On ו', 2003-09-12 at 21:06, Osamu Aoki wrote: > On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 01:12:47AM -0700, Jon wrote: > > I'm looking to buy a laptop that can easily be set up to run debian > > linux. I do not need a high end graphics card, nor is there a real > > need for a big screen. Being light weight is not a primary factor, > > whereas rugged reliability would be. Can anyone suggest particular > > brands and models that fit this description? Top priority is that > > debian linux can be easily installed on the machine, while the other > > requirements are less important. > > Many thanks. > > This may sound unintesrting but "Buy most popular PC in your area for > the class of PC.". First thing to check is screen resolution! > > This is how I check. > > * Hardware compatibility issue > > 1. Is the graphics chip supported by Xfree4.x? (If you upgrade soon to > Sarge in preparation, it should be quite OK.) > > 2. Is your PC has some weired feature to be cheap. Shared memory > graphics card is first thing I can think of. If you can afford, please > avoid these. This is usually budget issue and relatively non-issue > since X should be OK by now. > > 3. I will not worry about Linmodem issue. Who use modem. Make sure to > get one with Ethernet. Also make sure you have cardbus PCMCIA (Most of > new PC does.). These are feature and budget issues. > > When you talk about reliability, buy the big brand. This reaches: > > IBM: If you can afford. Their high end are nice. > > Sony/Toshiba/...: Pretty good for the price. They are note-PC companies. > > Dell/...: It is good for most business so should be OK. (Remember, > Dell's dominance is only desktop/server PC. They are not the > performance leader but price leader) > > HP: Expensive. > > Totally generic Taiwanese PC: Hey, if you get reliable local store, you > may consider but risky. > > FYI: I have following Linux note-PCs: > > 1. IBM i486 DX2 50 MHz ThinkPad (Router/Server, 9 year old.) > 2. Sony UXGA, 2GHz Nice and reliable. > 3. Dell inspiron (Bought used at 200 Euro, 300 MHz P2/XGA) > Nice but slow for heavy X apps. > > Osamu
I would avoid buying a sony. I got everything to work under linux, but they customer support is nonexistent, even for windows. Tried to contact them several times with problems on my laptop. If I mentioned I was running linux the immediate reply was they don't support linux. Otherwise the email replay was call us, which resulted with a support guy telling me to press the power button for 60 sec and then I was told to send it in for repair. Their repair shop did one of the worst jobs I have ever seen, and changed 250$ for warranty work. IBMs are good afaik if you can aford them. Be carefull with no brand laptops. Also some of the non intel/amd cpus can cause problems. A friend of mine has a giga-something cpu which apperently doesn't run matlab since it doesn't support java, or at list matlab's java.
