coverup Posted May 29, 2003 Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 I red somewhere that a while ago Dell was shipping laptops with Linux preinstalled (at least in the US). They have abolished Linux support a few years ago. Does any other manufacturer ship linux laptops, or does any manufacturer at least claim that their hardware should work with linux? I am after a lightweight notebook with a decent battery life, preferably Centrino from Dell/IBM/Compaq-HP (the university wouldn't like to buy from other companies). I've checked out some linux on laptop websites and am getting an impression that Linux does not keep up with hardware manufacturers. By the time that somebody reports on a successful install, laptop manufacturers seem to change the hardware. I am lost with wireless for example. It seems that there are several standards around, which of them is/will be supported in Linux? What is the current status of winmodem support? Some people say don't go near them, other get them work. Does it all apply to onboard network chips? It's hard to make a right choice, when it is so confusing... I have enjoyed linux for the last 4 years and wouldn't like to eXPerience anything else... Any good advice/suggestion? Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted May 29, 2003 Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 I heard that IBM does laptop with linux preinstalled.. Anyway, to get linux preinstalled laptop, you may have to really search for it if the vendor does offer it. I'm afraid most of laptops are still in microsoft domain. Unless of course, you live in Thailand and get that 400 dollar laptop with linux preinstalled :) Anyway, centrino is still not fully linux supported yet.. at least the wireless part. Some PCcard wireless cards are supported with just a bit of tweaking, especially if they use orinico or prism chipset. Modems are bit more problematic, but can be doable. Anyway.. googling for preinstalled linux laptop give me these links http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html http://www.atnextcom.com/linuxmain.htm http://www.laclinux.com/front.py There could me more.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted May 29, 2003 Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 Of course, it's not that hard to install it on there yourself. I understand not wanting to buy any M$ products at all; hell I bought mine with the absolute bare minimum that Dell would sell me. If they would have sold me the laptop with no OS installed, I would have scooped that up in a heartbeat. As far as the wireless goes, with a PCMCIA card, it's actually not all that hard to get it working. I'm in the process of writing a FAQ about it for this board. Since I recently hosed my FS and had to reinstall, I have it fresh in my mind so I figure now would be the best time to do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted May 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 has just written a reply, but the browser got stuck, not sure if the post got through... Anyway, I've checked the Intel OS compatibility chart, http://www.intel.com/support/notebook/centrino/os.htm An interesting thing is that linux is supported in pentium M processor and 855 chipset, but they stop short when it comes to supporting the wireless LAN mini-PCI adapter. A naive question, apart from the wireless, what else does centrino include? I would go without wireless, don't care much about it. It's the size/weight and battery life that amke centrino attractive. And of course, when you buy a notebook, the wireless hardware is already there, you've got to pay for it and pay for a PC card on top... Hmmm, it sounds very familiar.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted May 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 Of course, it's not that hard to install it on there yourself. I understand not wanting to buy any M$ products at all; hell I bought mine with the absolute bare minimum that Dell would sell me. If they would have sold me the laptop with no OS installed, I would have scooped that up in a heartbeat. As far as the wireless goes, with a PCMCIA card, it's actually not all that hard to get it working. I'm in the process of writing a FAQ about it for this board. Since I recently hosed my FS and had to reinstall, I have it fresh in my mind so I figure now would be the best time to do it. Weel, it's not entirely about not paying MS tax... I've been through that exercise when I was buying my desktop, doesn't work in Australia. The law requires that every computers is sold with an OS, and you can guess which OS is that... I just can't spend much time on tweaking... BTW, LiquidZoo, I red your notes, about Inspiron and look forward to reading your FAQ. Actually, I got Inspiron 8200 for my daughter a couple of months ago, quite a nice computer, but a bit heavy to carry around... Nevertheless, if she decides to switch to linux, I know where to look for good notes... Thanks for putting that stuff together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitz Posted May 30, 2003 Report Share Posted May 30, 2003 I don't know if they ship to Australia but you can check out: http://www.emperorlinux.com/ They take dell computers, install linux on them, and sell them. They have drivers for all peripherals on the laptops they sell as well as support. Glitz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted May 31, 2003 Report Share Posted May 31, 2003 I agree that tracking down a laptop that is not sold with M$ tax is your best bet. As far as I know, Dell still does linux packages, but only in America. My brother got a laptop without M$ tax and I helped him to set it up. Everything works now except the hotkeys. Modem, Lan, etc. are all fine under mdk 9.1. We also had some problems with the onboard Radeon Mobility, but that got ironed out with the latest version of XFree. The make was AOpen... just pay carefull attention to the chipsets included and check compatibility and you should be fine. EDIT: Sony Vaios are well known for their Linux compatibility - very solid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted June 1, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2003 Thanks everybody who responded. SoulSe, which model was that Dell? How long does the battery last? If I am not mistaken, according to a report that I red a while ago (before Intel released centrino), Dell's batteries were rating pretty poorly compared to some others. Indeed, my daughter's Inspiron P4 2GHz, gets very hot. Fans kick in quite often. Compared to my P2 Gateway 5150 that gets barely warm and can run up to 4hrs, a huge difference... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted June 1, 2003 Report Share Posted June 1, 2003 which model was that Dell? I don't know. I spoke to some guy in the States last month who had bought one. Apparently (according to him) Dell have their own semi-distro going, largely based on Redhat, with their own drivers, etc. The best laptop I have ever used, running Linux, was a Sony Vaio - the guy who owned it even had the Sony Jogdial working, it was amazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tezca Posted July 15, 2003 Report Share Posted July 15, 2003 Enpower ships really nice laptops preinstalled with redhat for a reasonable price, + warrenty support , etc can't find the origional manufacturs site but you can get them through PCClub http://pcclub.com They even have them on display in their stores! only problem is their sales people (in the pcclub store) still dont know $%#$ about linux so they can't pass on any of the advantages of linux to thier potential customers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted July 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2003 Thanks to everyone who responded to my original post. I have narrowed down my choice to Thinkpad T40 and Dell D600. From what I read, Linux can be run on those notebooks, except for winmodems, ACPI and Wireless. All reports were from people running Red Hat 9 or Debian, hence everybody had to patch kernel 2.4.20 or use an rc release of 2.4.21 kernel, etc, and still nobody managed to get a 100% working ACPI. I wonder if anybody tried Mandrake 9.1 on any of those notebooks. Bamboo comes with 2.4.21 kernel, so at least ACPI should work smoothly (at least Mandrake claims that this is the case...) Is that right? I don't care much if wireless and/or winmodem wouldn't work, but having unstable power management may be a pain. Apparently, neither of these notebooks come with APM enabled bios, only ACPI... Unfortunately, the Uni is reluctant to buy from anybody else but Dell or IBM as they get discounts on Win notebooks from them, so getting Linux preinstalled is not an option anymore... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest palepaul5 Posted August 4, 2003 Report Share Posted August 4, 2003 I'm currently running an Inspiron 2600 with MDK 9.1, and everything works a dream. It's also had RH 9.0 and Slack 9.0 running on it. The biggest problem with notebooks used to be XFree, but version 4.3 has went a long way to sorting a lot of problems. HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted August 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 4, 2003 I'm currently running an Inspiron 2600 with MDK 9.1, and everything works a dream.It's also had RH 9.0 and Slack 9.0 running on it. The biggest problem with notebooks used to be XFree, but version 4.3 has went a long way to sorting a lot of problems. HTH Thanks for the reply. How old is your laptop? In Australia, they are curreently marketting Inspirons 1100, 5100,5150 and 8500. Linux works perfectly on older laptops; I have Gateway 5150 myself with MDK Linux on it, it's a perfect combination. People have power management problems with newer models though. Can anybody tell:If ACPI is not working properly, can this cause processor overheating? All reports that I've seen focus on problems with suspend/resume/hibernate. Some people also mentioned that fans are controlled by the ACPI/APM software. So I wonder, does power management handle fans correctly in Pentium M and newer Pentium 4 M models? I should probably post this question to the Hardware forum, I guess... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted August 5, 2003 Report Share Posted August 5, 2003 I have an Inspiron 8200 (older version, I think, of the 8500) currently running MDK 9.1 and everything is running perfectly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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