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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

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Old 01-31-2003, 11:49 AM   #1
SilentStrike
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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: New Jersey
Distribution: Mandrake
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Recommended laptops for a linux install?


I've got like $550, and I want to buy a used laptop for some experimentation with gentoo (I've got Red Hat on my main box, and that is going to stay, because I can actually get stuff done with it), but I'd like to have another machine to

A. Do whatever stuff I want to without worrying about losing anything.
B. Use for wireless access in my university
C. Perhaps use as a 'bottom end' to whatever games I program (make sure they run on reasonably poor hardware )

Any reputable places to buy used hardware that is not a huge pain to get running in Linux?

Last edited by SilentStrike; 01-31-2003 at 01:08 PM.
 
Old 01-31-2003, 12:07 PM   #2
finegan
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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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A) First, watch the language, when you signed up you agreed to the fact this site is rather PG-13.

B) Nothing in the $500 ballpark has wireless built in, and the laptop isn't going to matter much, two words: Orinoco Silver, still the best out of the box wireless card for Linux, poke around for threads about it; online you can buy one for the $35 ballpark tops... CompUSA for an annoying WPC11 v.3 will cost you $50+ and be a pain to get working, even with brand spanking new Gentoo sources.

Some other things... Compaqs, ick! Sure they're cheap used, but that's because no one wants to keep them around! Its best to try and avoid anything with a Trident chipset, but if you have to deal with one of those Cyberblades, they finally got supported under XFree 4.2.1.

Avoid any of the Intel graphics chipsets pretty much entirely, especially the i830.

You really can't go wrong with mobile ATIs, which were common in the 700Mhz-900Mhz land you're looking at.

pcmcia bus, board chipset, drives, onboard sound, none of these are ever really a big deal, especially for the age in your pricerange, so the specs on those can be pretty much anything.

The upshot to Gentoo is that you'll end up with a maxed out little laptop, so the most specs that really matter are chip and video, RAM from that era in the realm of pc100 sodimms is easy and cheap to upgrade, so buy low in that regard if you have to, just make sure the board can handle a good 256+ if you want to upgrade, which is about the only thing you can do easily on your own.

If you want to buy to upgrade on your own: anything dell from latitude and inspiron land, good modular bays and a lot of headroom under the keyboard for ripping things apart. They also have about the only power connector for AC on the market that doesn't break and require you to learn how to solder.

That's my $.02

Cheers,

Finegan

P.S. browsing fleabay I just noticed that if you take about a 100mhz hit on the chip you'll end up with a much better screen, who cares if its a 900 Mhz P3-M if you're staring at a 12.1 inch TFT... ack!

Last edited by finegan; 01-31-2003 at 12:09 PM.
 
  


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