Any laptop users out there??

I'm looking for a good distro to use on my portable, can anyone give me a good idea of what to use??

I've used Redhat 7.2 & 7.3 and Mandrake 8.1 on my Dell Inspiron.

I wasn't too impressed with Mandrake, although it was my first experiance with linux - I wasn't able to get my mudular drives working and had several other problems- but overall I didn't care for the distribution anyway.

Redhat 7.2 & 7.3 has worked great, the only problem I've had has been gettting my modem to work on my NIC/Modem combo card - but I have rarely had a need for my modem since I am usually on a LAN. I use Linux (Redhat 7.3) as my primary operating system. I almost never boot into windows anymore.

I've been pretty happy with Redhat, but I have been deciding whether or not to switch to Slackware. I've heard of people getting Slack to work seemlessly on laptops, but I am a bit hessitant to switch.

fhbooker,

Let us know what the specs on the laptop are and we can help you more. Distributions such as Red Hat and Mandrake tend to be more resource intensive, but are "easier" to install (cause and effect relationship there.) Slackware and Debian tend to be leaner and you can configure them more readily.

Also, check out this site:

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

j.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.

Spec is:

Celeron 1.2 gig
128mb ram
10 gig hdd
8 x DVD

Pretty basic really. Not a known make but seems a very good build. Have tried Mandrake and as you say it's a bit awkward to say the least.
I would be after something that doesn't take up too much space as I'm studying a few MS (dare I say it?) courses as well.

Hope you can help.

Cheers

Also SIS sound 7018 chip set, and SIS graphics upto 32 meg 630/730 chipset.
Thanks again

Thats a pretty hefty laptop you have. I have an older IBM Thinkpad, 233mhz, 4gb hd, 96mb of ram...so i installed VectorLinux 2.0 on it cause it is for small hardware specs systems.

I dual boot it wit Win98se also...and everything went pretty good.

I use Slack 8.0 on my new tower system at home, and like slack really well, first time using it. If I get tired of Vectorlinux on my lappy, I may decide to try Slack on it, just do an expert install to trim the fat!

i have a laptop with the same sound and graphics cards that you have and i have not found a distro of linux that supports my ethernet card, my modem or my infrared port.

Be careful what you get, that graphics card is not supported by red hat 7.0 or mandrake 8.0 for instance, but works fine with mandrake 8.2 (and i have heard with red hat 7.2 and 7.3 also)...

If you do get all those components to work (modem and so on), please let me know how you did it!

Mine is a HP Pavilion N5430
8meg Trident CyberBladeXPm Video(video driver= cyberbladeXPm)
128meg system ram
850 AMD duron CPU
Built in Combo NIC/modem(Nic driver= tulip)
ess sound card (sound driver= maestro3)
20 gig HD

I've Installed:
RH7.1/7.2/7.3
Slackware 8
Mandy 8.1
LFS

And the only thing that didnt work(Didnt try that hard) with all distros was the Modem. Right now I'm just dual booting Win2k and RH7.3. Grafixs are fine, sound is fine, was using USB but not anymore, have to run the NIC at 10BaseT-FD because of other factors(bad switch port)

well, my main bitch is the USB mitsubishi CDRW i have that only comes with windows drivers. This gripe is closely followed by the modem which i have heard has several projects on the go to try and get the modem working, but i've never managed it,

Also, i have windows 2000, but cannot install it on the laptop for some reason! same problems every time, most likely hardware, but then, windows 98 does not even work with my USB CDRW properly either, so really the solution for me is change the hardware, not the software.
Just saying, with laptops, be careful. At least with linux, it's a free system, so you don't lose out if it doesn't work...

I have a ThinkPad 365XD (P120/72MB/2.1GB) that runs Mandrake 8.2. I also run KDE 3.0.1, KOffice 1.1.1 (for KDE 3), and OpenOffice.org 641D. Yeah, it's not fast by any means, but it does what I ask it to do. I don't do anything with the infrared port, so i couldn't tel you anything in that respect, but the PCMCIA ports have always worked from the git-go and the Xircom Realport 56K Global modem is perfectly automatic under Linux. XMMS has never had any problems with recognizing CDA, CD-Rs, or CD-RW formatted music CDs. For obvious reasons (low processor speed, small amount of video memory), movies are not going to work on this machine and even music videos are not particularly enjoyable, but since I'm not pariticulary into those things, it's not a problem.

Your laptop is, spec-wise, awesome. You should have no problem running anything on it. The one exception may be the fact that modems are hit and miss in Linux. You'll want to go to the Linmodems page and get some good background info then to Winmodems are not modems page for some info on specific modem models.

Thanks for all your help guys, guess it's just a case of keep trying,
I've got Brutal ware to give me a consal based system and will just have to try some others until it works!!
Thanks again.

I am using Red Hat 7.3 on my brand new IBM Thinkpad T23 (Pentium III-M 1ghz, 256mb ram, 14.1" screen, 20gb hd) right now. I have Gnome set up in 1024x768@24bpp in no time. It was very easy to install.


BP
0003

What graphics chip have you got, I had problems with my sis graphics and audio with Mandrake 8.1??

I have an S3Graphics Supersavage IXc. RH 7.3 detects this as an S3 Savage4, and I accepted that choice. It seems to work OK.


BP

0004

Hi All
I have recently tried to setup Red Hat 7.2 on my Thinkpad 365XD but failed due to X windows configuation problems. I then tried Mandrake 8.2 and although I did get X windows working it was only very low resolution and the wrong shape for my screen. I am pleased to see that jglen490 has had success. Would jglen490 be able to give me any tips as to how this was achieved.

Cheers Derek