Has anyone had any experience of running mandriva on a Compaq NC 6000? I ask this because I've had quite a few problems with my Tosh Sat Pro 4600 (sound system unreliable, LAN only works on restart, etc, etc ) and, if I buy another laptop, I'd like it to be a bit more consistent. Thanks.


[moved from Hardware by spinynorman]

I'd never touch a Compaq/HP laptop again. I bought the last one some eight years ago, and then found out that the mainboard drivers were severealy crippled, and HP did not want to pay a dime for fixing them. Oh yes- I am actually talking about windows drivers, not Linux ones. Somehow I got rid of it, and never looked back.
Today Dell, IBM/Lenovo and Asus make the most "Linux friendly" laptops.

Agreed

Thanks to you both. Following up on this, I've been doing some searching for info on the IBM ThinkPad Port Replicator II (models 74P6733, 74P6734, 74P6735; not quite sure of the significance of these numbers ) for use with a Thinkpad T42, and came across a site which said that "The ThinkPad Port Replicator II does not support LINUX." Seems a bit of a strange statement; could either of you (or anyone else) tell me what it means? Thanks.

My HP laptop has been better than my Toshiba laptop for easier integration. I agree that there are other laptops that probably work better, but they can also work worse if you don't check each of the particular items for hardware support in Linux - network, sound, video, etc, etc.

Thanks for all your help.

I've narrowed my search down to one of Thinkpad T42 or T43, and have a few queries:
- Has anyone any experience using Mandy on either of these machines?
- Neither seems to have a PS2 connector; is this true, and does a USB (external) mouse/keyboard combination work OK?
- Is it possible to hotplug the UltraBay, e.g. an extra hdd for archiving (would be useful)?

Thanks

I would expect most laptops to work fine with a USB keyboard and mouse. I've never used a USB keyboard with a laptop though as I tend to use the laptop keyboard, and just use a USB mouse.

Thanks, Ian, I'll try the USB-keyboard when my adaptor arrives.

Further on down the line....... This is becoming a bit of a nightmare. I've spent the last day reading (with horror) the info on

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T42

There are 12 "Problem categories", including what appear to be pretty serious ones, such as

* Problem with fan noise
* Problem with garbled screen
* Problem with hard drive clicking
* Problem with high pitch noises
* Problem with high power drain in ACPI sleep
* Problem with video output switching

Could anyone help me by putting this into context, because I have difficulty believing that a company like IBM would produce a machine with faults like these? Looks to me like a device to be avoided at all cost.

Or am I missing something here?

I've been using IBM ThinkPad T41 with port replicator 74P6733 and Mandrake 9.2 for years. It works fine except for the couple of things related to the X server, e.g., dropping the laptop onto the replicator does not enable USB mouse automatically. However, I blame Mandrake's poor handling of USB devices (at that time) and the quality of the X server software. Another thing that never worked for me was the dual display under Linux. Again, I believe, the ATI driver is to blame. Since the ATI dropped the support of Radeon M9 (Radeon 9000), I will never find out the true reason (sigh). VGA to DVI-I bridge always worked without a hitch.

OK, again based on my experience with T41:

* Problem with fan noise

The noise is nothing compared to DELL inspiron of the same age.

* Problem with garbled screen

Under Mandrake 9.2, the laptop never resumed from suspend-to-RAM. I always ended up with the grabled screen. Switching to the virtual console before resume was the way to go.

* Problem with hard drive clicking

HDD clicking was a lot more annoying under Windows than under Linux. I guess, Windows parks the HDD more frequently, that the real reason why the HDD makes that clicking sound.

* Problem with high pitch noises

Fan does sound a little whiny, also the power adapter makes a buzzing sound, but neither is irritating. You will get used to it at no time.

* Problem with high power drain in ACPI sleep

I turned ACPI off, and used APM on my T41. I don't remember the reason for this. As mentioned, I never had much success with suspend-to-RAM anyway. Problem with high power drain in ACPI sleep was discussed a lot on the linux-on-thinkpads mailing list when the kernel 2.6 was introduced. Mandrake 9.2 had kernel 2.4 as default, hence I have never had a chance to see power drain.

* Problem with video output switching

The ATI driver for the Radeon did not support video output switching for a very long time (don't know why). If your laptop has Intel video, there should not be any problem.

In summary, ThinkPads are made for Linux. If you can get one of the last IBM made ones, that's the best deal. Five years from now, it will work as new. Lenovo's T61 is good, but one can clearly spot some cost-cutting here and there.

Many thanks, coverup, nice to hear an IBM-supporter after reading all that depressing fault-stuff.

BTW, how old is 'one of the last IBM made ones' likely to be (can't remember when Lenovo took over)?

Thanks again.

Look for the IBM logo on the armrest.

I am typing this post on a T61 made by lenovo. It's all good though to my taste, there some things which a reputable company should not have done. They followed the stupid trend and made it widescreen, but the footprint is actually bigger than that of T41 because the battery is protruding - like, helloo? The buttons are replaced with el-cheapo ones. The armrest cover rattles a bit and has a suspiciosly plastic feel. It took some time to get used to a little smaller touchpad, but it is still the three-button one and it nicely doubles up with the good ol' clit. Since I am used to the traditional UNIX/Emacs controls (the middle button does pasting), thinkpads are the only choice for me

In newer models, the sound control and the screen brightness are software controlled, apparently, as of T61. But if you get anything older than T61, these will be hardware controlled. That could be good or bad thing for you, it depends... Software controlled special keys may require some feedling, and (in my case) require me to login, say, to adjust volume. Though this might sound negative, actually I have all special keys working, so in in the end it is not bad at all. Mandriva can't take credit for this though, as I spent a lot of time chasing up bits and pieces on Thinkwiki. To compare, in Ubuntu all buttons worked out of the box except for the video switch (I made it work too). With the hardware controlled buttons, they work regardless of the OS.

The biggest Lenovo's innovation is that they keyboard now features the Windows key for which I have no use. But the keyboard still features two extra navigation buttons for the web browser.