afternoon. i'm about to get a new laptop. comes new without an operating system.
at the moment i run an old xp system and i have a mini mac. The new laptop i want to run purely on a linux based system, i'm not bothered which version as i dont' know any better any personal oppinons?

it'll be used mainly for uni stuff, wirelessly. number crunching and typing mainly and general day to day stuff. my Mac will be used for photos and tunes/video stuff.

where would you guys suggest i begin apart from obvioulsy doing alot of reading. is there any systems or programs that i shouldn't be without? i've noticed on there forums alot of questions regarding setting up wifi and the problems it causes does anyone spot any major probs with this project. i hope to switch to mac and linux exclusively by the end of the year.

here are some specs

INTEL® Core 2 Duo T7100 (2 X 1.80GHz) 800MHz FSB/2MB L2 Cache
2048 MB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS
INTEGRATED BLUETOOTH ADAPTER
80GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5400rpm)
8x DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
128MB (SMA) INTEL GM965 + D-SUB + TV-OUT
Realtek ALC268 2 Channel High Definition Audio + SPIDIF OUT
Onboard LAN & WIRELESS 802.11G NETWORK CARD
INTERNAL 3 IN 1 MEMORY CARD READER (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO)
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
2 x 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

A willing student.

Hi,

It's probably best trying a live CD version of Linux first to give you an idea of how the hardware works on your (soon to be purchased?) laptop. You can try Knoppix or Ubuntu to see where your are at.

I understand that some internal card readers can be problematic currently.

Good luck

Nice place Plymouth, fell in the sea there once on the Hoe when I was a young monkey.

I use Abiword for my papers, it's more lightweight than OpenOffice and offers all the general formatting needed. But most distros offer a way to download extra software effortlessly. If you're new to linux then I'd recommend Ubuntu or SUSE. Both are very newbie friendly.

Cheers guys. yes its a soon to be purchased laptop. hopefully to be up and running by early sept. i'm a linux newbie yes so this is a very big step to take although i'll still have my other units to do uni work on should the worst scenario happen.

looking forward to being able to actually use a system as opposed to being told by a system what i can do.

Where did you get a laptop without an OS? And for how much?

off the web a custom build company http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk the specs i put up there works out to be about £660 inc vat.

Did you (or anyone) get one from this company? Was wondering how good they are and how good their customer service is.

not yet still in deliberation until funds have cleared might instead go with the dell with ubuntu pre loaded at least that way i know all the devices work. all i need to do then is buy a 512mb system and buy 2x1gb chips from dabs will save bout £90

I did a bit of surfing round and found a lot of bad reports on them. I've sent emails out to a couple of other companies that do barebones systems to see whether they'll sell without Windows. I used to deal with one of them (CMS in Liverpool) and I know they're excellent.

Ill have to look them up. getting a system without windows or just without an OS is practically impossible. or if they give you one they still put the vista license in the price anyway and just delete it