I've a Dell 600m and, yes... next laptop won't be this brand. It works great in Windows (ok, ok... as good as it could be in Windows), but only "well" in Linux (i got wireless working!). More than this, my harddisk died after 1 year, not to mention the electricity connection and the extra keys for sound).

Anyway, you could try http://www.linux-laptop.net/ to have some information on specific models.

PiRaNhA.be

To get rid of that stupid Celeron Problem... you can simply buy a PIIIM chip and do the swap urself... That's one of the largest misconseptions about laptops today is that you cant MOD them. Well anything but a complete MOBO mod can be done on a laptop. Check out intel's website or do some research elsewhere to find out the socket/slot connection for ur processor, and then go to Pricewatch.com or ebay.com and grab a processor and heatsink there, and do the swap at home...

You'll spend a few hundred bucks but will get a way better piece of hardware...

Just a suggestion.

- NeRMaTriX





P.S. You could also look at getting a high cap battery, so you could watch a movie of 2 hours without having to plug in... Again just suggestions do as you will...

ok guys, I took everyones comments into account and ordered a Toshibs M30X ,
it should be here late this week or early next week, I am gonna try to put SUSE 9.2 on it (probably be back on here solving something) and I'll post how I like it after I get it all LINUXed up.
p.s.
any experiances/advise about the suse install, i've never used suse. i wanna try to do the live internet install thing, and also dual boot (win xp) w/ a fat 32 partition for sharing files between OSes (partition magic?)

Let the installer create the Linux partition for you, and format it in XFS - that's the only option if you want to have 2GB+ files.
It's very stable and quick, especially for big files.
I advise you to look into software that Yast installs for you.
And, hopefully, you did order your laptop with an NVidia gfx, didn't you? If not, your 3D support will be poor (although ATI drivers have been GREATLY improved, but NVidia drivers are still the best )

Just a small remark. In http://elibrary.fultus.com/technical...n/ch20s04.html it reads that there is not 2Gb limitation with ReiserFS or ext2 or ext3 or JFS...

Ok, maybe ext3 doesn't have this limit more, but ReiserFS still does have the 4GB limit, and it's the default option when you install Suse, and it's somewhat unstable (after a cold reboot, GRUB will load 2 minutes and recovery will take some time, too) And XFS is way faster than Ext3. So my choise was XFS.

3 things (keep in mind, I was a purely MS untill not to long ago):

1: The laptop I wanted only came w/ ATI, so I geuss I'll deal w/ it.

2: I didn't know much about the file systems so that was very uselfull information, but I think I also need to make a FAT32 partition for sharing files w/ windows (do I have this right?) I don't think the Linux installer will do this for me (at least I don't remember the Mandrake installer giving me that option) (i can't really share files between Windows and linux on the computer I am using right now), anyway, how should I go about that, should I use a program like partition magic, or just use windows to make the FAT32, and should I do that before I install LINUX, or will there be some advantage to resizing a partition later, or just leave room to make it later. I geuss I need a step by step order of operations (sorry if I'm the dumb guy w/ the dumb question).

3. I never really got the wireless on this computer to work in linux (D-link DWL122) I messed w/ Ndiswrapper and some other stuff and eventualy ran a cable accross the floor out of laziness. The laptop says it has ATHEROS wireless, any suggestions?

Total n00b here, but i just installed Novell Suse 9.1 to a Dell C840 and everything worked out of the box.

good to know! wireless to? wireless is what i'm worried about. did you happen to use the live install where u just download enough to boot into a utility that downloads the rest while you instsll? I have heard that sometimes the utility can't find the IP address, but I don't have the disk space right now to download that whole DVD image. I wish they had CD images.

My Dell C840 doesn't have built-in wireless, but I do use a SMC 2632W v3 PCMCIA card - that did not work out of the box. I d/l'd the atmel WLAN drivers from Sourceforge, built the pcmcia packages and made the appropriate changes to .conf files and used YaST to set my WiFi settings.

I didn't do the live install - I had ordered the Novell/Suse 9.1 Resource Kit they were giving away about a year ago. That's what I used to install. I had used YaST to start an update session manually, but just told it to d/l & install everything that was outdated. Then, I got called away from the laptop for a few hours - when I returned I saw that YaST had finished. I re-booted and WiFi no longer worked. So, I re-formatted/installed again and this time I've only used YaST to add things I know I want/need and that shouldn't mess with my WiFI (gcc tools, Nvidia drivers, games, etc).

So, long story, short is: Novell/Suse 9.1 auto-detected all the "out of the box" hardware on my Dell C840. WiFi took me 30 mins to get set up after I had d/l'd the drivers and read the instructions.

This probably a really wierd question, but someone told me that "suse doesn't like gnome." Is there any truth to this statement, does suse not work properly w/ gnome?

ATI? That's a pity But it's not a problem. You can install ATI drivers, too, and they will work, but probably not as good as nvidias. Atheros wireless cards DO have a native linux driver, I believe. Anyway, you'll see if Yast recognizes your card, then it's ok, if not, you'll have to use Ndis wrapper.

Suse 9.0& 9.1 didn't like Gnome, maybe, but 9.2 comes with Gnome and Gnome apps.