On Thursday 08 July 2004 18:30, JM Ibanez wrote: > Who here runs Linux on their laptops?
I've used linux on quite a few laptops, ranging from a toshiba something with only 48MB of RAM, to two or three different thinkpads, to two different Dell laptops to my current WinBook P4 with 512MB (all this hardware, issued by my office, unfortunately, i don't own any of them :(. i used to run slackware and redhat, but that was before i used mandrake. lately, ease of use and management in mandrake keep me loyal. generally, mandrake runs on anything i've tried it on. problems lang with some soundcards and wifi cards (but this was when wifi was new and i spent weeks trying to find some setup that would work, now, wifi is pretty standard and easy to setup). > * Hardware support issues - What hardware doesn't work? i've never worked hard at getting the winmodems to work. basically, i gave up on them and just used external modems or PCMCIA modems. PCMCIA modems are nice, but i prefer my Diamond Supra USB external. more rugged. i've seen too many PCMCIA modems slowly deteriorate as the jack gets slowly damaged by continuous use. i also prefer for the lan slot to be built into the modem, same reason. > Since I'm looking into a second-hand machine, in general, how > difficult is it to look for parts? i don't know. memory and hard drive are pretty much the only user replaceable parts apart from PCMCIA and USB devices (which are pretty easy to come by and pretty standard and well supported). memory is probably the biggest problem. laptops that use SDRAM (like this winbook, and the desknotes, i think) are cool because upgrading memory is easy and cheap. no jumping through hoops to find somewhere that has the right brand of memory compatible with your laptop. > * Is a Linux laptop suggestable? works for me. the only problems, really, are: chikka, and windows specific games. if those aren't a problem, then linux laptops are fine. > * Distro - I'm leaning towards Debian and Slackware, but if you've run > RH or MDK on a laptop, please share your experiences i like mandrake. easy to manage. every new version works better than the last (with respect to device support, e.g., my soundcard was hard to configure with mandrake 9.2, i had to steal the sound config from knoppix to get it working on 9.2, on mandrake 10 it was automatically supported). i don't have any experience with any of the other distributions though. i've used slackware and redhat since they came on floppies, but when i used mandrake 8.0 i never looked back. generally, as you say, the laptop experience is pretty much the same as the desktop. the main problems lang are winmodems, proprietary memory, and i feel that some hard drives are slower than hard drives of similar size and brand name on desktops. good luck. tiger -- Gerald Timothy Quimpo [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bopolissimus.sni.ph Public Key: "gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 672F4C78" There is no patch for stupidity. http://www.sqlsecurity.com/main.asp -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
