[gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[qfpvajdy]

Hello,



first thanks all for your great support on Gentoo Linux.

I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to install Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions of the laptop for which I have bought.



Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine with Linux?

I don't want to have trouble with wireless, webcam or this kind of stuff.

Is there maybe a laptop hardware constructor which supports 100% Linux on laptop?



Best regards,

saf
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RE: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: qfpvajdy [mailto:qfpvajdy@trashmail.net]
> Sent: 05 January 2007 12:47
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo 
> GNU/Linux?
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> first thanks all for your great support on Gentoo Linux.
> I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to 
> install Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions 
> of the laptop for which I have bought.
> 
> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works 
> fine with Linux?
> I don't want to have trouble with wireless, webcam or this 
> kind of stuff.
> Is there maybe a laptop hardware constructor which supports 
> 100% Linux on laptop?
> 
> Best regards,
> saf
> -- 

Hi

Check the Gentoo Wiki Hardware section as it lists many of the common
laptop brands and models that have been known to work with Linux.

In general as far as I am aware nVidia video cards work better in Linux
than ATi ones, and you might want to avoid anything too brand new if you
are worried about hardware support? I'm not entirely sure.

I currently have a HP DV8000 series laptop: the nVidia graphics work
great (I play UT2k4 on it in Linux), the Intel HD Audio works well (as
long as you use the userspace drivers - the kernel drivers dont seem to
work so well, and result in quite poor sound sometimes IMO). The
wireless is Intel ipw3945 and works great once set up according to the
instructions in the gentoo wiki.

I'd find a laptop you like and start searching for information about the
various bits of hardware to see if they will work.

Cheers,

David

PS There is a gentoo-laptop list as well... :>

Note: These views are my own, advice is provided with no guarantee of
success. I do not represent anyone else in any emails I send to this
list.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Michal 'vorner' Vaner]

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Hello,

On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 01:46:32PM +0100, qfpvajdy wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> first thanks all for your great support on Gentoo Linux.
> I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to install Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions of the laptop for which I have bought.

I have Dell Latitude D510, and I made work anything I had opportunity to
test. I did not test infrared and docking. I have the version with intel
WiFi card.

AFAIK this exact model is not sold any more, but something similar enough
should be.

-- 
Michal "vorner" Vaner
==
This email has been checked by an automatic damage possibility check system.
It can contain harmful instructions if read backwards.
Internal checker ID: lacol.cr/cte/ << tlah ohce

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[gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-01-05, qfpvajdy <qfpvajdy@trashmail.net> wrote:

> I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to
> install Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions
> of the laptop for which I have bought.

I've got an IBM R52, and everything works fine -- including
wireless and the winmodem. I haven't tried bluetooth yet, but
I've read that it works.

> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine
> with Linux?

http://tuxmobil.org/
http://www.linux-laptop.net/

> I don't want to have trouble with wireless, webcam or this
> kind of stuff.
>
> Is there maybe a laptop hardware constructor which supports
> 100% Linux on laptop?

http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://system76.com/index.php/cPath/1
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Yow! Are we wet yet?
                                  at               
                               visi.com            

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[gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[James]

qfpvajdy <qfpvajdy <at> trashmail.net> writes:


> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine with Linux?

Before I purchased my HP pavilion (amd64) I took a liveCD to the 
store and just booted it up and got everything working, right
in the store. If you cannot find all of the device drivers,
take a usb flash and copy  the results of lscpi, lshw, etc
onto the flash device. Copy any other files/data  information
about the hardware, so you can research the linux compatibility options,
remotely.

Several trips might be necessary to get everything working....

hth,

James

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Cliff Wells]

James wrote:
> qfpvajdy <qfpvajdy <at> trashmail.net> writes:
> 
> 
>> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine with Linux?
> 
> Before I purchased my HP pavilion (amd64) I took a liveCD to the 
> store and just booted it up and got everything working, right
> in the store. If you cannot find all of the device drivers,
> take a usb flash and copy  the results of lscpi, lshw, etc
> onto the flash device. Copy any other files/data  information
> about the hardware, so you can research the linux compatibility options,
> remotely.
> 
> Several trips might be necessary to get everything working....

That sounds like a good suggestion.  I've got a Toshiba Tecra that I 
love.  I'd recommend against ATI video (Nvidia and Intel seem to work 
much more reliably [read: at all] with the new XGL stuff, if you care 
about that).

Regards,
Cliff

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Shawn Singh]

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I've got an IBM Thinkpad  Z60m and Thinkpad A21p on which Linux works great
(The A21p is running Gentoo 2006.0, and the Z60m is running Gentoo 2006.1).

On 1/5/07, Cliff Wells <cliff@develix.com> wrote:
>
> James wrote:
> > qfpvajdy <qfpvajdy <at> trashmail.net> writes:
> >
> >
> >> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine with
> Linux?
> >
> > Before I purchased my HP pavilion (amd64) I took a liveCD to the
> > store and just booted it up and got everything working, right
> > in the store. If you cannot find all of the device drivers,
> > take a usb flash and copy  the results of lscpi, lshw, etc
> > onto the flash device. Copy any other files/data  information
> > about the hardware, so you can research the linux compatibility options,
> > remotely.
> >
> > Several trips might be necessary to get everything working....
>
> That sounds like a good suggestion.  I've got a Toshiba Tecra that I
> love.  I'd recommend against ATI video (Nvidia and Intel seem to work
> much more reliably [read: at all] with the new XGL stuff, if you care
> about that).
>
> Regards,
> Cliff
>
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>


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[gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[»Q«]

qfpvajdy <qfpvajdy@trashmail.net> wrote:

> I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to install
> Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions of the laptop
> for which I have bought.

I've just installed Gentoo on a Sony VAIO VGN-FS740, and I recommend
against it.  Almost everything in it is well-supported, but one of the
most important things is a PiTA.  Sony uses some unusual system to
handle power management, and there are things the drivers available
with the kernel will not handle.  Most notably, I could not get control
of LCD brightness without installing a driver which is (a) not in
portage and (b) AFAICT not in most distros' repositories.  If someone
hadn't published a portage overlay for it, I would still be struggling
with it.  From what I've read (which was a lot more than I wanted to,
this is the situation with most (all?) of Sony's FS models.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[7v5w7go9ub0o]

On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 23:49:48 -0500, »Q« <boxcars@gmx.net> wrote:

> qfpvajdy <qfpvajdy@trashmail.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to install
>> Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions of the laptop
>> for which I have bought.
>
> I've just installed Gentoo on a Sony VAIO VGN-FS740, and I recommend
> against it.  Almost everything in it is well-supported, but one of the
> most important things is a PiTA.  Sony uses some unusual system to
> handle power management, and there are things the drivers available
> with the kernel will not handle.  Most notably, I could not get control
> of LCD brightness without installing a driver which is (a) not in
> portage and (b) AFAICT not in most distros' repositories.  If someone
> hadn't published a portage overlay for it, I would still be struggling
> with it.  From what I've read (which was a lot more than I wanted to,
> this is the situation with most (all?) of Sony's FS models.

Think that this is exactly right.

However, I wouldn't limit my laptop selection to one that is 100%  
Gentooable.

e.g. I went with Sony (their smallest) and would do so again, because  
small size, light weight, and high-quality display (necessary on a tiny  
box) were so important. As you indicated, it was a PITA; Lot of stuff  
still doesn't work :-( , but it's light enough (2.7 lbs) and small enought  
that I stick it in the backpack and don't resent it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Daniel Barkalow]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007, qfpvajdy wrote:

> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine with Linux?

I've got almost everything working on my Lenovo 3000-N100 0768-36U. I 
haven't played too much with suspending, and I haven't got the last detail 
working on the software modem (slmodemd is using an audio format not 
supported by my codec).

When I bought the machine in September, there were a bunch of things not 
yet supported, or only supported in testing versions that are now stable.

> I don't want to have trouble with wireless, webcam or this kind of stuff.

ipw3945 is well supported (except that it's not on the install CD, so you 
need ethernet to install it). I didn't get a webcam.

You should probably also specify what features you want, rather than that 
you just want all of the features to be supported; I haven't used the 
firewire on mine at all, despite the fact that it reportedly works, and 
I've got a "Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843" that will never have Linux 
support because it doesn't actually do anything at all (it's the 
placeholder device for a 4-device-in-1-chip, where the 4 devices pretend 
to be various single device Ricoh chips and appear as 4 more devices).

	-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*
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RE: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Barkalow [mailto:barkalow@iabervon.org]
> Sent: 06 January 2007 07:02
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo
> GNU/Linux?
> 
> 
> I've got a "Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843" that will never 
> have Linux 
> support because it doesn't actually do anything at all (it's the 
> placeholder device for a 4-device-in-1-chip, where the 4 
> devices pretend 
> to be various single device Ricoh chips and appear as 4 more devices).
> 
> 	-Daniel
> *This .sig left intentionally blank*
> -- 

I would add that I haven't got my SD card reader on my HP DV8000 series
to work in Linux. Then again I haven't tried very hard, and I have an
external USB one that I got for a few quid (~$5-6?) off the net which
works like a dream.

David
Note: These views are my own, advice is provided with no guarantee of
success. I do not represent anyone else in any emails I send to this
list.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Richard Fish]

On 1/8/07, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) <David.Nelson2@astrazeneca.com> wrote:
> I would add that I haven't got my SD card reader on my HP DV8000 series
> to work in Linux.

Last time I investigated this for my Dell, built-in media readers
unusable under Linux on all laptops, as they are all made by Ricoh,
who refuses to release any programming specs to allow someone to make
a driver.  We need some competition on this component I think...

-Richard
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RE: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: richard.j.fish@gmail.com [mailto:richard.j.fish@gmail.com]On
> Behalf Of Richard Fish
> Sent: 08 January 2007 17:32
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo
> GNU/Linux?
> 
> 
> On 1/8/07, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) 
> <David.Nelson2@astrazeneca.com> wrote:
> > I would add that I haven't got my SD card reader on my HP 
> DV8000 series
> > to work in Linux.
> 
> Last time I investigated this for my Dell, built-in media readers
> unusable under Linux on all laptops, as they are all made by Ricoh,
> who refuses to release any programming specs to allow someone to make
> a driver.  We need some competition on this component I think...
> 
> -Richard

A quick bit of Googling yields:
http://www.leenooks.com/Ricoh+Co+Ltd+R5C8xx+SD%252fMMC%252fMS%252fMSPro%252fxD%252fSC+Card+reader

Looks like there is partial support for the SD/MMC aspect of these. I'll maybe give it a shot when I get home tonight :)

David
Note: These views are my own, advice is provided with no guarantee of success. I do not represent anyone else in any emails I send to this list.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Richard Fish]

On 1/8/07, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) <David.Nelson2@astrazeneca.com> wrote:
> A quick bit of Googling yields:
> http://www.leenooks.com/Ricoh+Co+Ltd+R5C8xx+SD%252fMMC%252fMS%252fMSPro%252fxD%252fSC+Card+reader
>
> Looks like there is partial support for the SD/MMC aspect of these. I'll maybe give it a shot when I get home tonight :)

Interesting.  The last time I looked was around April '06, and the
outlook didn't look good at that time.  Nice to know things have
improved here.

-Richard
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Re: [gentoo-user] Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Daniel Barkalow]

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Richard Fish wrote:

> On 1/8/07, Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D) <David.Nelson2@astrazeneca.com> wrote:
> > I would add that I haven't got my SD card reader on my HP DV8000 series
> > to work in Linux.
> 
> Last time I investigated this for my Dell, built-in media readers
> unusable under Linux on all laptops, as they are all made by Ricoh,
> who refuses to release any programming specs to allow someone to make
> a driver.  We need some competition on this component I think...

The Ricoh SD card reader on my laptop works fine with the sdhci driver. 
The only oddity is that the mmc-block driver doesn't have sysfs support, 
so udev doesn't create the device nodes. As far as I can tell, Ricoh 
doesn't release programming specs, but they seem to make devices that 
don't need vendor-specific drivers when possible. So we don't find out 
about their errata, but they may well never actually notice the quirks in 
the first place.

	-Daniel
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[gentoo-user] Re: Which Laptop is recommended for Gentoo GNU/Linux?

[Christian Marie]

If you're looking for an ultra-portable, take a look at the Thinkpad
X60s. I've gotten everything to work on it, aside from the modem which I
haven't tested. It's also one of the best ultra-portables on the market.
In general, most hardware will work fine on Thinkpads. If in doubt:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/

On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 01:46:32PM +0100, qfpvajdy wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> first thanks all for your great support on Gentoo Linux.
> I'm interessted to buy a laptop on which I would like to install Gentoo GNU/Linux by using 100% all hardware functions of the laptop for which I have bought.
> 
> Does somebody know a model of a laptop on which all works fine with Linux?
> I don't want to have trouble with wireless, webcam or this kind of stuff.
> Is there maybe a laptop hardware constructor which supports 100% Linux on laptop?
> 
> Best regards,
> saf
> -- 
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> Free disposable email addresses: http://www.trashmail.net/
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