Hi,

I want to buy an new laptop, and I want it to run linux. But it's difficult to know if linux will work on it. If anyone can share their wisdom or experience in this matter I would greatly appreciate it.

The laptop I am considering is the HP Pavilion dv7-1130us.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834147792

I'm not totally committed to this model. I just need a decent laptop with a 17" screen for about $800 where the hardware works with linux.

I checked various hardware compatibility lists and this model isn't there. But those lists seem to only have really OLD laptops listed.

Can anyone confirm that this model laptop will work with linux--or will there be problems? Or if someone has a comparable laptop that they can confirm works with linux, please let me know.

To be a little specific about my concerns--will the laptop's wifi work with linux? I have had problems with wifi and linux in the past. Sometimes wifi did not work, or it did not have channel scanning capabilities.

Will the power management of the laptop work? I have also had problems with ACPI in the past.

Will the webcam work OK with linux?

Any advice or info appreciated.

the hardware supported is dependant on your distribution. CentOS, RHEL etc are more geared towards servers. Fedora, Slack, OpenSuse, debian, are geared towards desktops/laptops.

I’m a Fedora guy myself...


I have found Broadcom to be very poor with Linux, spend the extra $25 to get a nice Intel wireless embedded in your system, it will work great with out any headaches.


In the past Dell, and HP have been good with Fedora & Suse Linux

Well I would say any of THESE HP LAPTOPS should work fine with any distro of Linux.

but no I'm not finding anything for the one you listed.


the Conpaq 6830s was listed on HP's Linux page..
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...gtCjCVRqCjCVRq

Core 2 Duo instead of Turion..

What exactly is a turion anyway ? the lowend AMD CPU kinda like a Celeron ?
I think I'd rather have the decent CPU and less RAM..


Yes it has 2GB of RAM instead of 4 but for the price difference you can add 2 GB back in..

Thanks, farslayer! The HP Compaq 6830s does look like a better choice. Think I will buy it as you suggest... and it looks like Tigerdirect has an excellent deal.

Thanks for sharing you wisdom!

you can also consider buying from a Linux specialist like LinuxCertified - at least you would know that all components are Linux compatible.

Hello, just wanted to update what happened with me. I did buy the HP Compaq 6830 from Tiger Direct as farslayer suggested. I am VERY satisfied with this decision. Its an excellent laptop, perfect for my needs at a great price...and Tiger got it to me 3 days after I placed the order, for only $3 shipping!

I was amazed at how well Kubuntu works on the new machine, and how easy it was to install. I just popped in the DVD, it did most of the work, even helping me shrink the Windows Vista partition (more than Vista was able to shrink itself!). Then I just followed the instructions on the http://linlap.com wiki. Easy.

What is amazing is that it actually took significantly less time to install Kubuntu 8.10 than it did to install Windows Vista... even though Vista was already ON THE LAPTOP, it still needed various installation stuff to be done, had to be rebooted several times, which took forever.

Everything works great -- sound, video, wifi (the laptop has the Intel as watcher69b suggested, it works great), power management, etc.

Thanks to farslayer and everyone else who provided help...and to linuxquestions.org for providing this forum.

General rule of thumb w/ Linux and wifi...

1. Intel - Works out of the box almost always
2. Atheros - Works out of the box quite often, and if it doesn't, madwifi is usually helpful getting it going..
3. Broadcom - Pain, but w/ Ubuntu, has gotten easier with recent releases
4. Realtek - Pain, no other way around it.

Glad you found a laptop that meets your needs..

IGF

I'm glad to hear that worked out so well for you.

It pays to do a little research before purchasing hardware, it can make your life so much easier

Hi All,
I am new to this forum and wanted to check if there are any possibilities to install CENT OS 5.2 version on my HP Pavilion dv7-1245dx laptop?

Welcome to Linux Questions.org Shetn !!

Let me start by suggestion that you create a new thread when you have a question, it will get better exposure that way.. OK, now that that is out of the way.


CentOS is a repackaged Redhat Enterprise Linux which is designed for servers. Probably not your best choice of Distro when you are looking to install it on a laptop. I'm assuming your laptop is new and not 5 years old, since you didn't specify.. When it comes to the newer hardware typically found in laptops you are better off choosing one of the mainstream distros for better hardware support out of the box. Newer distros will be the least frustrating to get everything functional on new hardware. Distros for Servers, are not as easy to get new hardware, and multimedia functioning. I watch people struggle trying to get certain media working on Centos, where in Debian it's a simple command to install the functionality needed. so that's my suggestion to you.

Might I suggest the most recent version of one of the following distros (in no particular order)
Fedora
OpenSuse
Ubuntu

Other good options would be
Mepis
Debian
Slackware
Mandriva

those are all pretty mainstream distros and getting assistance should be easy.


Check the Linux Laptop web Sites for how-to's for installing linux on your laptop. This will give you a good indication of what will and won't work as fr as hardware goes.

tuxmobile
linux-on-laptops
linlap

Thank You so much for your help Farslayer. This was very helpful.