Hi,

Would definitely appreciate any advice on the above

Technically, any laptop could do, but that depends on your tolerance level, and how much patience you have

The last laptop I installed slackware on was my IBM thinkpad T60, and I had everything fully working in no time. What is your budget like?

I'm searching this too and i found some good ones with pre-instaled linux distros on ZaReason and System76.
But i'm in Brazil and the taxes import make them a lot more expensive.

There is point too, they make this laptops and install any distro, but i didn't found the drivers source available to download. If i will boot any other distro, maybe like corp769 said will require some work to make all functional.

actually it is not the distro itself but the applications which will require hardware: database, webserver, computing, 3d graphics, games, whatever...

Try to avoid a laptop that says "Nvidia Optimus" on it. You will live to regret it.

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ThinkPads, ftw. My T61 and Slackware are a wonderful combo. Also had a T42 and T43 in the past, both solid.

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Trust me on this, I am NOT going against what you said, but it has gotten better recently with the whole optimus support. I'm currently using the Alienware M14xR1 as my main laptop (always wanted one :/ ), and I have Arch 64 bit installed, and both optirun and primusrun I got working to perfection. Alas, like you said, I wanted to break this laptop in half at so many points.....

So yeah, stay away from Optimus-based products

Technically though, it is all up to OP's budget in the long run. If he/she was short on cash, I'm sure one of those EeePC things would suffice? I've heard good things about them and compatibility with Slackware.

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This is the reason why i'm searching a new one, i sold mine with that. I would say more: try avoid all Nvidia graphical cards, even with the driver working my 610M never worked flawless.

I have had only laptops with Nvidia graphic cards. The last one was a Dell Vostro 1710. And everything works very well, with Nvidia proprietary drivers (directly, without any slackbuild).

Thinkpad's are always good. I have had good luck with HP's. My last 2 laptops have been HP and they have both run Slackware great out of the box. Current one is a dv6 6145dx.

Yeah - having the Nvidia graphics card is fine - as long as it isn't hobbled by NOT being the sole graphics system on the laptop. The Optimus shares the graphics capabilities with the built-in Intel graphics card. Bad combo. I know people have had some luck getting it right. But it's not perfect. And it requires user intervention at every level. It should just work out-of-the-box, but it does NOT. That's why Linus Torvalds gave Nvidia the middle-finger ... and they deserved it ... and they STILL do.

Hi,
I'm using an ASUS p53e with an i5-2340M, 2.4 GHz, 4Gig RAM, 320GB hard disk and bluetooth. I'm using slackware 14 64 bit with multilib because of the printer drivers (Brother). Everything works fine, just out of the box, wireless, the lot. No funny tricks, special things I had to do extra to get it all working. I'm not dual booting because the machine came with no OS installed :-)

The kids have an ASUS each too, bought with Ubuntu preinstalled. They also worked brilliantly out of the box.

So I guess I've had good experience with ASUS and can recommend them.

The Thinkpads are a classical recommendation.
I am running 14.0 off an IBM T60 which I bought used - I put an SSD in it, too, which gives a bit extra speed.
It runs extremely smoothly with Xfce, and I just installed the 14.1 beta, which is promising.

Ever since I joined IBM 15 years ago, I have been running Slackware dual-boot with the company-supplied OS on ThinkPads. Excellent hardware support in Linux, best machines you can get for running Linux IMO.

Eric

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And of course, the real IBM machines are becoming increasingly affordable even if they have quite a few years left in them yet...