Thanks, I will dual boot windows and either put fedora, ubuntu or Centos as the other os. I am looking to run several virtual machines on kvm (no more then 2 at a time) most probably a centos client and server to study for rhce and an xp/2003 config just because I need those skills wherever I end up. The laptop should also have a decent web cam for skype.

I have not had a laptop in years and was wondering what would be "linux friendly" that I could get on ebay. I don't need fancy graphics I really just need to have enough juice (do I need at least 4gb ram?) to run a virtual environment.

Although I am looking for used, if there is a decent linux friendly laptop that would fit the bill in the $500 range I might be able to sneak it past my wife.

thanks I know it is an open ended question but I was just hoping some here have purchased similar machines and could through out some make/models or appropriate specs based on my requirements. I suppose I need a cpu that will run kvm too as I see many laptops cannot do that.

thanks so much for reading.

Hello bluerfoot,

normally people experience problems with very new Laptops and their wireless-adpaters in Linux. So if you are looking for used laptop every Linux-distribution should come with all drivers needed and everything should run out of the box.

I would say without virtual machines every Linux-distribution and also Windows will run fine with 1.5-2GB of RAM. But since you want to run virtual machines I'd recommend to look for a laptop with 3-4GB of RAM. Look for 64bit hardware (at least if you have more than 3GB of RAM).

Don't buy a Laptop with an Intel-Pentium processor (everything from Intel with a "P" in it's name) these processors are old and lack many modern features, especially CPU-frequency scaling is not very well supported. This makes the laptop very loud since the fan is always running.

If you buy a laptop in a store, I'd recommend to boot the machine with a recent Linux-Live-CD/DVD and check if all the hardware is supported.

Markus

Virtualbox or VMplayer would be my choice if you kept the W7 and just ran a virtual linux cluster.