobil maintains lists at
> http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html and
> http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_manufacturer.html
> (some links are obsolete as it's a rapid marked anyway).
>
> Rather icky seemed to be, at least in the past, Acer for their
> special BIOS features, perhaps someone can confirm that.
specially if they give you online support. A few month ago when I buyed my
laptop, I did some preliminary test to see if it can run linux on it (video
acceleration,screen resolution). I was happy at the moment with the results,
but it turned out it wasn't enough.
My experience is that configuring a laptop could be a long and tedious task. I
don't mind doing so, but maybe is because i'm a little patient.
Just doing a little google search a found this link:
http://mcelrath.org/laptops.html
Maybe is a good start.
Regards,
Yoanis
teefour
Owen Heisler wrote:
> I'd like to get a laptop, but don't know where I should look...
>
> It would be really great if it was fully supported by the Linux kernel
yes, a thinkpad seems like a good idea for that
> (maybe even video acceleration as well? Is there such a thing?),
> without all the annoying fiddling.
/me bites his tongue
> Next, I don't know if it is really possible with laptops, but one that
> is friendly where hardware replacements are concerned. Like if the hard
> drive or DVD drive goes bad, that it is relatively simple/cheap to
> replace them. In fact, I'd like to find a laptop that is a bit bigger
> and heavier and bulkier and whatever in order to get a little bit more
> friendliness with hardware and heat problems and whatnot.
what i cannot recommend is sony laptops due to their spare part policies.
>
> Last: are there any laptops with 2 hard drives?
the tp's can have two (the cd/dvd drive bay can hold another hd with an
adapter that can fit into instead)
>
> Obviously, I want to run Debian on this laptop. It'll probably be Etch,
> if not the next one (testing after Etch is released).
>
> Perhaps linuxcertified.com is a good place? Oh, and maybe I should
> mention that price is a concern, $3000 seems like a lot to pay for a
> laptop...
if you're a student, most companies will give you discount for a proof
of studentship.
>
> Thanks lots for your help; I'm new to the laptop arena.
>
>
hth,
tee
Philip Bellenoit
I bought a Compaq Presario V6000 laptop a fews weeks after it hit the
store shelves. It has a dual core AMD Turion64 processor. I thought I
would be a BIG SHOT shot and tell all my friends, "Hey I'm running
GNU/Linux, on my new laptop, not Windows!"
It turns out that I got SHOT down BIG time. It took a month before I
was able to run the LCD at its native resolution because the Xorg nv
driver didn't include my graphics card (nVidia GeForce Go 6150) and
nVidia's binary driver still doesn't. My sound card only works
partially. A friend who tests sound cards at his job tells me that ALSA
doesn't yet have a driver and that a generic intel driver is loaded
instead. Several SMP kernels I've tried make my laptop freeze so I'm
don't get dual core support. Also my laptop can't suspend or hibernate.
I'm sure that in time I'll get all these issues resolved--part of the
problem is my own inexperience. But next time I buy it won't be
anything too new.
Owen Heisler
> Sometimes bad experiences can be helpful. Here is mine.
>
> I bought a Compaq Presario V6000 laptop a fews weeks after it hit the
> store shelves. It has a dual core AMD Turion64 processor. I thought I
> would be a BIG SHOT shot and tell all my friends, "Hey I'm running
> GNU/Linux, on my new laptop, not Windows!"
>
> It turns out that I got SHOT down BIG time. It took a month before I
> was able to run the LCD at its native resolution because the Xorg nv
> driver didn't include my graphics card (nVidia GeForce Go 6150) and
> nVidia's binary driver still doesn't. My sound card only works
> partially. A friend who tests sound cards at his job tells me that ALSA
> doesn't yet have a driver and that a generic intel driver is loaded
> instead. Several SMP kernels I've tried make my laptop freeze so I'm
> don't get dual core support. Also my laptop can't suspend or hibernate.
>
> I'm sure that in time I'll get all these issues resolved--part of the
> problem is my own inexperience. But next time I buy it won't be
> anything too new.
Thanks a lot for everyone's comments!
Miroslav Maiksnar
> Several SMP kernels I've tried make my laptop freeze so I'm
> don't get dual core support.
As for SMP kernel freezing, try adding "noapic" to kernel parameters. It is
quite common issue, that motherboards for dual-core CPUs don't have APIC.
Mixi
Johannes Wiedersich
> Sometimes bad experiences can be helpful. Here is mine.
[...]
> I'm sure that in time I'll get all these issues resolved--part of the
> problem is my own inexperience. But next time I buy it won't be
> anything too new.
It's a pitty that still hardware manufacturers don't support linux the
way one would expect. The best solution to this is probably to do some
research on linux support prior to buying the notebook, which will
support those vendors who support linux (better), giving an incentive to
improvement.
As already mentioned in the thread, there is an excellent forum for
thinkpads
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
so prospective buyers can easily benchmark the support they find for
models from other manufacturers against that.
A friend of mine bought a laptop that is also sold with suse
preinstalled and thus should be supported by linux. It turned out that
it is not perfectly supported by debian etch and it took a lot of time
to figure out how to configure his graphics and other stuff, because
there is not sufficient linux documentation for his model.
I think one can by a decent laptop for debian, but one can cut down
immensely on the time spent for setting it up, if one settles for a
slightly older model with enough linux information on the net.
YMMV, but my guess is that it in many cases it will take a long, long
time before the faster cpu will make up for the additional time spent on
configuration, custom kernel compilations and the like.
Johannes
Philip Bellenoit
> As for SMP kernel freezing, try adding "noapic" to kernel parameters. It is
> quite common issue, that motherboards for dual-core CPUs don't have APIC.
>
> Mixi
>
I had to google APIC because I didn't know what is was. Is it possible
that my laptop doesn't have APIC because it's dual core and not dual
processor? One site I googled suggested to look at the output
of /proc/interrupts. Here's my output:
phil@falcon:~$ cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0
0: 3372720 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 11233 IO-APIC-edge i8042
8: 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
9: 5574 IO-APIC-level acpi
11: 3 IO-APIC-level ohci1394
12: 924022 IO-APIC-edge i8042
14: 120000 IO-APIC-edge ide0
50: 537756 IO-APIC-level ndiswrapper
209: 4 IO-APIC-level ehci_hcd:usb1
217: 175146 IO-APIC-level ohci_hcd:usb2
225: 46850 IO-APIC-level libata
233: 149 IO-APIC-level HDA Intel
NMI: 1356
LOC: 3280198
ERR: 0
MIS: 0
Does this mean that my board has APIC? Should I still try noapic?
Florian Reitmeir
APIC is a feature, a new one to support better IRQ handling on the mainboard.
Normally its a Chip included in the chipset. Sadly some/most BIOS vendors do not
support APIC, so sometimes when Linux uses APIC it ends in strange/unstable
behavior.
Just try to boot your kernel with the option "noapic", if it helps you
are lucky.
> phil@falcon:~$ cat /proc/interrupts
> CPU0
> 0: 3372720 IO-APIC-edge timer
> 1: 11233 IO-APIC-edge i8042
> 8: 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
> 9: 5574 IO-APIC-level acpi
> 11: 3 IO-APIC-level ohci1394
> 12: 924022 IO-APIC-edge i8042
> 14: 120000 IO-APIC-edge ide0
> 50: 537756 IO-APIC-level ndiswrapper
> 209: 4 IO-APIC-level ehci_hcd:usb1
> 217: 175146 IO-APIC-level ohci_hcd:usb2
> 225: 46850 IO-APIC-level libata
> 233: 149 IO-APIC-level HDA Intel
> NMI: 1356
> LOC: 3280198
> ERR: 0
> MIS: 0
>
> Does this mean that my board has APIC? Should I still try noapic?
in the first cols, are number beyond 15, so APIC is enabled.
--
Florian Reitmeir