i'm thinking of getting a modest laptop to cover my non design-related needs. on this laptop i want to install linux but i've been reading articles that there can be problems regarding some hardware - notably graphics/sound chips and addon cards. i want to buy a second hand one which will be up to a 350mhz (hey! - im skint!) inc a modem, cdrom and some connection to other computers (nic, usb, parallel etc). Obviously buying second hand is more tricky as i can't send it back if linux doesn't work on it. any thoughts on makes/models that are proven to work with linux? also, which linux distrib's are good with laptops?

RedHat 7.1 works real good with my dell latitude except for the built in modem, which is being worked on from what I understand.

Anyway pcmcia modems work great.

The nics work, and pcmcia nics work too, mouse pad, usb, everything works great.


I have not done anything yet with the video out, I don't know if it will work or not.

It is dual booting win2k. LILO is on the MBR

There is a way to have different hardware configuration files setup for docked and undocked, etc...

I have not got around to setting it all up, but it is in linuxconf. You can specify certain config files to use.

Right now I let kudzu handle it when it boots up. remove / add , etc...

when it's undocked eth0 is the built in nic, when it's docked eth0 is the dockers nic. This works out great for me because nothing needs to be changed.

I am going to try the dvd when I get a chance, but for now I have not tried it I think I will try OMS for the player. Anybody got a better one.

sound like you got it sorted. my only problem with red hat is that i reakon it may run too slowly. i currently have it installed on a 333 celeron / voodoo 3 system and it runs pretty slowly on that with kde or gnome.

I don't think it's RedHat, I think it's KDE and Gnome that are slowing it down.

Ram is a big issue with GUIs

You need to try wmaker.

It's as fast as it can get, It is very customizable, has a very small memory consumption.

And IT ROCKS!!!

my laptop will run kde at blazing speed but I prefer wmaker.

think your right i read of one called xfce but seemed as if it was a pain to install and use though once up and running worked with around 4mb of ram! is wmaker a standalone gui or is it a window manager? wmaker sounds good for a weedy system though.

Wow, finally a question I've had too much experience with.

First off, I've had a lot of issues with kernel versions after 2.4.6 when they started migrating the pcmcia code into the kernel. So, that would make the best bets Mandrake 8.0, Redhat 7.1, probably 7.1 or 7.2 of SuSe (which I'm going to try tomorrow), and of course Slack and Debian if you're hardcore. Of course, recently I've been doing these installs on a slew of 9 vintage P75-p150 notebooks (I don't want to go into why there are 9), so some of my problems may be old hardware, but I doubt it.

Avoid picking up anything with a winmodem. These little proprietary monstrosities have vitually no linux support. This comprises a few of the Inspirons and most of the good old Thinkpads. Built in ethernet almost always works, but unless you're picking up a two-three year old ex-top-of-the-line, there probably won't be any built in ethernet. A lot of the mobile graphics card issues were knocked out with the XFree86 4.x series which is standard with all of those distros I listed above. Also, 350Mhz-land is going to mean at least 2-3 years old, so you shouldn't have a video problem. My Thinkpad 1400 has one of the Mobile Radeons that I could never get X working on with Redhat 6.2, but Mandrake 8.0 just probed it and configured X all on its own. Installing Mandrake is easier than installing Windows.

As far as KDE and Gnome chugging, it probably has more to do with the level of install. Redhat and the distros based on RPMS tend to install... well, everything. If you have a nice internet connection, you might want to try Debian. I have it running Gnome on one of those p133s, 24Megs RAM, with not a whole lot of swap flogging, even when I try something like the Gimp!

Or, the first add-on you buy is maxing out the notebook's memory. For $50 or so, you can drop 128Megs in and never have to worry about Gnome chugging.

Luck,

Finegan

sounds as if your pretty well qualified on notebooks...9!!!! i take it that by 'winmodem' you mean the internal ones fitted along with the 'internal' ethernet ports and i guess hardware modems are pcmcia cards?

i'm a wuss - i'm scared of debian! i've only been using linux for around a month so maybee thats one for the future.

Winmodems are these annoying little devices that instead of having an onboard chip to do something, they borrow clock cycles. I can't offhand remember what that "something" is, but I think it has something to do with ring tone reproduction. Anyway, I've yet to ever configure a modem for Linux (DSL and wireless are much more fun), so I'm a little out of my depth. Regardless, the downshot to them is that the software drivers are completely proprietary, a beast to recreate, and technically illegal thanks to the USPTO handing out patents on common sense... but anyway. They became really popular to put in notebooks for a while because they take up less room.

You'll probably just have better luck picking up a well supported pcmcia modem.

Oh, and the Nine; they came from a friend who's father's girlfriend works for a consulting firm. She figured it was more expensive to do the paperwork necessary to donate them as a tax write-off than to just chuck 'em. Admitedly one was a 386 with a wonky power supply and a dead 3.5(doorstop), one had another wonky powersupply so we gutted it for the hard drive, and another was a 486 (with a 250Meg HD! and a 14 inch tft ?!?). I've just been playing with the remaining 6. So far they've gone through Slackware 7,7.1,8(both kernels), Mandrake 8, Redhat's7,7.2, CalderaOW3.1, Debian 2.2r3, and FreeBSD4.3. This weekend I'm trying SuSe7.3 on the last one we're still unhappy with.

Oh, and to recover from this tangential path, 2 PCMCIA slots are just downright addictive.

Hope your purchase and install goes well.

Cheers,

Finegan

ive had problems with winmodems and NT so i can imagine how frustrating it is with linux! as for your notebooks, if you want any more i saw an advert at ebay yesterday selling 40+ (40!!) of them for around 400 sterling! admitedly i think most were totally knackered.

Being a newbie myself and also the fact that have tried out different distors b4 settling out for Redhat though some ppl might say that Mandrake is much better in terms installing ease or configuring. But my personal favorite is still RedHat and would suggest you to stick to the same unitil and unless you want to wrestle with the Linux configurations. As per for notebook, redhat has got virtually support for all commmonly used hardware, whether it be display card or sound card or etehrnet or modem. But , yes there is a BIG BUT, that there is almost no support for software modems, and many laptops come with software modems, so make sure whatever laptop you buy doesnt have a software modem. As for the rest of the hardware just to be on the safer side, check the list of available list of drivers, just check the list in your current installation.

Hope this helps..

:smash:

i´m using an acer travelmate 201 txv and recently installed mandrake 8.0
i´ve never seen anything computer-related work so beautifully, honest to god.
of course the winmodem does not work, and it took me some time to figure out the partitioning - i had already prepared a non allocated space on the hard disk using partition magic, and somehow the installation program thought i wanted to format c: and d: ...anyway i figured that out too. everything else, like a charm. love it.

Has anyone had any problems with kernels > 2.4.6 where pcmcia is located in the kernel?

I can't get the kernel to recognize cards. Pcmcia loads fine, but what would have been modularly tcic or i82365(er.. some # like that), doesn't seem to notice the existence of the hardware. Cardmgr won't start because it can't see anything under /proc/pcmcia. Should I be passing parameters to the kernel? Did I leave something fun out during the compile?

Tonight I'm going to try 2.4.16 and include basically anything with pcmcia in it.

Any advice would help.

Cheers,

Finegan

thanks for all your feedback guys (and gals!). one thing i was wondering... this modem issue with notebooks. if the notebook has a winmodem included but has pcmcia slots i should be able to just buy another pcmcia modem (hardware) and use that instead... shouldn't i? i'm so dependent on the internet nowadays a computer looks decidedly dull without one.

Absolutely, if there's a winmodem in there just taking up space then the kernel will just ignore it. Its hard to get conflicts out of something the kernel doesn't have a driver for.