LinuxQuestions.org - Lightweight laptops running Slackware

- Slackware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)

- - Lightweight laptops running Slackware - Post your model (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/lightweight-laptops-running-slackware-post-your-model-4175475729/)

Running Slackware-current 64bit on a 14" HP dm4-2058, everything works including video, audio, webcam, wifi, skype, sleep/hibernate etc, using both kde and xfce. I don't use bluetooth but got it to work one-way (receive files from an android phone).

Quote:

Originally Posted by kikinovak (Post 5022943)

Slackware64 14.0 with my personal blend of KDE running fine on a brand-new HP Pavilion DM1. ATI video card uses the proprietary fglrx driver. Wireless works perfectly using the broadcom-sta driver. I had to fiddle a bit with the audio configuration to make it work.

Thanks! I might just pick one of these up this week.
They seem budget friendly and have fairly good user reviews.
I've found 4 different model variations on the DM1 here in Sweden. Would you suppose that the dm1-4401eo can achieve the same results?

Some reviews claim that the screen is a bit dim, have you experienced any issues of this sort?
And, how has the battery life with Slackware64 been for you?

Samsung Notebook n150.

Just in case anyone is interested, I'm running the latast Slackware 14. Without problems, so far.

I hope this thread continues to build a useful resource for people in search of a suitable device for their Slackware needs.

I've gone ahead and ordered a device which hasn't been mentioned:
Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E130, 11.6" (Core i3 @ 1.9Ghz) 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM SATA, 3G

I have no idea if Slackware is compatible, but based on the hardware specs of previous posts, I would think there's a pretty good chance that it will.
If not, I'll post an update on how it went and what is needed for it to start puttering.

Thanks again for each one of your replies, and please do keep adding!

I'm using a Dell Latitude 2100 (with an 1.6mhz Intel Atom and 2gb of RAM) with Slackware 14. I'd be lying if I said 100% CPU usage wasn't a regular thing, and I do get the occasional lag, but otherwise it works pretty nicely!

Quote:

Originally Posted by HankTk (Post 5025098)

I've gone ahead and ordered a device which hasn't been mentioned:
Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E130, 11.6" (Core i3 @ 1.9Ghz) 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM SATA, 3G

I have no idea if Slackware is compatible, but based on the hardware specs of previous posts, I would think there's a pretty good chance that it will.
If not, I'll post an update on how it went and what is needed for it to start puttering.

Yeah, I'm sure as far as the specs go that will work, but is that one of those Windows 8 laptops? I know that they can be finicky as far as putting on different operating systems go from time to time.

IBM Thinkpad T61p. Works flawlessly with Slackware64 14.0.

Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E525 (1200 CTO). Requires the proprietary video driver from AMD for resume from suspend and hibernation to work. Though the fingerprint-gui worked well for the Upek thumb print reader under Ubuntu, I haven't tried building it under Slackware. (Though fingerprint-gui is GPL, some of the drivers it relies on are proprietary as is the case with mine.)

Modern and lightweight? I wish I had a laptop that had either of those qualities, let alone both ;)

Anyway, I have many laptops, but the most modern I own is a Dell Studio 1558. Besides having AMD graphics (ugh...), that particular laptop is rather Slackware-friendly; even the wireless worked well (which is a surprise in hindsight, given that when I eventually installed openSUSE on it, the lack of proper wireless support was among the first things I noticed...).

The laptop I've been using most often, though, is a Dell Latitude D830 that I salvaged from a pile of computers my employer was discarding. Once I picked up a "new" (actually not all that new, but it was cheap) hard drive (since we have to shred the hospital hard drives), it worked like a charm. Currently running Slackware64-current (along with a plain /boot and encrypted LVM VG for /, /home, and swap), and while it's neither lightweight nor modern, it's been a reliable and durable business-grade laptop.

Update:

My laptop arrived (Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E130, 11.6" (Core i3 @ 1.9Ghz) 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM SATA, 3G).

The first things I did were to insert an additional 4GB of RAM and replace the spin-drive with a 128GB Samsung SSD.

Slackware64 v14 wouldn't boot due to the fact that it's an UEFI-based machine.

The solution I chose was to head on into the BIOS setup and enable "Legacy" mode.

After this, it was a straight forward Slackware partition & install with fdisk & the setup guide.
I chose to make one primary partition approx 120GB (beginning of disk) and the remainder 8GB as a swap partition at the end (to match the amount of RAM).

Everything seems to work so far. Wireless, and other network technologies included didn't work "straight away" - you have to open up a terminal and enter "NetworkManager" to get those devices started.
Audio - no problem.

Haven't seem to have found any life in the Bluetooth, but I'm sure it'll be an easy fix.

There is another option for those who don't wish to enable Legacy mode in the BIOS - which you can read about here:
http://xathrya.web.id/blog/2013/01/0...based-machine/

Another useful resource is:
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sla..._uefi_hardware

In the latter, they recommend enabling Legacy mode in the BIOS setup if it is available on your machine.

I'm running Slackware64-current on a new Asus Zenbook, model UX21A. Everything important worked out of the box (I guess the unimportant things would be the screen brightness keys and a few other things I can't think of right now, so they can't have been that major). It took a bit of tweaking to make things perfect, but it is working flawlessly right now.

I am working on a guide to getting it set up with Slackware.

I see a lot of laptops listed but not a lot of lightweight. I'm looking to replace my eeepc soon and am looking for lightweight and there are not a lot out there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by enine (Post 5029165)

I see a lot of laptops listed but not a lot of lightweight. I'm looking to replace my eeepc soon and am looking for lightweight and there are not a lot out there.

Well, my Zenbook is an ultrabook, so it is lightweight. Your other main ultrabook choice is the Dell XPS 13, which also runs Linux quite nicely, though I prefer the Zenbook (well, obviously).

Those are the major Macbook air competitors out there right now. Of course, If you want to get a Macbook air, there is nothing stopping you. The Arch wiki has a nice tutorial for setting up Arch that can definitely be extended to Slackware.

If you do not want an ultrabook, the other "lightweight" laptop options are your netbooks. I have a Samsung N145 Plus, and I like it very much for what it is. If I ever wanted to buy another netbook (although I can't see why I would, honestly), I would not own a different one, except maybe the Acer Aspire One, since it can be upgraded to 4 GB of RAM and doesn't look like a chunky black pencil case. It is uncommon for a netbook to be upgradeable beyond 2 GB. Of course, the performance improvement you will get with 4 gigs with a Fusion processor is debatable, but still.

Anyway, most people aren't buying netbooks anymore anyway, but they are inexpensive. However, if you can afford it, I would pick a nice lightweight ultrabook. I find them really very pleasant to work on.

As a university lecturer I use Slackware 14 on a Thinkpad T60 as my "lecture theatre machine". I prefer to take my own computer rather than use the Windows box in the theatre. XFCE is enough bloat for me, I do not use KDE. Everything works very well, including suspend - not that I use that feature.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloomingNutria (Post 5029392)

Defiantly not anything apple, no way I can afford them or have the down time while its being sent off to be fixed multiple times or waiting on one of the recalls.

I'm looking for 12" or smaller business class. Dell had a Latitude 2100 but seems to have discontinued it. Its frustrating, I keep finding cheap consumer grade or tablets with no storage and limited OS and can't tell if i can throw a useable OS on them or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by canadensis (Post 5029449)

As a university lecturer I use Slackware 14 [...] as my "lecture theatre machine".

Love it. I am rolling beamer slides in okular for my stats class, and do some live plotting with R.

Quote:

Originally Posted by enine (Post 5029165)

I see a lot of laptops listed but not a lot of lightweight. I'm looking to replace my eeepc soon and am looking for lightweight and there are not a lot out there.

After reading this. I decided to see if the netbook I use is available.

I was surprised so I bought one of the 20 being sold. I paid more than that for this one previously. I have a 64 Kingston gig 1.8 " zif SDD I put in mine and the netbook has a water proof keyboard and is designed for kids to abuse it. It is also super linux friendly also and should run Slackware just fine.

Code:

$ inxi -Fxz

System:    Host: biker Kernel: 3.7.10-antix.3-486-smp i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.7.3) 

          Desktop: IceWM 1.3.7 Distro: antiX-13_386-full Luddite 01 June 2013

Machine:  System: manda product: Intel powered classmate PC version: Gen 1.5L

          Mobo: N/A model: N/A Bios: American Megatrends version: CM94515A.86A.0024.2008.0715.1716 date: 07/15/2008

CPU:      Single core Intel Core CPU N270 (-HT-) cache: 512 KB flags: (nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3191.99 

          Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz

Graphics:  Card: Intel Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 

          X.Org: 1.12.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1024x600@53.3hz 

          GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 945GME x86/MMX/SSE2 GLX Version: 1.4 Mesa 8.0.5 Direct Rendering: Yes

Audio:    Card: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 

          Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.7.10-antix.3-486-smp

Network:  Card: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller 

          driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: ec00 bus-ID: 01:00.0

          IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>

Drives:    HDD Total Size: 63.3GB (39.6% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: KingSpec_KSD size: 63.3GB 

Partition: ID: / size: 59G used: 24G (43%) fs: ext2 

Sensors:  System Temperatures: cpu: 61.0C mobo: N/A 

          Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 

Info:      Processes: 102 Uptime: 2:39 Memory: 287.0/2015.1MB Runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.7.2 

          Client: Shell (bash 4.2.37) inxi: 1.9.14 

harry@biker:~

$ lsusb -t

/:  Bus 05.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M

/:  Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M

/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M

/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M

/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci_hcd/8p, 480M

    |__ Port 6: Dev 2, If 0, Class='bInterfaceClass 0x0e not yet handled', Driver=uvcvideo, 480M

    |__ Port 6: Dev 2, If 1, Class='bInterfaceClass 0x0e not yet handled', Driver=uvcvideo, 480M

    |__ Port 7: Dev 3, If 0, Class=vend., Driver=rt73usb, 480M

    |__ Port 8: Dev 4, If 0, Class=stor., Driver=ums-realtek, 480M

$ acpi -i

Battery 0: Discharging, 45%, rate information unavailable

Battery 0: design capacity 6600 mAh, last full capacity 6600 mAh = 100%

The stock pata 1.8" zif 30 gig Toshiba 4200 rpm drive is OK though kinda slow.
The SSD I put in here makes boot in seconds and flys in Linux just fine.
So a low cost replacement atom netbook for the eeepc is 50 bucks and some change.
You will probably have to use a universal ac adapter as I don't see any in the pictures.

I know this thread is or Slackware. But if I wished. I could run Slackware on this netbook if AntiX runs just fine on it also.
No lag in youtube either and movies and music and webcam and mic and viop/(Jitsi,Skyoe,Pidgen) work just fine.