Re: best labtop for debian
On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 15:09:23 -0700
Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
> Celejar wrote:
> > I'm curious - everyone has always seemed to love ThinkPads, but I've
> > never understood what exactly makes them so popular. I'm not
> > disagreeing or challenging - I've never used one, and I just want to
> > understand why everyone swears by them.
>
> The IBM ThinkPads were always solid equipment and all of the hardware
> was supported very well. They did what you expected a laptop to do in
> that all of the peripherals worked with Linux drivers. Networking
> worked with native drivers. Graphics display worked with native
> drivers. Suspend to ram works. Suspend to disk works. The volume
> buttons work. The keyboard light can be toggled on and off. The
> special function keys work. Battery life is reasonable. The keyboard
> is the best of any of the laptops I have used. In my experience
> everything "just works".
Good to know, thanks - I've heard that before. The keyboard is the one
thing about which I'm really dissatisfied with my Acer Aspire, although
that's not Linux specific.
> Contrast that experience to other brands of laptops I have used where
> only 80% of the peripherals had working Linux drivers. With one I had
> endless trouble with the graphics chip and eventually traded the
> machine out. With one I could only get suspend to work by using the
> kernel patches for suspend2 (now known as tux-on-ice). Excellent as
> those were it meant I always required a custom patched kernel. But I
> also required a custom kernel for the wifi driver on that machine. So
> I couldn't just install security upgrades for kernels but always had
> to spend the time to build patched new ones. Another machine I could
> never get all of the special function keys running. There seems to
> alway be pieces that never function with Linux. Vendors put on
> proprietary (often very cheap) hardware that causes endless problems
> for users.
>
> For a long time it was very useful for people who installed GNU/Linux
> on a new laptop to put up a page on the web documenting what was
> needed to make it work so that we could share progress in the
> struggle. And it was always a struggle. I have done that and it was
> useful. But I stopped doing it when I started using ThinkPads. The
> reason is that I stopped needing to do anything special to install a
> working system on a ThinkPad. Everything just worked. Having used
> other brands it was always like being beaten with a stick. Moving to
> the ThinkPad was like having the pain stop.
>
> The ThinkPads traditionally have been just very normal and standard
> hardware. Being mainstream this meant the Linux kernel drivers were
> sufficient and well supported. This is what made them so nice. But
> as unsupported wifi chips and graphics drivers get added to newer
> machines this means that now you have to be careful not to get one of
> those. Now you have to watch out and make sure the components are
> supportable. I don't think future ThinkPads will be as uniformly
> supportable as the older models.
Yes - the very message I was responding to stated:
> I have problems with the Realtek 8191SE wireless network
> device. The Realtek driver built but didn't appear to
> support scanning for wireless networks.
> (I didn't manage to get ndiswrapper working.)
> On various ThinkPads of mine and others I have replaced fans (three),
> keyboards (once), individual keys (once), display (backlight died),
> busted plastic case parts (once). You can repair them. And taking
> them apart and putting them together with the new parts is usually
> pretty straight-forward. My 2004 T42 is still running great.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
> Bob
Celejar
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