Hi,
I'm planning to buy a new laptop and install Slackware 13 (probably have it dual boot with XP). I want it to run a web server to host some standard web pages and set up a wiki for private collaboration. I also want to have SVN set up. I will be working with some graphics intensive applications so would like have the full power of a the graphics card. Given these basic requirements, which off the shelf laptop is recommended?

I understand that Slackware can be installed on all laptops but just trying to find out if there is certain hardware which works better or certain ones that should be avoided (especially when it comes to graphics and wireless).
E.g. I recently installed Slackware 12.2 on a HP dv6t laptop. Everything went smoothly except the wireless. It so happens that the HP laptop uses a Broadcom wireless card which has been problematic for Linux.

So any good and/or bad experiences with recent laptops would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance,

Regards,

Ash.

PS: By the way, I did search the forum for similar threads and found them useful. However, I didn't find anything specific to Slackware, so thought I'd ask.

I bought a SONY laptop about a year ago and recently installed slackware 13.0 on it flawlessly. It recognized motion cam, wireless, touchpad, everything. I was surprised how well it all worked out of the box. Best of luck.

Last week I purchased an HP G60 which is running Slackware64 flawlessly out-of-the-box. The only thing I haven't tried to use is the built-in webcam...because I don't webcam. It's a good value for the price ($795 USD).

I am very satisfied with my Lenovo ThinkPad T61. I have a dual boot with Windows 7, though I only use Windows 7 to get Windows updates as of now -- but I could install Dragon Naturally Speaking on top of it sometime as I don't know of any usable speech-to-text application for Linux

To meet your specifications, if you can afford it I certainly would recommend a ThinkPad among the W serie. You can customize it to your taste and they have rebate programs for slightly older (but still very good) models. You can get up to a 1900 x 1200 resolution (I only have 1680 x 1050).

Out of curiosity though, why choose a laptop as a web server ?

I I have a Thinkpad T400, and I posted my experiences with it here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...3/#post3639705

I have a Thinkpad T60p and everything works out-of-the-box.
I even bought Logitech M555B bluetooth mouse with the laptop and it's working as it should be. Of course it needed a little configuration, but it really took just a couple of minutes. If someone else is interested about bt mouse, you should look at this post.

Moving in the opposite direction:

I have an older Thinkpad, and seek to find the best possible distro for it. Slackware works well, but xfce seems not to offer particular advantage, compared with other desktop managers (JWM, Icewm).

During install, Slack gives the option to select one of the "lightweight" Xwindows managers, but thus far, I have not succeeded in manipulating one of them, as easily as xfce.

By comparison, Puppy Linux is just much easier to use.

Any advice would be welcome.
A21M 0.8GHz cpu with 0.5Gbyte RAM, CD, 18GB hard drive.

CAI ENG

I see quite a few satisfied Thinkpad users have responded. I went for a cheaper Lenovo 3000 N200. Also worked just fine with Slack 12.1 which I guess I will soon upgrade to 13.1. I did a bit of homework beforehand and made sure that the model had Nvidia graphics but I notice that recently the cheaper Lenovos seem to have Intel and there have been various problems reported with Linux drivers and some of these graphics cards, so that is one thing to research a bit before you buy.

@caieng,

I use Fluxbox on Slackware and am very satisfied with it. It's easy to configure once you are used to it, see the how-to.

Would you prefer Icewm, there is a SlackBuild available for it @ slackbuilds.org as well.

And for both of these your CPU speed + RAM size will be enough to get reasonable speed. In particular, apart from running several virtual machines at the same time (which would be hard to do anyway considering your space on disk) you will barely need to use swap space on disk -- which really slows down the system.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you Didier, I will follow your recommendation.
regards,
CAI ENG

Hi,

I m using a Thinkpad T500 and everything works well with Slack13 previously I had a R51 and a R60 all worked like a charm.

Not to count you ll have a very nice wiki to look at during configuration install:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

What other than screen tearing with xv video, which has been solved?

FTLOG make sure it has an nVidia GPU not an Intel or ATI. My best experience has been with Dell Latitudes.

I'm happy with a Dell Inspiron 17 (means it's a 17" screen); dual-core Pentium, 64-bit, 3G RAM, DVD burner, and 230G drive standard, runs Slackware64 13.0 just fine. It came with Vista, I think they've replaced that with Win7 (I just got the free update DVD in the mail from Dell) but I blew away everything and installed Slackware 13.0 on the entire drive. I am a happy camper.

IBM Thinkpad T43 - has worked great with every Slackware distribution since 11.0.