i know this issue has been addressed in the past but i need some help and i cant find it by searching. i found a few posts that were almost perfect but they were realy old.

im a high school senior and ill be going to college soon so i want to get a new laptop and a new distro. i want to know wich laptops are the most compatible with linux and wich distros are most compatible with laptops. ive been using linux on and off for about a year so i pretty much know the basics and how to get around but im not sure if i could set up something like gentoo. ive been useing mandrake 10.1 on an averatec 3650 and ive found it to be kind of bloated and incompatable with many generic programs, so i definitely want something other than mandrake/mandriva.

im hoping to major in graphic design and 3d modeling type stuff so i need a pretty good computer. it has to be a laptop because i like the portability. i want it realy small as well. about 10 or 12 inch screen and no thicker than about an inch. this means pretty much not a dell, gateway, or hp.

a few specs:

3 ghz processor
1 gb ram
1280x1024 screen res
6 hour bat life
cdrw/dvdrom (dvdrw if posible)
at least 3 usb
fire wire (if possible)

basicaly i want a supercomputer as far as notebooks go. ive been looking at IBM ThinkPads and the Falcon Northwest FragBooks.

can anyone help me out and make some suggestions.

With Gentoo, it is like this. If you can read, you can install it. They have written the install documentation, so that even I (not a n00b, but anyway, was back then :P) could install it the first time. But I recommend a broadband internet connection, otherwise things go slow when installing Gentoo. It can take up to a few days, to download and compile the stuff. But I really like the packaging manager called emerge. You just type in what you want and Gentoo installs it for you. Like emerge openoffice. And BAM in a couple of minutes, hours, days you have it installed. Time depends on the speed of your computer and internet connection.

Good luck!

IBM Thinkpads have a good reputation for Linux compatibility from what I read. My Thinkpad R51 runs Slackware 10.0 very happily.

I don't know of they make Thinkpads to the specs you want though. I think some of the Fujitsus get pretty high end; they certainly cost a lot!

Have you thought about something from Apple?

thanks for your help. i think ill try out gentoo and see if i like it.

as for the computer, im being kind of picky about this one. its got to last me about 5 or 6 years in college. it has to run the more high end programs like maya at a useable speed. and i dont want it tobe to out of date by the time i get through school. my comp now has lasted 3 years (barely) and is practicaly falling apart because of all the abuse.

i didnt see anything that realy worked for me with fujitsu. i realy like the look anf feel of thinkpads x and t series but the highest avalable processor is about 2 ghz. would it pe possible to get a notebook like that and just buy a new 4 ghz processor?

as for apple... i dont like 'em. i do like osx a little bit and they look good, but thats about as far as my love them goes. ive heard horror stories about putting a different os on a mac and i realy dont want to get into it. and, from my understanding, mac os takes less to run so the comps are less powerfull.

any other help and suggestions are much appreciated.

Typically you wont get the really fast processors in a notebook due to heat and battery life issues. They have to balance speed with having a battery last more than a few minutes. The faster/more powerful the processor the higher the power drain. And notebooks aren't known for great cooling as there is limited room for fans/air flow.

If you're going for a high power notebook I'd highly recommend a cooling pad.

I'd like to know how nenyo got linux installed on an Averatec notebook. I've tried several distros on my 3200 with no success. They refuse to recognize graphics and or monitor.

Okay, I have a few suggestions.

First, get a laptop that fits your needs. Make sure you go with a laptop that will fit your needs and notnessaerically get what's fastest at the time, but just what you need.

Secondly, get the notebook through you college. I got almost half off of my Thinkpad T42P because I went through Penn State.

I'll tell you, if you want the easiest distro to get working with a laptop, it's Mepis. If you want the best, in my opinion, it's slackware.

As per the best computers for supporting Linux, it's hands down got to be IBM thinkpads. I LOVE my T42P, and think it was 100% worth the money spent on it. I highly suggest them.

Laptops always have "heat problem" as already discussed.
I would set up "supercomputer" part at my home, (not laptop, even building cluster) then network to laptop. In this scenario, laptop needs good LCD (not resolution, but other spec, such as view angle, power ....) good LAN connection (g-wireless, GIGAbit... whatever)
6 hour battery is practically not easy when wireless is used even with PowerBook low CPU load (Macintosh OSX).

Linux Certified's LC2520 is a good fit for your orginal specs, but it's battery life kinda sucks, and has only 2 open usb ports...

Specs that I can remember off top my head from mine:

P4 3.2g HT processor
1gig ram upgradable to 2 gig
17" widescreen glossy lcd with wide veiwing angle
2 usb 2.0
flash card reader
cmos camera
40 gig hdd upgradeable
fullsize keyboard with numpad
serial port
lpt port
vga out
svideo out
3 audio jacks
hotbuttons that actually work (i believe thats an OS setting tho)
1394 unpowered port
RJ11/RJ45 ports
ati mobility radeon 9700 128mb
optional pcmcia wireless lan card, 802.11b/g

works great, though i had to send it back last week, a hardware flaw popped up, the sounds kinda crapped out and made staticy noises constantly... Batterylife is like trying to power your desktop with a battery, doenst work for long... Be warned that with most laptops, i believe, you will need to get the lastest drivers under windows to play high end games, and some like doom3 required a hacked version of the desktop drivers as well as an external monitor to play. I haven't had much of a chance to try to get it (d3) to work under linux... also note that with extra wide laptops, you will need to get a special backpack for it, as no one actually carries the targus x large backpacks in a store that i can tell, ordered mine straight from targus...

also, if you have to ship it, it may be pricey, its heavy, lists at ~9.5 pounds and wont fit in UPS's special laptop boxes, costing a fortune to ship if you let them pack it...

HTH

Scott McNeely

Nenyo:

Check out emperorlinux.com, hopefully they will have something that will fit your specs. A blurb from their site:
. From what I saw though, I didn't see something over 2 Ghz, but you may want to contact them directly and see if they can do something for you. A distro that a lot of gentoo'ers have liked as well is archlinux, which doesn't have the bloat of the more noob-centric distros and you don't have to compile everything and has a great package manager.

fair_is_fair:

I too have a 3200 series averatec. For out of the box functionality of everything (wireless and acpi battery/cooling and xorg) except suspend-to-ram (standby) and suspend-to-disk (hibernate) check out simplymepis. Kanotix does a great job with Averatec 3200 as well, though I can't remember if it did as much as mepis did (I have a feeling that it does). Also, I have posted a useable xorg.conf (must copy/paste) file that you can put on a floppy and just copy over anytime you want to try a distro that doesn't detect your graphics settings properly:

roshanm.blogspot.com

This sounds like the specs on my HP ZD8080US - you don't happen to be using an HP do you? I've run into an issue where it fails to recognize the full gig of ram I have in there. Reads as 896mb for some reason. Other than that everything is great on this laptop.

For the original poster, it wasn't super-small by any means, but I ran FC3 on a number of Dell laptops without a single issue. It sounds like you have some rather tight specs for what you want, but good luck finding something to fit your needs.

The LC2520 is a Clevo computer, a company out of taiwan... it seems most similiar in specs to the 870p IIRC, but a different mobo and colored case (again, IIRC, the one that clevo has on their site is black, not silver...)

The only thing that isnt recognized correctly anywhere seems to be the video card, which is deteced un FC3 as a 9600, but i think thats a driver thing...

The only experience i've had personally with a dell laptop is the one that my dad signed out from the air base, runs knoppix ok, light weight, and the thing i really like about that one that i couldn't seem to find any where is that little joystick thing in the middle of the keyboard, I like that better than the touch pad...

nenyo, you find a laptop thats right for you?

Scott McNeely

I have a machine that is roughly the same:

P4 3.4gHT processor
2 gig
17" widescreen glossy lcd with wide veiwing angle
2 usb 2.0
flash card reader
cmos camera
60 gig hdd (7200rpm) + 80 gig (5400rpm) both are Hitachi
fullsize keyboard with numpad
serial port
lpt port
vga out
svideo out
ac3 audio
1394 unpowered port
RJ11/RJ45 ports
ati mobility radeon 9700 256mb
integrated wireless lan card, 802.11b/g, bluetooth, infared

It is a VoodooPC M:780 http://www.voodoopc.com

I have tried many many different distros and none of them will run.

Evil Entity 0.2.5 will install but will not boot
SuSE 9.0 will install but will not boot properly (have access to xterm console)
FreeBSD 5.2 will boot to the installation but will not install properly
PhatLinux XP wont boot to the installation
Dyne:bolic 1.0 - 1.3 will not boot from the cd
Mandrake 10 will not boot from the cd

I've tried multiple times, and I know I am doing everything right. all the cd's work in regular desktops but will not at all take on my VoodooPC M:780


What else should I try?????????????????/

I'm not sure, mine came preinstalled, I think some things have been customized to get it to work... LC will install for you if you send it to them, IIRC, check their site...

Scott McNeely

I doubt a p4 will get 6hr battery life, the pentium m is better for this. Note the the pentium m 1.6ghz is equivalent to a 2.4ghz p4, so it is not that much slower. Same goes with amd processors (though i don't know about their battery life).