Re: laptop and Debian

[dbarker@turing.cs.camosun.bc.ca]

Gerard Robin said...
> Hello,
> I intend to buy a laptop. I googled to find some information about laptops
> which support linux Debian and the informations that I got concerned fairly
> old laptops and no one works fine at 100%.
>
> Can someone give me some advices or give me a link to find some informations
> about recents laptops.

I have successfully purchased 3 laptops over the years and run linux
on them. (1 Dell, 1 Toshiba, 1 Averatec)

My basic strategy: take a live linux CD (I use knnoppix) to the store
with you. Ask if you can boot the laptop you're thinking of with the
knoppix CD, explaining that it won't touch the hard drive so their
precious win****s installation is safe.

When knoppix comes up check out the device support (use lspci etc. to
check everything has been found/configured OK). 

If there's anything not working, then you're almost certainly going to
have problems with that when you install.

The only thing this might not work well with is wireless networking,
especially non-linux supported chipsets which require ndiswrapper
(like the broadcom in my averatec).

This approach has saved me a lot of grief.
-- 
|Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Music does not have to be understood|
|Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada| It has to be listened to.           |
|email: dbarker@camosun.bc.ca         |                                     |
|phone: +1 250 370 4452               |         Hermann Scherchen.          |