beginner trying to choose a laptop question

[Warren]

I'm looking at the "HP Laptop 250 G5 (X9U07UT#ABA) Intel Core i5 6200U (2.30 GHz) 8 GB Memory 256 GB SSD Intel HD Graphics 520" at (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834266056&cm_re=HP_Laptop_250_G5_%28X9U07UT%23ABA%29-_-34-266-056-_-Product).
ark.intel.com says that VT-d and VT-x is supported by the processor but I can't find out, so far, whether it's actually enabled or can be enabled.
HP site says the chipset is intel SoC.

Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to whether or not I could use this laptop to run qubes?

Thanks

[Tai...@gmx.com]

That is a consumer level laptop (AFIAK), you need to buy a HPE pro or
elitebook if you want iommu (technical name for VT-d) generally
otherwise it is hit or miss.

You would have better luck with an AMD PRO APU laptop, they're less
expensive than intel and AMD-Vi (IOMMU) is more of a standard feature
with AMD systems.

You would have to ask HP if it has working iommu (and get it in writing
in case it doesn't and you must return it) or go to a store and boot a
liveCD then run the HCL.

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 8:04 PM, Tai...@gmx.com <Tai...@gmx.com> wrote:
> or go to a store and boot a liveCD then run the HCL.

^ This! It can be fun...

You may wish to try to explain to an employee what you are doing, to
avoid getting "banned" (thrown out) from that store for "trying to put
malware on the computers". Been there, done that (a while ago, and not
for qubes). Best Buy is disappointing. But... got dmesgs, doesn't
matter! :)

However, simply borrowing friends' laptops seems to be a far less
adversarial approach to testing hardware compatibility (assuming they
trust you and are not concerned you are trying to backdoor them).

[pixel fairy]

as long as you can get to the bios, that part should work. you might have to do this, http://linuxbsdos.com/2016/11/05/disable-secure-boot-on-hp-250-g5-laptop/

8 gigs is pretty tight for qubes, if you get this one, you'll want to upgrade to 16.

[jkitt]

As others have pointed out - the chipset has to also support IOMMU (VT-d). A lot of chipsets don't. There is the Qubes HCL that defines a lot of supported hardware.