Re: what laptop to buy - suggestion for Debian project developers
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 18:00 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Feb 2010, Bret Busby wrote:
>
> >
> > On Mon, 8 Feb 2010, António PT wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> I agree with Jason. I have an HP laptop. Its wireless card is supported
> >> (ath5k) and so is the graphic board (ATI - with open source drivers).
> >>
> >> 2010/2/6 Jason Filippou <jason.filippou@gmail.com>
> >>
> >>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 2:22 AM, Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Hi all,
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm having great difficulty in finding a laptop suitable for my
> >>>> needs. I'm vision impaired and a student, so primarily will use the
> >>> machine for
> >>>> school, and at home.
> >>>>
> >>>> Here is what I'm looking for: good debian linux support, including wifi,
> >>>> ethernet, sound, and the general hardware of the machine.
> >>>> I'm looking for something fairly recent, so I've got half a chance at
> >>>> locating one in Australia, but any suggested models would be greatly
> >>>> appreciated. I'm looking for something with a core 2 duro around 1.6
> >>>> ghz or more, and I want something with really good battery life, perhaps
> >>>> 5 hours or more. I have about $1,000 to spend give or take. Finally, I'm
> >>>> going to be carrying it around school every day, so portability is
> >>>> important to me.
> >>>>
> >>>> So basically it must have:
> >>>> - Good debian support including wiffi
> >>>> - core 2 duro 1.6 ghz or more
> >>>> - Good battery life 5 hours or more.
> >>>>
> >>>> I've been looking mainly at lenovo, hp, del, acer and maybe tosheba.
> >>>>
> >>>> Any suggested models would be greatly appreciated.
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>> Dan
> >>>>
> >>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >>>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
> >>>>
> >>>> iEYEARECAAYFAktTqc4ACgkQQCYsNYjKJVDaoACgtMC+QMAti5qQS2eJfqLHu5Ob
> >>>> XqMAoIc7+DsdVSBi2TKwSnGleWZ+0wLN
> >>>> =Aips
> >>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> When it comes to good Linux support, I always advise looking towards
> >>> the acquisition of an hp laptop, perhaps with an Intel GMA or other
> >>> sorts of Intel onboard GPU, (for people like yourself wo are not
> >>> interested in heavy duty graphics support) primarily because you will
> >>> virtually never have any problems with closed source graphic card
> >>> drivers (Intel's drivers are free software and are henceforth included
> >>> by the official Debian distribution). I have been especially pleased
> >>> by my 4-year old Pavillion laptop, which runs Debian smoothly @ 1GB of
> >>> ram and with a Centrino processor. It's construction is also pretty
> >>> solid and ergonomic, albeit based on PVC, which is not the healthiest
> >>> of materials (like most of today's laptops). HP is also very dedicated
> >>> to receiving and processing complaints about faulty hardware, and the
> >>> company has frequently made public announcements regarding free
> >>> substitutions of battery models that have been known to overheat, for
> >>> example. By buying an HP laptop you're also helping a company that
> >>> sponsors free software to an extent, they were among the main
> >>> contributors to the most recent DebConf ( http://debconf9.debconf.org/
> >>> ).
> >>>
> >>> There are a few downsides to my proposal, of course, the most notable
> >>> of which being that I'm not very sure what vision support you'd like
> >>> from a laptop's screen in order to assist you in your work. Perhaps
> >>> you're looking into a specialised system, with a 19'' screen at least.
> >>> Also, my HP pavillion has an integrated GMA graphics card which, even
> >>> though very helpful in the sense that I've never had to care about
> >>> drivers (for the reasons I've mentioned earlier in this mail), is also
> >>> quite weak. I can't run the KDE 4 effects from my laptop, but I used
> >>> to run some Compiz Fusion effects when I was running Ubuntu (desktop
> >>> cube, mainly). Of course this isn't a real problem, you can always get
> >>> an HP laptop with a strong graphics card. Nvidia cards work well with
> >>> Linux and the company provides well-functioning proprietary drivers,
> >>> I'd look into that after a friend of mine had serious trouble with the
> >>> discontinuation of ATI's support for his Radeon. I also noted your
> >>> need for a strong battery, yet I don't think any out-of-the-box HP
> >>> laptop (not any I have come across, at least) has such a strong
> >>> battery, you'd need to order a larger one yourself. This last
> >>> observation is very prone to error, though, due to my limited
> >>> knowledge of different battery types.
> >>>
> >>> I see you've increased your budget, this could help you look into one
> >>> of those new pavillions with an i7 processor (if you REALLY want to
> >>> step it up) but you don't need such a strong machine for office work
> >>> imo.
> >>>
> >>> All in all, I'd go for an HP laptop both because of the high-quality
> >>> of their pavillion laptops and because of their support of open source
> >>> and Linux, both financially and technically.
> >>>
> >>> Jason
> >>>
> >>
> >
> > After all of that, here is a simple, quick suggestion (that would probably be
> > quite complex and require much work to implement).
> >
> > I have a Debian 5 Live CD.
> >
> > Why do Linux Live CD's not include a package, that could be run from the
> > System menu; something like "System Compatibility Analysis" (as a suggested
> > name), so that a user boots a computer with the CD, then runs the
> > application, which displays on the screen, a list of the (major) system
> > components, such as CPU, RAM, graphics card, sound card, ethernet adaptor,
> > wiffle adaptor (WhyFie), HDD, etc, with the brand, model number,
> > capacity/memory, and compatibility, perhaps running demonstration tests, eg
> > to test the sound card, playing a recorded message like "if you can hear me,
> > then the sound card is working", with a dialogue box requiring "Click <Okay>
> > if you heard a recorded message, and <Not Okay> if you did not"?
> >
> > Such an application, included on Live CD's, such as the Debian 5 LiveCD,
> > would enable users to take the CD to a retailer, boot a prospective computer
> > (laptop or otherwise) using the CD, and then determine the compatibility of
> > the system and its components, with the particular Linux distribution and
> > version (what might work with Ubuntu 9.10, might not work with Debian 5).
> >
> > I suggest that this is something worth the Debian project developers
> > considering, to assist users to investigate prospective laptops for purchase
> > on the basis of compatibility, and, even, such an application (I believe that
> > somthing similar, but, not exactly what I have described, "Hardware4Linux",
> > already exists as an RPM, for Red Hat based distributions, but is not
> > included on Debian LiveCD's) could generate a report, which, when a user runs
> > the application on a computer owned by the person, and generates the report,
> > could be sent (via email) to a repository, for publication for other
> > prospective buyers of the particular computer configuration.
> >
> > --
> > Bret Busby
> > Armadale
> > West Australia
> > ..............
> >
>
> Maybe it would simply be a waste of time, including an application to
> test for hardware compatibility, in Linux Live CD's, when computer
> manufacturers design their computers to prevent them running anything
> other than MS Windows.
>
> I today went to a computer retailer, and attempted to boot an HP Compaq
> CQ61-412AX into Linux, using first a Debian 5 Live CD, then a Ubuntu
> 8.04 Live CD, both of which I have easily used on my HP Compaq NX5000,
> which has WinXP, Debian 5, and Ubuntu 8.04 installed, and with the
> ability to selectively boot into any one of them.
>
> A staff member at the computer retailer, when I unsuccessfully simply
> tried to reboot unsuccessfully with each disk in the drive, at my
> request, reset (or, tried to reset) the BIOS, to boot from the DVD drive
> first, rather than the HDD.
>
> However, the computer ignored the BIOS setting, and went straight to the
> HDD, to boot into MS Winows, with no other booting allowed.
>
> Thus, it appears that HP/Compaq has turned against Linux, and now
> prohibits Linux from being run on its new computers.
>
> --
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> ..............
>
There is an extended recovery console for Windoze that does completely
hijack the boot process. I had installed it on my IBM notebook and it
prevented me from booting to anything other than the HDD. It was so bad
that it showed the alternate boot menu, allowed you to select the
alternate boot device and then booted from the HDD anyway. Five months
ago, I bought a Presario CQ60 (from Newegg.com) and I have installed
Debian and Ubuntu on it several times w/o problems. It sounds like the
reseller has added some M$ extensions to be "helpful."
Giff
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