The higher end of the Thinkpad line (T & W) remain quite solid on Linux.
No real issues of late on them by folks here in the LTC at IBM in
Poughkeepsie. I can't speak about the rest of their line from direct
experience.
The X series is basically the same as the T/W, but in a slimmer case, with a
smaller screen/battery and generally slower clocked CPUs.
I'd think that pretty much all laptops have good Linux compatibility.
Ralink/Atheros drivers seem fairly stable, though some of the brand new
chips can be problematic sometimes (though they're usually on mini-pcie and
not difficult to change).
One of the only things you have to look out for is the wireless stuff. Most
of them have Intel graphics for those of you who insist on open source.
On 02/03/2011 03:50 PM, Anthony Acquanita wrote:
I've seen system76, zareason and the Thinkpads. Am I missing
anything? Anyone built a recent laptop with linux and can recommend
one?
Right now I'm leaning towards the systems76, either the Lumar or the
Pangolin.
Thanks.
I'd try to stick to business laptops (my personal preference are Thinkpads,
but then again I try to stay away from laptops, and only just got my first
used Lenovo as a personal machine). Most of the consumer laptops are pure
garbage. Junk hinges, screens, lots of flexing, or just crappy keyboards.
Are you looking for something new?
The IdeaPads should be OK as far as compatibility, but are nowhere near the
quality of a Thinkpad. If you're going to look at laptops, just make note of
what wireless card they use. Shouldn't have to worry about system chipsets
at all, and all the graphics options are well supported. Everyone uses an
Intel HighDefAudio sound option, which is well supported under Linux. Just
about every SATA controller is now AHCI, which is well supported under
Linux.
Much as I love AMD, my preference for graphics is nVidia > Intel > AMD for
Linux applications. At least last time I use the frglx driver.. it was
terrible. It caused crashes. The open-source AMD GPU driver does not support
newer GPUs last I checked. The ones it does support it gives fairly terrible
performance on. You can't ask much from Intel integrated graphics as far as
performance, but if you don't intend on doing anything even close to
intensive this is a non-issue. Everything past the i965/3100HD graphics does
some video decode offloading for modern codecs if that's important to you.
The nVidia binaries are pretty good (I've never had a problem with them),
but if you're opposed to the binaries for some philosophical reason, you're
probably better off with Intel graphics.
I just went with a used Thinkpad (T61, getting a T61P too), it was cheap,
and I know *I* don't need a laptop to be fast. If you go with something a
couple years old, there's a good chance that it will have a stable driver
package. I didn't even have to think about setting anything up when I
installed Slackware on it. Wireless, laptop function keys, etc just worked
out of the box.. and that's Slackware!
-Frank
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