hi all I need to get a laptop to study from the rhce (duel booting xp and fedora 5). I will run fedora primarily and also have vmware on xp to run multiple linux's for study. I need 5400rpm harddrive (at least 50 gb) as I will be using cubase (recording software) on xp. I am a memory snob and need 2gb. Also as I recently purchased several old cisco routers to learn on I need to have either a serial port or is there an alternatlty? I am willing to buy used and need 15 or below for my screen size. would any newer dell or ibm run linux fine (ie no issues detecting peripherals or the video card? And what yould you all suggest. I apologyze for the open ended question but I need to start somewhere. $1200 tops new or if used in good shape...thanks in advance.

I have a Toshiba M70-DL400E, specs are:

Pentimum M 1.86Ghz
1 GB Ram
Integrated Intel Graphics
100 GB SATA HD
15.4" widescreen
~$1100 CDN (includes ram uprgarde from 512 to 1gb)

Works essentially flawlessly with Fedora 5, wireless works, suspend/hibrenate both to disk and ram, works. The only piece of hardware that's not working is the SD card reader, which is not a big deal for me. The graphics performance could be better, but you can't really expect much with intergrated graphics.

I'm very, very pleased with how well this laptop works with Fedora 5.

I have been testing different Linux distros on a new Lenovo R60 laptop for use in a university intro to Linux class, and I am very impressed with how well Linux is working on this system. I tested SuSE 10.1,, Ubuntu 6.0.6, FC5, and CentOS v4.3. All ran well.

I am typing this on the R60 over the wireless connection using CentOS v4.3. The only thing not well supported is the video card (I am using the vesa driver), and I am not too concerned about the power management stuff that is much better in the newer distros.

Bob

hmm yes I need the wireless to work linux as well or its all worthless...