As you're asking about a specific hardware combination, I'll simply second what David and others have said.
However, for the thread, I'll add two items. 1) Ubuntu. In general "it just works". The last three systems I have installed it on worked "out of the box". Even the cute little "internet shortcut keys" and volume keys on my Acer were recognized. (Not looking to start a religious war here. Just saying that I've been very happy with how well Ubuntu works out of the box.) 2) If you haven't already picked out a piece of hardware, keep in mind that some vendors sell notebooks with Linux pre-installed. I'm not suggesting you purchase one in this configuration as they're usually as much or more expensive than the same hardware with a u$oft OS pre-installed. (Very sad.) However, this is a strong indicator that there is very good Linux support for a specific hardware configuration. - Paul Beltrani On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 10:43 AM, David Allan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, Daniel Feenberg wrote: > > > > > > > On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, David Allan wrote: > > > >> On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, Daniel Feenberg wrote: > >> > >>> > >>> > >>> On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, David Allan wrote: > >>> > >>>> Having run Linux on laptops for a decade there's only one strategy > that > >>>> has worked reliably for me, and it results in very, very stable > operation: > >>>> > >>>> Go through every hardware component and make sure that it has support > in > >>>> the kernel.org kernel. In particular, you are interested in wireless > >>>> network support and video support. You will no doubt be able to make > >>> > >>> HOw do you find out what the components are? Only the processor and > >>> (sometimes) the video are mentioned in sales literature I see. Is there > a > >>> website with information about wifi, ethernet and ACPI? > >> > >> The manufacturer's website will usually have the full specs, and you > have to > >> make sure that there aren't options for different cards. I won't buy a > > > > "will usually"? Can you give an example of a URL that points to such a > > paragon of information? When I go to a vendors website I get something > > like this: http://tinyurl.com/ykjwwgc [hp.com - click on "specs"] which > > gives the processor and video types, but characterizes wi-fi only as G or > > N and gives no information about ethernet or ACPI. I have never seen any > > more than that from any vendor, cheap or expensive, but if there were a > > way to get more information, I'd like to know it. > > First, I'm not saying that the research you have to do is either fun or > easy, just that I'd rather put in the research pain at purchase time than > at some later time that I don't control. > > Having said all that, to your point about the HP, HP's lack of specs is > seriously annoying, but that machine AFAIK is a home-user model, and I > haven't had a lot of good luck with that price-point from any vendor under > any OS. They can't really expect business users to buy a machine without > the card model. How could you manage a fleet of those things under any > OS? > > However, if you were really dying to get that particular machine, they do > say that you have an option for an "Intel wireless N mini card", which is > very, very likely to work on any modern distro, so I'd feel quite > comfortable buying that model as long as I was planning on running a > recent Fedora or Ubuntu. Centos runs a bit behind the edge by design, so > that's a trickier research project. You might want to look for a slightly > older laptop in that case, or a business model with long term support > where you can get an older card. > > HP does give the exact model of cards on their business class machines: > > > http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-3929941-3955552-4021356.html > > Which offers the Intel 5100. You can confirm that it's an in-kernel > driver at: > > http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers > > Looking for an A/B/G/N Intel card, I clicked on iwlagn, which took me to: > > http://intellinuxwireless.org/ > > which confirms that, "After 2.6.26 the intree driver iwlagn also supports > the new 5100BG, 5100ABG, 5100AGN, 5300AGN, 5350AGN, 5150AGN, 1000BGN, and > 6000AGN series" > > so you should be good to go out of the box with pretty much any modern > distro. > > Fedora has some pretty strict standards about what they will ship, which > correspond closely to what I'm suggesting, so I find that anything > supported under Fedora is likely to work reliably under any modern distro. > > There's more info at: > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ#Is_my_hardware_compatible_with_Fedora.3F > > Also, Fedora has an opt-in, anonymous hardware data reporting service > called smolt, and you can see the results here of what people are actually > running on: > > http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/ > > Smolt also confirms that a lot of people are running the 5100 out of the > box under Fedora. > > For more manufacturers who provide specs, see also: > > http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/notebooks/laptop_latitude_e5500/pd.aspx?refid=laptop_latitude_e5500&s=bsd&cs=04 > > http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087¤t-category-id=19C791A03AF24034A0011B825513BCED&tabname=TechSpecs#tabstart > > Like I said, it's not fun, interesting or easy, but it's a methodology > that gets me a stable development machine year after year. Having fought > with out-of-tree drivers on one card and witnessed the pain others around > me have had with binary drivers, I'm pretty happy with it. > > Dave > > _______________________________________________ > bblisa mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa >
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