# [Question] Subnotebook recommendations?

## splatnix

I'm currently running on a Latitude CPi-A400 which is getting to that point of aging - it still runs Gentoo fine, but it's just too bulky.

I'm looking into subnotebooks, such as the Sony PCG-TR1/TR2 or the U1/U3/U101 (which I think might be a tad TOO small), but I'd like to see if anyone has successfully gotten Gentoo fully working on these kinds of systems, and if so, which ones in particular. 

What are the performance differences between Centrino and Transmeta (I haven't seen any other platform) based solutions, as the only benchmarks I find are Windows-based?

The only big thing I would require on the subnotebook is either IrDA or Bluetooth (built-in preferred, but I can use a USB dongle, thus USB port required) so I can connect my GPRS phone SOMEHOW.

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## julot

Centrino is the Low voltage PIII-m and some expensive with P4-m with steroids (512k or 1 mb cache), bundled with wireless chip inside.  (A difficult Wireless see the URLs).

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59050,00.html

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2912516,00.html

In my opinion the cost/benefit is WAY too small,  Because is based on chipset heritage of 815 and have the same problems (512 MB RAM limits, low RAM and IDE performance).    And God Knows why is expensive than regular (And bigger normal architechtures based on regular P4).  

My sister Bought a 1800 dls Dell P4-2.4A GHZ  256 ddr RAM regular Notebook, 40 GB HD. Radeon 7500 mobility With 32MB and DVD/CDRW Combo and standard 845 chipset and it is awesome linux compatible!  And not to bulky compared with Centrino counterparts.

With the emerging market of Wireless, When you buy a Standard in a couple of months will be obsolete, and your notebook has a expiration date, (Thing more workarounded with a normal LAN, due to the more than enough LAN bandwith even with 10Base T.   Wireless is in it's Childhood, avoid now).

In short,  Go to http://support.intel.com  and see the requirements of a "normal" PC.  Per example, 845 Chipset, DDR etc.

Go and look for this info in the Laptop/Notebook you want.  If you keep too close to this "normal" PC, you will be in business without headaches in linux.

Specially with some laptops with "strange" video chipsets like Trident XP-A1  (A terrible Toshiba P3!).    :Mad: 

Remember also that in linux it is partial the support of new Centrino chipsets and wireless drivers.  

In the other hand Crusoe is a completely different approach,  It is a CPU with software in it that "emulates" the x86 family processors, It is a very low voltage CPU, That powers the beautiful and useful machines I ever seen, (Toshiba Libretto and Sony subnotebooks).   

The benefit,  A brand new approach  rather than old refurbished technologies with "added value".  

The problem, Expensive (questionable).

So if you want more bang for your buck in linux,  Pay the normal Notebook  

if you are newbie, or simply do not have time to test.

If centrino machines were the size of Libretto,  I will believe there is an improvement,

(Originally the centrino Promises the Affordable great notebook, what a lie).  Centrino costs 1800 dls the cheapest, the same thing compared to regular notebook, and the only thing you win is a weight loss of your same sized notebook.     :Embarassed: 

 :Mr. Green: 

Julio.

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## julot

Centrino is the Low voltage PIII-m and some expensive with P4-m with steroids (512k or 1 mb cache), bundled with wireless chip inside.  (A difficult Wireless see the URLs).

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59050,00.html

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2912516,00.html

In my opinion the cost/benefit is WAY too small,  Because is based on chipset heritage of 815 and have the same problems (512 MB RAM limits, low RAM and IDE performance).    And God Knows why is expensive than regular (And bigger normal architechtures based on regular P4).  

My sister Bought a 1800 dls Dell P4-2.4A GHZ  256 ddr RAM regular Notebook, 40 GB HD. Radeon 7500 mobility With 32MB and DVD/CDRW Combo and standard 845 chipset and it is awesome linux compatible!  And not to bulky compared with Centrino counterparts.

With the emerging market of Wireless, When you buy a Standard in a couple of months will be obsolete, and your notebook has a expiration date, (Thing more workarounded with a normal LAN, due to the more than enough LAN bandwith even with 10Base T.   Wireless is in it's Childhood, avoid now).

In short,  Go to http://support.intel.com  and see the requirements of a "normal" PC.  Per example, 845 Chipset, DDR etc.

Go and look for this info in the Laptop/Notebook you want.  If you keep too close to this "normal" PC, you will be in business without headaches in linux.

Specially with some laptops with "strange" video chipsets like Trident XP-A1  (A terrible Toshiba P3!).    :Mad: 

Remember also that in linux it is partial the support of new Centrino chipsets and wireless drivers.  

In the other hand Crusoe is a completely different approach,  It is a CPU with software in it that "emulates" the x86 family processors, It is a very low voltage CPU, That powers the beautiful and useful machines I ever seen, (Toshiba Libretto and Sony subnotebooks).   

The benefit,  A brand new approach  rather than old refurbished technologies with "added value".  

The problem, Expensive (questionable).

So if you want more bang for your buck in linux,  Pay the normal Notebook  

if you are newbie, or simply do not have time to test.

If centrino machines were the size of Libretto,  I will believe there is an improvement,

(Originally the centrino Promises the Affordable great notebook, what a lie).  Centrino costs 1800 dls the cheapest, the same thing compared to regular notebook, and the only thing you win is a weight loss of your same sized notebook.     :Embarassed: 

 :Mr. Green: 

Julio.

----------

## julot

Centrino is the Low voltage PIII-m and some expensive with P4-m with steroids (512k or 1 mb cache), bundled with wireless chip inside.  (A difficult Wireless see the URLs).

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59050,00.html

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2912516,00.html

In my opinion the cost/benefit is WAY too small,  Because is based on chipset heritage of 815 and have the same problems (512 MB RAM limits, low RAM and IDE performance).    And God Knows why is expensive than regular (And bigger normal architechtures based on regular P4).  

My sister Bought a 1800 dls Dell P4-2.4A GHZ  256 ddr RAM regular Notebook, 40 GB HD. Radeon 7500 mobility With 32MB and DVD/CDRW Combo and standard 845 chipset and it is awesome linux compatible!  And not to bulky compared with Centrino counterparts.

With the emerging market of Wireless, When you buy a Standard in a couple of months will be obsolete, and your notebook has a expiration date, (Thing more workarounded with a normal LAN, due to the more than enough LAN bandwith even with 10Base T.   Wireless is in it's Childhood, avoid now).

In short,  Go to http://support.intel.com  and see the requirements of a "normal" PC.  Per example, 845 Chipset, DDR etc.

Go and look for this info in the Laptop/Notebook you want.  If you keep too close to this "normal" PC, you will be in business without headaches in linux.

Specially with some laptops with "strange" video chipsets like Trident XP-A1  (A terrible Toshiba P3!).    :Mad: 

Remember also that in linux it is partial the support of new Centrino chipsets and wireless drivers.  

In the other hand Crusoe is a completely different approach,  It is a CPU with software in it that "emulates" the x86 family processors, It is a very low voltage CPU, That powers the beautiful and useful machines I ever seen, (Toshiba Libretto and Sony subnotebooks).   

The benefit,  A brand new approach  rather than old refurbished technologies with "added value".  

The problem, Expensive (questionable).

So if you want more bang for your buck in linux,  Pay the normal Notebook  

if you are newbie, or simply do not have time to test.

If centrino machines were the size of Libretto,  I will believe there is an improvement,

(Originally the centrino Promises the Affordable great notebook, what a lie).  Centrino costs 1800 dls the cheapest, the same thing compared to regular notebook, and the only thing you win is a weight loss of your same sized notebook.     :Embarassed: 

 :Mr. Green: 

Julio.

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## pau

Hi,

so many posts in a day... sorry...   :Embarassed: 

The place I am working for is going to buy a laptop for me. It's up to me to choose which one. If you look at my posts you'll see that I've been struggling all the time with fans-related stuff  :Smile: 

The laptop I bought for myself is a centrino, because I thought it'd be very quiet, but it's not _that_ quiet...

Well the question is... I'm looking for a laptop with ~12'' so that it's very light and not noisy... Money doesn't matter (I'd never thought I'd ever such a sentence!). I've being looking at the IBM thinkpad family. 

I'd like something I can configure in a couple of days (=gentoo  :Smile:  ) with a good result: power management, fans, etc etc everything working. 

Which one should I choose? I've even thought of choosing a powerbook, because they're very quiet and the hardware is good... 

I just want an answer of the kind: "The laptop XXXX is about 1.5 kg and installing gentoo on it is very easy. What's more, everything is working fine out of the box and it's as quiet as a cat"

 :Smile: 

thanks!

Pau

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## Schmolch

The Thinkpad X40 might suit your needs.

But whichever laptop you choose you should always be prepared that the harddisk might not be the quietest model  you can get. Since the X40 uses 1,8" HDDs i have no idea how quiet they are.

The fan should not be a issue at all and only run after some minutes of compiling (unless the laptop sucks of course).

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## pau

Well, this (hard disk) shouldn't be a problem... This is usually quiet... My main worry is the fan... My current laptop is a fujitsu-siemens Amilo M 1425, supposed to be quiet and so on but still it's noisy...

On the other hand, I've read that people are having problems with theThinkpad X ... I don't have lots of time to configure it, maybe one weekend... and I'd hate if power management etc etc would requiere a lot of time (as it did for my current one)... 

Do you have a Thinkpad X40? And what do you think about the powerbook issue?

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## Schmolch

Nah, i dont have a X40, im currently saving for a X41 (tablet) though.

ATM there is only my old TP240 (apm).

I have no idea why some people have problems with power-managment, in my universe its just a matter of getting apm/acpi (and cpufreq eventually) into the kernel and that should be it.

I have seen a few threads from X-40 users here and many people have X-Thinkpads, maybe message a few of them to be convinced  :Smile: 

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## Skystorm

from what i've heard, i'd recommend a thinkpad as well. they tend to be a little pricy, though, but that should not concern you as you have someone paying for it.   :Very Happy:   also there is a nice site for linux on thinkpads: ThinkWiki, you might wanna have a look.

HTH

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## nic01

I love my Toshiba Portage R100 (1.09kg). It's about two years old now, but people are still amazed when they see it  :Wink: 

Gentoo installing is pretty easy. It doesn't have a cd-drive tho so you might have to boot the livecd from an usb disk or PXE. Most important stuff (suspend to disk, FN-keys wireles etc.) works like a charm. Only thing I can't get running is the MMC/SD card reader. 

I think they made a R200 version, not sure what the difference is. 

Good luck with picking your notebook

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## pau

You know what? One of the reasons why I love so much gentoo is not so much because of gentoo itself (you can do a very similar work with ubuntu in about 20 minutes) but because you learn a lot and because of this forum... I always get an answer to my questions... in the ubuntu forums people seem not even to know what /usr/src/linux is... I don't want to say this is always right, but one thing is for sure: In this forum I always get a hint, advice or even a direct answer...

So, to conclude with my paranoia: The thinkpad is going to be quiet, right? And all things will work almost out of the box, right? Power management, wlan etc etc... and in a short time... that's what you claim... Then.... let it be!

(and I have to admit I was veeery close to ask for a powerbook because everything is really working out of the box!)

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## knirscher

I have an iBook G4 12". It is extremely light, gentoo installs on it and it is extremely silent as long as the fan (indeed the iBook does have a fan, it just never starts under Mac OS X) does not start. It is very robust: It fell on my foot once while in sleep mode. My foot hurt a bit and the iBook's frame seems to be somewhat twisted (it is only visible if the lid is closed), but the hardware remained undamaged. The battery lifetime is allegedly about 5 hours, as I am writing this (using the iBook as a Desktop PC), I have about 200 minutes left at 95% battery. Hey, thats not bad.

 *Quote:*   

> (and I have to admit I was veeery close to ask for a powerbook because everything is really working out of the box!)

 

I would not say that. 

+ Sleep mode is supported which is really really cool, 

+ CPU frequency scaling works as well, 

+ audio works superb with alsa, 

- the modem is a softmodem and thus does not work

- the Airport Extreme wireless card is based on the Boadcom chip, which does not work with linux

- the dvi video out has some issues: Only Xorg can use it, but opengl or xv do not work on the external screen

If you buy a powerbook, you will at least have pcmcia slots to put a wlan card in, with my iBook I always have a stupidly looking usb wlan dongle sticking out sideways.

If I had the choice today I would buy a Powerbook 12". It has pcmcia slots, an audio line in and a few more extra features.

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## Jeremy_Z

I have an ASUS S5N since a year now, works very well with Gentoo, is very light (1.3Kg) and silent. 

Well the fan doesn't spin unless i run some cpu burning app (i usually run at 600Mz, but for cpu demanding it goes up at 1.4Ghz which does heat up a bit, the fan spins but it is still very silent. I can force it à 1Ghz and the fan remains mostly innaudible). 

The hard drive is quite silent too.

And it is ASUS, so good hardware, and very good support.

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## pau

Hey!

Thanks for the feedback... 

knirscher, your post is very interesting... Did you find it difficult to install gentoo on your laptop? I don't have any experience witi ibooks or powerbooks, but sounds promising...

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## adsmith

If you want ultraportable, light, and quiet, then this is the classic choice:

Sharp Actius MM20: 

http://burdell.org/~pitr26/

However, it's a bit dated now.

However, just last week, Fujitsu came out with a new one.  I was amazed when I came across this, because it fulfills almsot exactly what I've long said would be the perfect subnotebook design.

Fujitsu P1500D, an upgraded P1000.

http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=P15D

Disclaimer: I haven't used either of these, but the Sharp is well-known.  I will buy the Fujitsu as soon as $1500 falls into my lap (hard on a graduate stipend!).  If you want to know if it runs Gentoo, then send me a check, and I'll buy one and do the beta-testing.   :Smile: 

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## pau

 :Smile: 

Join my institute and then you can ask yourself for something like that...

It looks pretty good, but I guess the installation of gentoo on such a laptop would not be exactly what you call "out of the box"...

I stick to the thinkpad or powerbook...

As a matter of fact, I already sent my "choice" to the IT... it's up to them to give me either a thinkpad or a powerbook... Depends on stock and

time to make orders...

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## adsmith

Well, as far as I can tell, all the hardware is supported, including the touchscreen.

This is certainly true on the Sharp, anyway.  Several linux repackagers offer Sharps with SuSe or Redhat preinstalled.

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## knirscher

 *pau wrote:*   

> Did you find it difficult to install gentoo on your laptop? I don't have any experience witi ibooks or powerbooks, but sounds promising...

 

Looking back it was of easy, of course, but when I actually did the install it was hell :-) The hardest part of all is the boot scheme on ppc. I have not understood up to now how exactly this OpenFirmware stuff works. But AFAIR all the information that was needed for a successful install can be found in the Gentoo PPC Handbook. 

In fact I just downloaded and burned a PPC bootable CD and installed Gentoo the ususal way. As I said, only the boot manager part and the partitioning (if you plan to have OSX as well) is a bit fiddly. So I would conclude that I have learned a lot about Linux, PPC and Apple in the process of setting up my iBook, and I wouldn't say Gentoo installed on it "out of the box". I had never before dealt with Gentoo, so it is hard to distinguish, how many of my problems were ppc-related and how many had to do Gentoo/Linux in general.

To come once again back to pros and cons:

It is just annoying that the internal wlan card cannot be put to work with linux. And one con I forgot to mention is also that it is quite hard to find ppc executables. Especially if you want to use commercial or closed software (e.g. cisco vpn client, quake3, etc.) And of course you cannot use wrappers for win32 drivers or audio/video codecs. 

But the Apple Notebooks are just supreme pieces of hardware and AFAIK the apple support is very nice.

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## grouch42

12" powerbook.. or 12" ibook if you don't need crazy power.. linux is real fast on both ibooks and powerbooks.

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## pau

@knirscher:

What's on with the boot scheme? 

Reagrding the wlan card... I don't use it normally, so I could live without it... And I don't want to use any commercial software at all... 

Can you please elaborate a bit more on the fan? You said it's working from time to time when you're running linux but that they seem not to exist on MacOSx

I got this from the thinkwiki:

```
Problem description

There seem to be two different occurances of the problem (or two different problems).

[edit]

acceleration problem:

The Thinkpad Fan accelerates in regular intervals, making an annoying noise.

[edit]

always on problem:

The Fan is always on, even though the processor is rather cool.

[edit]

Affected Models

[edit]

acceleration problem:

    * Thinkpad T40, T40p, T41, T42(?) 

[edit]

always on problem:

    * Thinkpad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p, T43, T43p

    * Thinkpad R32, R50, R50p, R51, R52

    * Thinkpad X40 
```

These are bad news for the thinkpad...

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## pau

As a matter of fact, very bad news:

http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2004-September/019737.html

 :Confused: 

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## janwolff

Hi,

I have a DELL Latitude X1 which is almost identical to the Samsung Q30; I think only the display is different.

It has a 12" widescreen display 1280x768 (! yes 768 not 800) and NO FAN.

It is about 1.1 kg and, except for the modem, everything is working with gentoo.

Bluetooth and WLAN is integrated. An optical drive can be connected with a proprietary connector which include power supply and which is compatible with usb-2.0.

I also considered the Thinkpad X40, but decided for the DELL latitude because of the widescreen display, touchpad and fanless cooling.

I am very satisfied with this notebook and really recommend either the Latitude X1 or Samsung Q30 (if money does not matter!).

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## pau

Yes, it looks real good... It's a good idea... How works the cooling? 

The only problem is that I don't like dell at all... Call me stupid, but they supported and financed both Bush campaign 

and Iraq's war... I don't like them...   :Sad: 

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## janwolff

Perhaps, u want to get the Samsung instead. I decided for the dell, because of the price.

Btw, never heard better arguments for not buying from some company ... ;-)

The notebook gets very warm on the downside, especially when compiling.

Without a fan, the heat has to be transported through the surface, which does not work well, if you decide to stay in bed  on a sunday morning.

With the linux speedstep governors, the processor temperature will be about 45Â°C and the device gets handwarm. When compiling, the temperature can reach about 65Â°C. It seems, that the bios limits the maximum frequency when the temperature goes above certain limits, because i had problems setting it to the highest speed sometimes. But I am not quite sure, what has caused that.

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## knirscher

 *Quote:*   

> What's on with the boot scheme? 
> 
> 

 

As I already said I have not yet quite understood, what exactly I have done :-( It is just different from x86 machines, where you have a boot sector and so on. AFAIR the boot sector on ppc in fact was a boot partition that had to be of a certain size and that had to be created with mac-fdisk or at least had to be kept from the previous OSX installation... Take a look at the Gentoo PPC Handbook, Installation.

 *Quote:*   

> Can you please elaborate a bit more on the fan? You said it's working from time to time when you're running linux but that they seem not to exist on MacOSx

 

I _think_ I read in some Apple advetisement that the iBook was so quiet, because it was entirely passively cooled. But I am not sure whether they really meant the iBook G4 or if it was really in an Apple ad. When I got the iBook, however, I was so impressed by the flashy Mac OS X, I used it for about one and a half month (before finding out that it was really unusable for somebody with a freedom-of-choice-background) and I am quite sure that the fan never started, because when I heard it the first time using Linux, I really believed that I had broken the harddisk! Maybe it is a featrue kept hidden by Apple to sepparate the two notebook lines (Powerbooks/iBooks) more clearly. They do the same with video out: The PB can use the video out as a fully-featured second monitor, the iBook can (unpatched) only mirror from the LCD to the video out. Same goes for closed lid operation. Apple proclaims this as a PB exclusive feature, although the iBook can be put to closed lid operation as well. 

Ok, back to the fan. Under Linux it usually starts after about one or two minutes of compiling. But in normal operation mode (e.g. now, browsing the web) the fan is normally not needed. Maybe it does not even start at all, if the cpu is put to powersave mode with speedfreqd. The cpu frequency is then limited to 599Mhz and I cannot remember that the fan has ever started when I was in powersave mode (usually using it in the library with battery power supply).

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## pau

knirscher, which stage did you use for the installation? I did a stage 1 on my own Amilo laptop and I have to admit that it was really hard... 

How long did it take for you to get to the point of having X working and a minimal system installed?

And... btw... can you post here your boot scheme? 

I told them I want a powerbook, but I will not be able to run MacOSX... it puts me on my nerves... Still... I think it was a good idea because, as you said, the hardware is really nice...

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## knirscher

 *Quote:*   

> knirscher, which stage did you use for the installation?

 

I did a stage 2. 

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> How long did it take for you to get to the point of having X working and a minimal system installed?

 

Good question. It might have taken me a week or so, but effectively I would say two days. For Xorg I used config files from http://www.aronchi.org/LinuxOnIBookG4. 

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> And... btw... can you post here your boot scheme?

 

Here is my yaboot.conf:

```

boot=/dev/hda2

device=hd:

partition=4

delay=10

timeout=40

install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot

magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot

image=/boot/kernel

   label=Linux

   root=/dev/hda4

   sysmap=/boot/system.map

   read-only

image=/boot/kernel-rescue

   label=rescue

   root=/dev/hda3

   sysmap/boot/system.map-rescue

   read-only

macosx=/dev/hda6

enablecdboot

enableofboot

```

I cannot remember what exactly caused me problems... I think it might have been because I did not know how to install yaboot to the boot partition and I did not have anything on it, so I had to find out how to boot Linux via OpenFirmware...? Not sure.

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## hamaker

If you do decide to get an Apple (which are, of course, and I hate to admit it, the most sexy laptops on earth) you should look into yellowdog linux, of course depending on your preferences. They claim to get most things working out of the box, but you do loose the Gentoo-wonders. Still, it might be worth looking at. 

I don't have any experince with it myself, I have to say. 

Good luck!

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## pau

what about the wlan? what do the yellowdogs say to that?

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## Dlareh

I love my x40.  Wish I had an x41 tablet, but I won't have enough money for another generation or two...

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## knirscher

For the wlan issue take a look at http://linux-bcom4301.sourceforge.net/.

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## hamaker

About yellowdog and supported Apple hardware:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/hardware/breakdown/index.php

Only the Airport, not the Airport Extreme, is supported by them.

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## pau

a silly question... what's airport/airport extreme?

Is this related to wlan? I guess so but then, why the difference in name?

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## knirscher

That is correct. Indeed Airport is the Apple name for wireless capability.

Airport was introduced in 1997. These Airport cards are supported by the Linux kernel, but firstly they "only" support bitrates up to 10mbit and secondly they are only found in outdated hardware and there seems to be no way to wire them into the modern Apple Laptops instead of the new flashy Airport Extreme Card. This card is based on the Broadcom chip, which is not supported by the kernel. Reverse Engineering is in progress, but it may still take some time, before a Linux driver will become available. The Airport Extreme Cards are allegedly mini-pci cards, but the hardware interface in of the Apple Airport Extreme card is completely different from the one used in other mini-pci cards (such as http://www.zdnet.de/i/mb/notebooks/2005/06/mini-pci/intel-2100-802.11b-karte.jpg). This makes it impossible to replace the Airport Extreme with another wlan card that would be supported by Linux. It is likely, that the Apple Airport Extreme is the only card, that actually physically fits into modern Apple Laptops.

The Airport Extreme theoretically supports speeds up to 100mbit, the external antenna (it is of course built in the laptop - in the left side of the lid IIRC, but not into the card) provides a very good connection. I have compared it with the D-Link DWL-122 USB Adapter and it is by far superior. The card can, however, not be put into passive mode. I do not know whether this restriction is in the hardware or just in the Apple driver. AFAIK this means you cannot monitor traffic on a wireless network. 

What I would like to know, is whether the battery lives longer, if I remove the AEX card?

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## pau

Well... it seems that there are good news!

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-365647.html

Another linux wonder...   :Very Happy: 

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## the_mgt

Hi!

I am using a Sony Vaio PCG-SRX41P. It is old by todays standards, but the parts are all known brands with fine working drivers on linux. These Sony Subnotebooks come with lan, wlan,bt. Mine has no cd/dvd drives but thats no problem for me. (I have to say the i810 graphic card sucks a little... but newer laptops have better ones)

And with the laptop_script running it makes no sound at all most of the time. The fan is very quiet, too.

Weight is about 1,3 kg.

So, have a look at the latest sony models, i didn't check them but they are worth a try. Especially when you don't have to worry about money. I was lucky and got an exposition piece, so i saved lots of money.

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## pau

After doing a bit of research, I found out that a lot of people are having problems when conneting the ibm thinkpad x41 to an external screen... somehow, the intel graphics card seems not to achieve a resolution above 1024x768 and the result is an ugly pixelized thing... On the other hand, the ibm is not that quiet... I've read a lot of posts by people and it's a kind of lottery... If you're lucky, then it'll quiet... otherwise... fan, harddisk etc may be a source of noise...

So I chose the powerbook 12" with 100GB and ~1.5GB RAM, which is rather light and extremely quiet... I saw also in the powerbook forum that now airport is supported... or partially, so I will give gentoo a chance and install it on the box...

Thanks

Pau

PS: BTW, did you know that apple will switch to intel from next year onwards?!?!? Either this is a very intelligent commercial thing or I don't understand it... in any case it's very risky... People may end up installing windows on their boxes because they're used to...

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## alhambra

hi,

i'm searching for a light weight laptop (about 2 kg) which i want to use for school/studying.

i want to use gentoo, so it should be hardware which works with linux.

i like these vaio laptops or the apple ibook G4.

so could you give me some expereance you made? and do you recommend a ibook for running linux?

thx

alhambra

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## Epyon

I have issues with sound and the wireless card on my ibook.

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## otake-tux

mine isnt light. but i did manage get everything configured for my laptop.  its a compaq presario 2500.  right now its not working right because I messed it up but I did have everything working at one point.

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## Voltago

Lenovo Thinkpad T43. OK, it isn't a subnotebook, but comes pretty close  :Wink: 

Weight: 2.3 kg with 1024x764er display, 2.6 kg with 1400x1050er display. All hardware is supported, even the fingerprint scanner works (but still needs more application support). Not the cheapest laptop around though. Stay clear of Sony. These VAIO things are garbage.Last edited by Voltago on Sat Nov 19, 2005 9:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Archangel1

I've got a Dell Latitude X1, 99% of everything works on it.

It weighs something like 1.1kg so may be a tad lighter than you were thinking of  :Smile: 

I ended up passing on the Vaios - one or two models were quite nice, but they seem to mostly be about form over function. They don't work terribly well under Linux from what I've heard.

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## alhambra

thx for your expereance,

the thinkpad T43 is nice but it's a bit costly for me   :Rolling Eyes: 

i also looked for the dell x1, but i have some antipathy for intel

but is there realy a chance to get a laptop without an intel cpu?

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## gwion

i am rather happy with my acer travelmate 380. i did not bother to work on the modem and bluetooth connection but apart from that everythings works without any problems. the weight is about 1,5 kg so it is rather light. also the price is not bad (was about 1250  in may).

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## bLaXe

I have a ThinkPad T42 which works flawlessly with Gentoo. They're a bit cheaper than the T43 (obviously) but still quite capable.

I'll second the comments about Vaios - they are indeed a bit crap. They look nice, but the seem over priced to me. It seems like you're paying extra 'because it's a vaio'.

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## Archangel1

 *alhambra wrote:*   

> thx for your expereance,
> 
> the thinkpad T43 is nice but it's a bit costly for me  
> 
> i also looked for the dell x1, but i have some antipathy for intel
> ...

 

AMD now have a chip called a Turion, which is meant to be sort of similar to a pentium-M.

From what I've heard they're not quite there yet though (correct me if I'm wrong there...).

I know what you mean about intel, but the pentium-M's are nice chips; they perform very much more like an Athlon in regard to clock speed, and draw bugger all power. Intel's got an enormous market share in laptops - much more than it does in desktops - and there's been a good reason for that.

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## rebach

Days are getting warmer and I'd like to spend more time outside, so I'm looking for a sub-notebook with:

- A good battery

- A screen with enough contrast to work even where there is some sun

- "Ready for Gentoo"

I was looking at the Sony Vaio VGN-TX5XN/B.SW and the ASUS U1F-1P0003E, for neither of those I found reports on successful Linux installation. Does anyone has a recommendation for an ultra-portable gentoo-machine?

cheers,

reto

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## Roman_Gruber

ill go for a magnesium notebook, or mil standard notebook, they are proven to work with sunlight, like: solidbook or RANGER 1500-T

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## rebach

Both laptops look quite impressive. Just I was thinking to get something lighter, say less than 1.5 Kg,

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## darkn0th

 *rebach wrote:*   

> Days are getting warmer and I'd like to spend more time outside, so I'm looking for a sub-notebook with:
> 
> - A good battery
> 
> - A screen with enough contrast to work even where there is some sun
> ...

 

I've got a VGN-TX1XP/B and the only difference with a TX5 is the hard disk size. These laptops install perfectly under gentoo, suspend to ram/disk works, everything but the winmodem is recognized and functional, and they have huge autonomy ( 7 hours without wlan, and with the extended battery, 10 hours with wlan!). The weight is great but working out in the sun may be a problem even with brightness at setting 8 (using the sony-acpi kernel module).

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