Hmm..Too many laptops and too many configuration nightmares from several posts; quite a few successes though.

So...if you have a laptop with Slackware 10.2 installed that you bought or got as a gift (or just swiped it off someone who was using winxp and turned it to slack), and you payed $1000 or less please let me know. At this point I have no laptop but i've been saving some $$ so I can buy one used or new but I don't want to shell two grand on it. At most $700. Tops: $1000. This laptop has to run with all the bells and whistles of hardware WITH Slackware installed. 2.6 kernel and above.. 2.4 kernel although stable doesn't have some cool stuff 2.6.xx has.


What laptop in your expert opinion is best suited for linux for the following use in order of importance:

1) Wireless
2) Movie watching and some game playing that requires OpenGL like tux for example
3) Ripping movies from my DVD collection and watching them.
4) Some web page building
5) Access to my servers remotely
6) Music storage (less than 500 megs) I don't carry that much .ogg's. I reckon I am the only one who listens to Peruvian Machu Pichu local songs. Yes..I am Peruvian.
7) Surfing, Typing papers, e-mail.

Like my previous post: ANY input would be enormously appreciated. I need a laptop really bad but I loathe to be in laptop configuration nightmare (ok..maybe a little tweaking here and there but that's it.) Oh I almost forgot, this laptop has to have a nice battery endurance (2.5 hours or more). I hate laptop batteries that run out of juice in less than 2 hours..

Cheers,

Biledaemon

1)i've had dell latitude d610/d600's and the intel pro wireless chipset seems to work well with linux. so i can recommend a latptop that comes with that in built. although the d600/d610 are pretty expenvisse. to be honest, both of them have had / does have faults and in fact the 1st was swapped for a d610 after 2 mother boards. so maybe some other make....

2) you wont need mega graphics. maybe an ATI radeon mobility chip.

3). ripping dvd's isn't really a software issue if u have a dvd drive. however, slimline laptop drives are often pretty slow... my dell crapitude cd drives have been real dogs. you'll need to css library of course..

4) again a software issue - try NVU. however, obviously a decent screen helps. dont get a tiddler

5) any linux (even fedora!), can allow ssh, ftp, telnet, sftp, etc etc. so not a hardware issue at all.

6) decent disk really. even 20 gig is fine. but point 3 - you'll need lots of space to rip to harddisk.

7) again just the normal things you would get in any distro. beware the laptop key board and touch pad tho. some people dont like em.

i think you're asking a lot for your money. fair enough, shop arround. maybe a cheaper model without blue tooth and an external wireless solution would be better. although i'm not too in love with my dell the battery does last a long time. pity the screen goes blank from time to time though....

you're success will be based on picking linux compatible hardware and having the abilty to get it configured. e.g kernel compile.

that said, i've used mepis and ubuntu and everything pretty much works straight away : bluetooth, wireless, touchpad, hibernation. if you wanna go slack, then you might be in for some config time. never tried slack on my laptop. but i've seen stickies with people, who gotit working without hell on earth.

As a proud owner of an IBM Thinkpad T40 running Linux, I couldn't be happier. Thinkpads just flat out rock

I'm using a Gateway Solo 1450LS
Here's my webpage on it: www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org/slack

It already does all you want it to do. Plus some more I don't have on the website.

Alright! Thanks a bunch guys. I will certainly look into the different laptops choices you guys mentioned. The thinkpad T40 sounds pretty good based on several users while others complain about it. No biggie... I will google some more. Thanks again.

I got working Linux on a HP Pavilion zv5200, but it was really a mess to get everything alright specially the 1280x800 widescreen display on X.org. I won't recommend it if you want to get it working right out-of-the-box, but I learnt a lot screwing it up too

I used to have a good 'ol IBM Thinkpad A21m (PIII coppermine proc. ~ 700 MHz, 128 Mb RAM, 10 Gb HD) with Slackware 9 on it. It was pretty nice for office and home applications. I could even play UnrealTournament nicely

I can do all of these things perfectly in Slackware 10.2 on my Dell 700m, a centrino pentium m laptop, which cost less than $US1000. For wifi, it has a built-in Intel 2200 mini pci card which is supported natively in Linux. It has a cdrw/dvd combo drive and a 40gig hd. The graphics are the intel i810 onboard video, and the 3d acceleration with this chip is also supported natively in Linux. I play quake 3 on it and it's pretty good. I'd say this is almost a perfect linux laptop.

yeah the intel pro wireless 2200 is easy to get working in linux.

no ndiswrapper or any nonesense like that....

Toshiba A10-s177 is running fine with slackware 10.2. It doesnt work well with 3d games though. I had wolfenstein enemy-territory running on fastest setting working pretty well, but I would stick to 2d games with this model. Its an old model so you should find it pretty cheap on ebay.