Not An Ibm R Series - They Claim Linux Compatibility But Do Not Believe Them!

Did you actually read the OP? He is buying a laptop, not a desktop system. I would never recommend a generic laptop; it is one occasion where you really do want to the quality of an established brand like an IBM, Toshiba, or HP.

I agree with you

Does anyone know how well hp notebooks jive with linux ... particularly their pavilion and business notebooks

I know, I know just google it .. i am just looking for some up to date personal experience feedback

gracias

dunno, do u mean HP Compaq or plain HP

plain HP as in the NX NC and DV series

Well, I have an hp dv5000 series... AMD 64, ATI 200m Xpress 128mb vm, 512 ddr. I really like the machine, It's solid, well put together in my opinion. As for "problems" w/ distros... I had no trouble installing Slackware, the 32 bit version /*it had some trouble w/ the sound device*/. Debian 64, I couldn't get to boot from cd, Slam64D I couldn't get to boot from cd. I didn't have any trouble w/ Gentoo 64.

Since Slackware was the distro I used, I am atm, settled on FreeBSD, I'm just having some sound trouble.

And Dell sucks. :P

Happy hunting.

I bought a rather generic laptop from cyberpower. It came with Win2k, but I partitioned the harddrive and installed Mepis. Dual boot using GrUB. It is a Centrino system, but I never got the internal wireless to work, not even with Windoze. My DLink AirPlus DWL-650 PCMCIA card works great. Display resolution runs at 1400x1050 on an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 using the fglrx driver. Anything I would normally use Windoze to do, I can make happen using Mepis. For some applications I have had to employ wine, but with recent development, wine is performing much better than it has in the past. The only complaints I have about this laptop is battery life when using linux. It is advertised to have 4 hours use on battery. I get just over an hour. I could probably recompile the kernel to take advantage of the power-save mode. Also, there is some flexing of the outer hull on the back of the LCD which is starting to show signs of rubbing between the LCD and keyboard when the unit is closed.
Overall, for the money, this a great little machine. It cost me just over $1100, including a pre-installed version of Win2k sp4. When I say this box is generic, I mean it was completely un-branded. Not even the documentation or the packaging pointed to a specific manufacturer. I finally discovered that the chassis is an AOpen. The shell is available for DIY types who want to have a go at building one. ABS sells it as a kit for 399.00 (US) plus shipping. Check the specs for what is included.
The best way to determine Linux compatibility is to check the HCLs here and at other sites. If you can get a specification listing of all the hardware, you should be able to determine for yourself whether it will fit your needs.

By personal experience Dell Latitud D600 with internal Wireless Intel NIC and Mandriva 2006 with Kernel 2.6.12-19mdk kick ass! Not a big fan of Dell systems but I have done it on tons of them and does works!

Im more of an AMD fan than a Intel fan, but in the mobile processor world, im Intel all the way. Id say you should use an Intel processor

Well, I bought an Acer Aspire 3000(cpu Sempron, graphcard SiS Mi720..)

I tried to install Debian Sarge 3.1r2 and everything gone well,but I noticed it didn't recognize my softmodem,since its kernel was 2.6.8,while some live distros,like mephis,which have 2.6.15, do, moreover grub showed me 2 pairs of Windows Xp, the effective oem system I found inside the notebook, and NT, the OEM recovery partition,it was very strange.

So I decided to try Ethc,but it gave my some problems with DVD burner(during the installation)and ,in the end, the X system didn't boot at login time.

Finally, I installed mephis,no problem, but I find it..."diminutive",too much maybe.

Now I'm thinking about:
-reinstalling Debian Sarge and picking kernel 2.6.15 image with deb packages
But...what about grub's errors?and would it be enough to install 2.6.15 with apt or I would risk to get some other issues?

-installing lots and lots of packages from deb repository inside actual mephis

-trying Yoper

-trying Ubuntu

which would you use?

My goal would be to find the best general purpose and free to adapt distro,as Debian would be, except for hardware difficulties...

I hope I was clear

thanks.

I would say:
Wireless: i think you should choose a laptop with an intel wifi chip
Modem: softmodems work perfectly if you manage to configure everything correctly, google for slmodem
Graphics: can't help you much, i only know that i915 work correctly (with hardware accel), only yuv12 doesn't work for now.
Processor: intel core duo if you can afford it, or a core mono, or a plain "old" centrino
Memory: over 512 Mb
PS: consider compiling your own kernel!
PPS: all the hardware in my toshiba m40x-118 (probably not sold anymore) works perfectly, ecxept for the 6in1 card reader (only SD works) and ACPI doesn't work properly (can't use suspend or hibernate, the screen won't wake up)

Hamtavs:
The softmodem can work with 2.6.8, if you use slmodemd (compile with "make install ALSA_SUPPORT=1" (don't need to do make by itself, since compiling is inside the install target too in the strange makefile)): it creates /dev/ttySL0 which itself sends data to your modem through alsa (softmodem = strange soundcard connected to phone line)