# Best Laptop for Gentoo

## gentoowanabee

What's the best, sub $800, laptop that won't have too many hiccups with gentoo and will still run KDE3 well?

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## huw

Basically any Laptop with reasonably standard hardware should be fine. Look at major distributions compatablity lists like http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/?pagename=hcl as a start and also check out http://www.linux-laptop.net for tips once you have a model in mind.

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## katakombi

beware of winmodems.

some are supported, most are not.

information can be found under http://www.linmodems.org

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## cluster2600

i know i sound like a commercial but i quite like dell laptops i think they are realy cost effective and the support is ok 

 :Rolling Eyes: 

please excuse my english   :Mr. Green: 

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## alec

Check out ebay!

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## masseya

I feel I have to stick up for my fav. brand here:  Compaq.  I haven't had a serious problem with a Compaq laptop.  They have a lot of really good features and most of their laptops have great travel in their keys.  I love their high end screens and the ATI Radeon Mobility graphics fly and don't drain the battery.  Also, I like the fact that they aren't Intel only.  I don't have a laptop with an AMD chip, but I think it's a little upsetting how Intel can basically buy Dell and eliminate AMD as an option.

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## jadenjahner

 *cluster2600 wrote:*   

> i know i sound like a commercial but i quite like dell laptops i think they are realy cost effective and the support is ok

 Dell's laptops are great for Linux. Dell offers drivers for Linux for a few models. I have a Dell Inspiron, and everything except the winmodem works.

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## alec

 *Tristam29 wrote:*   

> I feel I have to stick up for my fav. brand here:  Compaq.  I haven't had a serious problem with a Compaq laptop.  They have a lot of really good features and most of their laptops have great travel in their keys.  I love their high end screens and the ATI Radeon Mobility graphics fly and don't drain the battery.  Also, I like the fact that they aren't Intel only.  I don't have a laptop with an AMD chip, but I think it's a little upsetting how Intel can basically buy Dell and eliminate AMD as an option.

 

I've recently got a somewhat-old Compaq 1800T and installed Gentoo on it.  Everything works except the battery and the freaky iKeys stuff.  I'll back up Tristam's praise for Compaq.  Screen is almost too bright!

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## klieber

Might also ask in the PPC forum what peoples' experiences are with Gentoo on powerbooks and ibooks.  Apple makes kick-ass laptops with nifty things like gig-E, firewire, etc.  You can usually get a good deal on a used one via eBay as well.

--kurt

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## littlekif

i've had serious hardware problems with my older toshiba (~2yrs) with just about any distro of linux out there.

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## AutoBot

I can tell you the easiest thing to do when looking to buy a laptop your wish to run linux on, download and burn knoppix, take it to your local computer store, pop the disk in, reboot the laptop and see what happens. I just got a Sony Vaio PCG-FXA32 slapped my knoppix disk in and it auto-detected everything then proceeded to boot xfree (Mobile Radeon) automagically with sound, usb, pcmcia, and firewire support.

.: Knoppix has the best hardware detection I have ever seen.

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## EvilTwinSkippy

The best laptop I've ever installed linux on we my 200Mhz Cyrix based laptop from CTX. They don't make laptops anymore, unfortunately.

I have also had very good experiences with IBM Thinkpads. If you can find one of those on sale, scoop it up.

Old Sony's make great laptops. We have a bunch around the office that we have been converting over to Linux as the Win98 OS crufts into uselessness. They hold up well and are very hard to kill. 

It is a bitch to get some of the quirky things the sony builds into them to work, but so many Linux users love Vaios that sooner or later SOMEBODY writes a driver.

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## samppa

I haven't had problems with my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D 8820 (P4-2800, 512MB, ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, 40GB HD). This thing is very stable.

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## rhennig

I love my IBM ThinkPad T30, though it has Lucent WinModem but I don't care.

All other hardware is supported (Radeon 7500, Intel(R) PRO/100 VE, Toshiba DVD/CD-RW, PCMCIA, etc.).

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## deviljelly

IBM laptops are a bit boxy but if your budget is big then at least you know that around 10,000 IBM'ers are also running linuz on them and some develop drivers.....

Or a cheapo generic laptop, based on very very common components might be a better bet, nothing facy or vendor specific.

Paul

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## deviljelly

 *katakombi wrote:*   

> beware of winmodems.
> 
> some are supported, most are not.
> 
> information can be found under http://www.linmodems.org

 

Katakombi, your picture is very disturbing what is it???

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## klieber

 *deviljelly wrote:*   

> Katakombi, your picture is very disturbing what is it???

 

A baby sucking on a baby pacifier.  Oh the horrors...

--kurt

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## deviljelly

Oh I get it now!, it's fake teeth on the back of the dummy (british word for a pacifier)

 :Embarassed: 

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## qwkbrnfox

 *deviljelly wrote:*   

> Oh I get it now!, it's fake teeth on the back of the dummy (british word for a pacifier)
> 
> 

 If it makes you feel better, I was a bit disturbed by it to, until I figured out what it was.

I have an HP pavilion zt1175 that I'm pretty happy with.  Stable, easy enough to set up gentoo on.  I've never had serious problems with it.

qbf

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## mb4guns

I would go for dell or ibm.

I've been around linux and laptops past few months now doing some projects with them (all gentoo), my worst experience is hp, they use exotic hardware many suffer from bugs(hw).

Watch out for exotic or brand modified hardware, then ur save....

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## gwydion

I haven't seen anybody mention HP yet, so thought I'd chime in.   I have an HP Pavilion xh535 running gentoo, and it was a fairly painless install.  I had a slight hiccup with setting up xwindows, but all in all, not too bad.

[EDIT] Ok, so I skipped mb4guns post before I wrote this.  I have not had any problems with my hp, maybe it depends on the model?

Specs:

amd athlon 4 950

256MB ram

20gb hdd

dvd

ess winmodem (haven't looked to see if it's supported yet - I have no need for a modem atm)

ess sound (maestro something)

onboard nic (tulip driver)

trident cyberblade xp

the video was tricky as I couldn't find any info on the screen, and couldn't get the 1024x768 mode to work.  Eventually I remembered that knoppix had detected/configured x correctly, so I used it's config file.  No worries since.

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## tirantloblanc

I got everything to work on my IBM Thinkpad T23: sound, network, usb, dvd/cdrw... Even the hotkeys and the winmodem work!

You can make the winmodem to work with the lucent drivers. The only thing it lacks is 3D Support for the SuperSavage chipset, but it's in the works: http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html

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## tirantloblanc

There's also the new lindows laptop, gentoo shouldn't have any problem to run on it:

http://info.lindows.com/mobilepc/mobilepc.htm

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## biosx

I had the same question back when I was shopping for a laptop.

I emailed Chris Dibona (sourceforge/linux nut) and asked him what his opinion was. I lost the email but he said that IBM and Dell are probably the best. He has an IBM Thinkpad that runs Debian. As for me, I have a Dell Inspiron 2650 that ran Slackware for a while and as of recently, Gentoo.

HP is probably a safe bet as well because for a while they were all pro-linux.

So my recommendations:

IBM, Dell, and HP (in that order).

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## bryon

I would have to say to go and get a think pad, they might be a little more expensice but they are worth it.  I have a A30 that has the hot buttons and one of the most useful features is it's buit in light.  Oha yaha the ultrabays are also great also, I can switch the drives, or putt in diffrent ones all toghter.  Say I want to take a DVD and ZIP drive with me or jsut take a floppy and CD burner with me it is all possible with thinkpads, the ethernet, pcmica, and the winmidem is supported under linux but I have not gotten it working yet.

thinkspads rule!

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## henke

 *tirantloblanc wrote:*   

> There's also the new lindows laptop, gentoo shouldn't have any problem to run on it:
> 
> http://info.lindows.com/mobilepc/mobilepc.htm

 

The Lindows Laptop  does look pretty sweet  :Smile:  You get 

933MHz VIA processor

256MB RAM

USB 2.0

Firewire

Ethernet

12.1" 1024x768 TFT display

PCMCIA slot

Compact Flash slot

in a 2.9 pound package for $799. The battery only seems to last 1.5 - 2 hours though  :Sad: 

henke the Swedish Lindows astroturfer  :Wink: 

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## spinfire

I have an HP Pavilion ZT1000 custom built notebook (which is unfortunatly no longer available, but you might be able to find one used).  It remained with windows only on it for some time, but I eventually put gentoo on it and was surprised to learn it really runs much better with linux on it.  From wireless configuration to battery life, its almost always better under linux.

There is a winmodem in it, I have no idea how to get it working, but I really don't have much interest in getting it working currently.

My experiences installing: http://isomerica.net/articles/hp_zt1000/

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## puddpunk

 *henke wrote:*   

>  *tirantloblanc wrote:*   There's also the new lindows laptop, gentoo shouldn't have any problem to run on it:
> 
> http://info.lindows.com/mobilepc/mobilepc.htm 
> 
> The Lindows Laptop  does look pretty sweet  You get 
> ...

 

What they don't tell you, is a 933MHz VIA C3 processor is, in all seriousness, equivalent to less than a Celeron 500MHz. Even though it runs cool, it runs SLOOOOOOW which is not good when you compile programs every other day.

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## d3c3it

 *puddpunk wrote:*   

>  *henke wrote:*    *tirantloblanc wrote:*   There's also the new lindows laptop, gentoo shouldn't have any problem to run on it:
> 
> http://info.lindows.com/mobilepc/mobilepc.htm 
> 
> The Lindows Laptop  does look pretty sweet  You get 
> ...

 

but lindows isnt source based is it? so would that matter? for gentoo i would i know that but lindows is trying to do something else surly?

personally i think they went a bad way with the via chip because it doesnt show off linux to its true potential.

Ive got a Toshiba 1800-354s *value special, got given it, long story* and ive just installed gentoo on it and kde 3.1 and it runs sweet. Better than redhat, debian *didnt know what i was doing with that thou* vector linux and suse. All latest versions. Gentoo is by far the best 1 ive ran on it and for compatability aswell ive no problems with any my hardware its all been auto detected and its all working:)

but when i say via doesnt show linux off is because ive also duel booted my laptop with windows 98 *for tv out and winmodem usage* and win98 works at at least 2/3 the speed as gentoo does. Guess thats what you get for compiling everything to you own machine:)

btw my laptop spec is

celery "coppermine" 1.1ghz

256mb ram

14gb hdd

trident cyberblade xp

ali m1451*ithink* sound

24x cdrom

2 PCMCIA slots

2usb 1.1 ports

runs gentoo very very nicly, discontinued now thou

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## Narada

I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 which has now been superseded by 8200.  It's been running Gentoo for a year now and runs beautifully with one exception.  The ESS Maestro3 kernel sound driver is experimental and sometimes crashes but it can be made to run as modules which works nicely.  Anyway, Dell has also a mailing list called linux-dell-laptops on Yahoogroups which is a good source of specific help in times of need.  Also Dell are good at providing regular BIOS updates which have resolved many issues for me in the past.  Alternatively, you could find a company which sells laptops with Linux preinstalled.  Good luck.

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## gnarlin

 *samppa wrote:*   

> I haven't had problems with my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D 8820 (P4-2800, 512MB, ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, 40GB HD). This thing is very stable.

 

Setting up Gentoo-linux on the amilo-a laptop

Problems:

The first and firmost problem with setting almost ANY linux on the amilo-a laptop is the bios (phoenix). It reserves ports that it should not for its own evil purposes. Since almost all distros probe those ports it means that the kernel panics. This is NOT good.

There is also another problem with the amilo-a. If it tries to boot a linux kernel which has been compiled to use isa-plug-n-play support it panics. This means that since almost every single major linux distro (including gentoo) include isa-plug-n-play support in their install kernels it means that they all panic on bootup.

The solution:

There is, of course, one distro that neigther probes those ports on bootup nor includes isa-pnp support... Slackware. Yes, the old master still lives. So why not just use Slackware then ? Well, it is not very optimisable nor does it have a useful package system which can easily install, compile and optimize every program you install after your specifications. Basically, I am too lazy to bother with compiling endless lists of needed dependencies that are missing just so that I can compile some small obscure program nor am I interested in having to fetch the source myself manually for every god damned program from their respective web pages. 

O, well. Enough rambling. I am now going to tell you how I did it. That does NOT mean that there isn't a better way to do it of course. It just means that that is the way that I accomplished it.

What do you need:

Hardware:

A cd-burner. An access point to the internet (router, external modem.. whatever). Some soft drink, anything above cola version 1.0L  :Smile: 

Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo-A (well.... this entire post is rather pointless without it).

Software: The stages 1..2 or 3..

an open web-browser (since neigher links nor lynx are avaliable in the Slackware shell install). One of the stage files. I prefere the stage3 file since it contains the most complete system. It can always be recompiled from scratch anyways. A Slackware install cd. A windows 2000server cd (as a couster for your soda drink).

Lets begin.

I downloaded the stage 3 file and untared it into a directory (remembering to use the -p switch with tar... or else). I then proceeded to burn that directory directly to the root of a cd.

It was time to start the actual installation. I booted the slack 8.1 cd on the laptop noting that it was using busybox for the basic utilities. I really hate busybox, but I guess it has its purpose.. If only it had the -p switch on the tar command. I created the /mnt/gentoo dir as well as /mnt/floppy and /mnt/cdrom as mount points for their respective devices and proceded to mount the stage3 cd I had burned. I then used busyboxes cp (making sure to keep symbolic links, copy recursively and preserving file attributes) into the /mnt/gentoo dir. 

After that I could mostly follow the standard gentoo install guide with a few exeptions. The kernel you compile MUST NOT contain isa-pnp support. Why not ? I don't know, but it makes the kernel panic. ACPI support all the way since APM doesn't seem to work at all on this laptop. The vesa framebuffer really helps with the console since it makes it possible to view it fullscreen. Also remember to change permissions on the /var dir and some subdirs that contain the X11 keybord layouts. Otherwise you won't be able to access the altgr keys (like @ and | which are rather important IMHO). Just check the X output after you start it (CTRL-ALT-F1). One more thing. This is rather important. Edit the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts and split the first line in two and comment out the: include port 0x100-0x4ff like so:

# System resources available for PCMCIA devices

#include port 0x100-0x4ff

include port 0x800-0x8ff

If you don't ... again the kernel panics... big woop !  

There is only one remaning problem with the amilo A. It has a radeon IGP graphic card build into the motherboard. That particular chip uses the ram as its own private playground to do with as it pleases. This does not bode well for linux users. 

The ONLY current driver that I have found to work with X is the vesa framebuffer driver. It is painfully slow and that means that I can't watch movies on the laptop even though the hardware is good enough and that almost all games won't run or will perform very poorly. Alan Cox has been doing some work to fix this (so try to use the newest kernel which is 2.5.64 as of this writing). 

Despite running 2.5.64 I have not managed to get the official ati drivers to work (firegl binary hell). If anyone has this laptop and runs gentoo on it AND manages to get hardware acceleration to work... for the love of whatever deity/kernel hacker you worship please (got tears in my eyes at this point) tell me how. I am sick of my windows loving friends poking fun at me and ridiculing linux for not "working nearly as fast as their U7ltRa-L3eT windows machines (laptops as well...). I really want to give them a swift kick in the peanuts.

Well I guess that is all there is to it. I know that this post is kinda specific, but since so many people have been mailing me about the amilo-a  I thought someone could use a small write up on it. 

Cheers.

Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson

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## drizzt

Ok, here's my experience..

I tested two laptops:

1. Toshiba Tecra 730 CDT.. everything runs Out-Of-The-Box (Gentoo installing/compiling slow but running fine). Even the Dockingstation (Deskstation V+) running without glitches.

Toshiba has a good FAQ running linux on their laptops.

2. Acer Travelmate 5?? (I think 512 or so). Most things work except modem (winmodem) and standby.

Of what I heard and read also the Thinkpad series (at least the old ones without TCPA) should be very good. I myself wasn't able to test yet.

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## d3c3it

 *drizzt wrote:*   

> Ok, here's my experience..
> 
> I tested two laptops:
> 
> 1. Toshiba Tecra 730 CDT.. everything runs Out-Of-The-Box (Gentoo installing/compiling slow but running fine). Even the Dockingstation (Deskstation V+) running without glitches.
> ...

 

i never knew they had a FAQ on linux *toshiba that is* cheers for the info

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## nacs

My Dell Inspiron 2650C laptop that currently retails for ~$900 works great with Linux. Sound, networking, etc. The only thing I haven't tried to get working is the Conexant modem (winmodem) but Conexant  has released official linux drivers so it should theoretically work also.

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## lemming

My Sony Vaio F580 - PIII-650 is a great Gentoo Laptop now.  I got it in mid-2000 and it wasn't well supported for Linux until late 2001.  As a rule of thumb, that works for most of the laptops out there.  As long as they don't have Window enabled HW, a year old laptop will probably be well supported.

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## magnet

gericom sells cheap laptops with linux pre installed.

I own a silver seraph , all is working fine , exept the 56 internal modem.

also note that www.linux-laptop-.net is dead. I sent an howto for gentoo on this laptop nearly 6 month ago , mailed the admin some times, and never get any answers.also there are no new laptops entry.

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## ricko73

 *d3c3it wrote:*   

>  *puddpunk wrote:*    *henke wrote:*    *tirantloblanc wrote:*   There's also the new lindows laptop, gentoo shouldn't have any problem to run on it:
> 
> http://info.lindows.com/mobilepc/mobilepc.htm 
> 
> The Lindows Laptop  does look pretty sweet  You get 
> ...

 

Bla bla bla...don't curse the thing unless you have on.  (yes I do have one).  I bought my little enote and have been very happy with the overall performance.  Yes the processor is a VIA C3.  The only thing bad about it is how poorly VIA supports the Linux community.  Nearly all my boards have some sort of VIA chipset on them.  Older stuff is supported eventually, but things like the USB-2.0 stuff is flakey until you get to the newer kernels, the ALSA sound is still broken on damn near all VIA onboard chipsets (cracks, pops--sometimes I think I'm eating breakfast instead of listening to audio).  It took less than a day to have a working Gentoo system including emerging X (I started from stage 1).  'emerge kde' took somewhere between 44-48 hours.  

I made the mistake of blowing away Lindows (aka debian with some extra scripts) before I backed up the configuration files.  

When I was running Slackware 9.0 on it earlier, we connected a second laptop at our LUG via crossover cable, ran KDE on my system, then using Cygwin (demonstration purposes), ran a second copy of KDE on the "under powered" VIA processor, exporting the display to the Windows machine.  We had no noticable issues while running different programs (like OpenOffice Writer).  

While you have a slower processor, the bus on this thing is running at 133.  The ide is at least UDMA100 and it has USB2.0 and firewire.  It works perfectly fine for me.

Darrick

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## SmegTheLight

I have an Asus L3800 (P4 1.7 1400x1050 Radeon M7), and it works great with Linux.  There are even some ACPI patches (now in the Wolk Kernel) and enable the extra hotkeys and Funky Blue Mail waiting light  :Wink: 

I even got the WinModem working, but not 100% (fails to get carrier about 20% of the time)

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## snutte

My Acer Travelmate laptop works like a charm. Everything works, and I hade no problems setting it up.

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## magnet

smeg : what is wolk kernel ? does it has special things for laptops ?

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## SmegTheLight

 *magnet wrote:*   

> smeg : what is wolk kernel ? does it has special things for laptops ?

 

It's the "Working Overloaded Linux Kernel" - Stuffed to the gills with patches.

http://wolk.sourceforge.net/

It's even in Portage too.

It has recently gone a restructuring to make it more tailored to server use (some problem patches were removed).  It works great on my desktops.

The Asus patches that are in the Wolk are available individually at http://julien.lerouge.free.fr/md9675.html

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## d3c3it

 *ricko73 wrote:*   

>  *d3c3it wrote:*    *puddpunk wrote:*    *henke wrote:*    *tirantloblanc wrote:*   There's also the new lindows laptop, gentoo shouldn't have any problem to run on it:
> 
> http://info.lindows.com/mobilepc/mobilepc.htm 
> 
> The Lindows Laptop  does look pretty sweet  You get 
> ...

 

fair enough i was just saying from what i read about the chip ive much admiration for lindows thou in the way they seem to want to pi*s off m$ as much as possible also which is nice to see is how the laptop will run any distro because the hardware is choosen for linux which you dont get with alot of laptops *like mine, modem and tvout doesnt work:(*

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## NightMonkey

I have a Thinkpad 600X w/ PIII-650. Works great (even the WinModem). I use the ltmodem, thinkpad, tpcl and wvdial for specific portage packages for this laptop. Even the infrared works. The only thing that is troublesome is the Intel Processor Power Management, which I can't seem to control from within Linux. If I start the laptop without AC power, it'll throttle the processor down to 450Mhz and I can't change it back without a reboot.

If anyone know a solution to that, let me know. I even searched the bios...

You should be able to find a 600X within your price range, and it might still be under warranty!

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## ray0r

i have a dell inspiron 8100 and it works perfectly with linux (except suspending because I haven't tried to set it up yet). even my windmodem works. plus when my motherboard got fried last year and i still had my warranty i sent my laptop in and the fixed it overnight, and had it back the next day.  pretty good service.  :Surprised: 

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## zfc-tinkerer

I have to add a plug for the little-guy manufacturers   :Wink: 

A few months ago I bought a Sager 8880 notebook (ok, really a desktop replacement)  (www.sagernotebook.com)  and I adore it.  Everything from the cd/dvd combo drive to the tv-tuner card to the builtin mp3-player to the builtin network card and ati M7 video were autodetected and set up flawlessly by SuSE.  (note that this is a company that custom builds your notebook for you).  Because everything is so standard, Ive had no problems whatsoever.  I don't have everything working in gentoo yet, but I've only been using gentoo on this machine for about 1 1/2 weeks.  the winmodem is the only troublemaker, but i knew from the beginning that was a lost cause.  I also like the non-mobile p4 processor.  And their tech support is great!  (they do also have several smaller and more budget-conscious starting models also which you customize from)   If only the thing didn't weigh over 12 lb!  It's worth the cost for a dream machine, though.  :Razz: 

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## MrYoya

I'll second that.  I just got a Sager 5670 which is fantastic.  It wasn't sub $800, but definitely worth the price especially since it didn't come with windows.   :Very Happy: 

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## steveforse

I picked up a Compaq 2105US for $800 (after rebates) from Best Buy. It's a nice little laptop. Specs:

14.1" 1024x768 screen (not too great, but it does its job)

Athlon 1800+ Mobile processor

512MB DDR memory

One PCMCIA

Integrated Radeon

Built-in National Semiconductor ethernet

Buitl-in Conexant WinModem

Funny litle multimedia keys

Touchpad with scrolling ability

DVD/CD-RW Drive

To get it to work properly, I needed a kernel with CPUFreq and ACPI built into it. I'm using wolk for that right now. Premptible kernel patch won't work with the winmodem drivers, so that may be a bit of a problem for some. The IGP 320M Radeon doesn't support 3D acceleration yet, from what I hear. The WinModem is a bit flakey. When it connects, WVDial spits out a bunch of gibberish to the screen sometimes. But I'll usually connet on the first try and definitely by the third attept. I'm still trying to figure out how to get software suspend to work with it. I can't seem to find a 2.4.x kernel that has CPUFreq, ACPI, and SWSUSP built-in. Sound works fine with ALSA. I got the multimedia keys to work with some omke perl script I found on sourceforge. Sticking my wireless card into the PCMCIA causes my comp to crash when I type startx. Also, sometimes my touchpad seems to push its own buton for no reason randomly while I type. It may be that I misconfigured the touchpad, so I'm going to look into that later.

I picked it up last Thursday, so I'm still playing with it. These cheap Compaq laptops seem to be supported by Linux pretty well. Though I hear Compaq doesn't really much care for supporting Linux users. So you might be on your own with hardware issues.

Hope this info helps people.

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## sputnik1969

Take a look at

http://tuxmobil.org/

By the way, i'll try to install Gentoo on my Thinkpad 760XL in the near future, but everything is compiled in a chroot-environment on my server, because P166MMX/48MB/2GB HD isn't powerfull  :Wink: 

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## zuiko

I used to own a Thinkpad 600 for 4 years and it ran every OS I threw at it and was extremely reliable.

Then I used a Compaq Pressario for (mercifully) a few weeks before it completely burned itself out due to CPU throttling problems. The service was also the lousiest I have EVER seen from any company. In the end the vendor ended up exchanging the Compaq for another machine. DON'T BUY THE PRESSARIO (lower end) Compaqs. They truly truly suck bad.

I now use an upper end Sony Vaio and it works like a dream. Sony took a while to really get into the laptop scene but like all their products their Vaios are really well sorted. I would buy another IBM also and would recommend them highly.

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## nitrous

go apple

-tweek

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## treehugger

i've got a toshiba 2775xdvd and have a no problems getting everything working in both debian and gentoo.  it's a couple of years old now and still no problems... probably could find one cheap if someone was willing to let go of it.

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## hook

i was thinking of a gericom a2, since i'd like my (first) laptop to be pretty thin and have a long-life battery (a2 has a transmeta processor).

i can't find it at www.linux-laptops.com,  but googling shows some mailing lists concerning it ...so i'm pretty optimistic about :]

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## cdunham

 *AutoBot wrote:*   

> I can tell you the easiest thing to do when looking to buy a laptop your wish to run linux on, download and burn knoppix, take it to your local computer store, pop the disk in, reboot the laptop and see what happens.

 

Heh - also sounds like a good viral marketing plan for Linux, or maybe something for a flash mob. Worth the cost of a few CD-Rs  :Smile: 

To the people that suggested Sager - the configurators on their Web site don't seem to have a "no OS [deduct $100]" option. Do you have to ask for it "manually", and do you really get a discount for not getting Windows?

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## someguy

i agree with masseya ive had good experiences with compaq laptops (even though there desktops are shameful) there laptops seem to like linux in my experience

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## MasquedAvenger

Anyone know of laptops that support hardware mixing for sound?  Arts is delayed, I can't get esd to work, and I've heard that alsa supports software mixing at the driver level but have not figured out how to get it to work.  If anyone knows:

a) how to get alsa to support software mixing at the driver level

or

b) if there are any well-supported laptops out there with hardware mixing, please respond!  :Smile: 

James

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## sputnik1969

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> a) how to get alsa to support software mixing at the driver level
> 
> 

 Have a look at this: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin

Good luck

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## Rav3n

Asus laptop running gentoo, anyone has it?

cuz' i'm gonna buy one of those, i hope   :Cool: 

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