Laptop Recommendations?

[Snowhog]

For you, with your knowledge/understanding of how Linux works, using a single partition presents no problems that you can't deal with should they arise. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, many who have just made the move to Linux from Windows don't. And worse, they don't seem to have the patience to develop the knowledge/understanding that will enable them to deal with issues as they arise. It's these people for whom the advice of using at least two separate partitions is geared towards.

I've been using Kubuntu since 2007. I'm rather better than just comfortable with it, but I am in no way an expert, and don't think I ever will be. I use three partitions; root, /home, and swap. It's been my habit, and for me, it's what I stick to.

The beauty of Linux is that, like Burger King, you can have it your way.

[Chopstick]

That's the only argument I have ever heard, but since I do have fairly frequent backups, that is not a huge issue. Also, should you mess up your system so badly that you have to reinstall the OS, you can still mount your hard drive on a different system (or from a thumb drive) and back up your home folder this way. It's a bit more hassle, but I've never messed up my system so badly in all the 5.5 years I have been using Linux now, so the risk seems fairly low to me.
The thing that I do mess up sometimes is KDE, but that's in my home anyway and it is easy to recover.
(In this context, I highly recommend installing a light-weight window manager like IceWM in case you seriously break something in your KDE installation and need a browser to google for help or post in this forum.)

[Snowhog]

The principle benefit of having at least two partitions; one for root; one for /home; is that should "something wicked this way come" in the root partition, you only need to reinstall the OS and mark that /home NOT be formatted. When you have only a single partition for the whole system, and reinstalling the OS becomes necessary, you will loose everything in your users /home directory. If you have a current backup of the users /home directory this isn't an issue. But many unfortunate souls don't have backups at all, or what they do have is outdated.

[Chopstick]

Teunis, I am assuming you are refering to my post about the EFI boot partitions?
Although I wouldn't call myself a specialist.
At first I followed the common advice to at least use a separate home partition, but to be honest, I really don't see the benefit in doing that.
First of all, I would need several encrypted partitions and unlock all of them at every boot, which would be more hassle that it's worth. But even without full disk encryption I stil don't see the benefit. The only thing that has happened repeatedly is that my system crashed because the system partition was full or I was not able to install something system-wide because I didn't have enough space left. In my view having multiple partitions just needlessly chops up usable dispace into smaller, less usable pieces.
Anyway, I'd be happy to hear what benefits you see in using multiple partitions.

[DoYouKubuntu]

could you please tell me your experience with putting Kubuntu on this

Vinny, please have a look at the thread I posted after totally borking my new laptop. It gives a rundown of what happened, and why, and how I resolved it all. Bottom line is that installing Kubuntu on a System76 should not be a problem at all.

I am at the moment thinking of geting one of system 76's systems .
wanted to know if things like the cool back lite key board was easy to get working in Kubuntu (did you get one of the nVidia GPU's) or even if thay would use Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu when I got it .

No, I don't think they would. I say that not because I asked them about it, but because I asked them to partition its hard drive to my specifications and they said they couldn't do it. So when I received the laptop, its drive only contained one partition, and everything was installed there. After ~30 years of installing *nix, I'm very, very set in my ways, and I wanted its drive partitioned the way I like it--so that's what I did. Wiped it, partitioned it, installed Kubuntu on it.

was thinking of the bonobo extreme but at minimum extras added it was up to around $2000.00,,,,, or the touch screen one ,,,,,if I knew it would still work with Kubuntu,,,,,

or that Leopard extreme desktop with liquid cooling DOooooo I'm salivating/drooling .

Ha, ha, yeah, I hear you! I brought my Kudu in at ~$1,000--which was more than I'd intended to spend [when I was planning on buying another HP Pavilion laptop]. But I'm very happy with it.

[vinnywright]

Forgive me for not going back and reading all the posts in this thread. I just want to throw out one thing: I LOVE my new System76 Kudu Professional laptop. Everything about it just smacks of solid, well-built, quality. I highly recommend it.

PS I wiped its original Ubuntu installation and replaced it with Kubuntu.

could you please tell me your experience with putting Kubuntu on this ,,,,,,,,, I am at the moment thinking of geting one of system 76's systems .
wanted to know if things like the cool back lite key board was easy to get working in Kubuntu (did you get one of the nVidia GPU's) or even if thay would use Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu when I got it .

was thinking of the bonobo extreme but at minimum extras added it was up to around $2000.00,,,,, or the touch screen one ,,,,,if I knew it would still work with Kubuntu,,,,,

or that Leopard extreme desktop with liquid cooling DOooooo I'm salivating/drooling .

,,,,, O ya ,,,,but back to point ,,,,,how did the switch to kubuntu go

VINNY

[DoYouKubuntu]

Forgive me for not going back and reading all the posts in this thread. I just want to throw out one thing: I LOVE my new System76 Kudu Professional laptop. Everything about it just smacks of solid, well-built, quality. I highly recommend it.

PS I wiped its original Ubuntu installation and replaced it with Kubuntu.

[christw]

I have had two Toshibas, one HP and my most recent is a Sony Vaio which I am very happy with. It was a bit dearer than the Toshibas, Asus, Samsung etc to get i7 and an illuminated keyboard but if you like quality like a thinkpad then they are worth a look. You get what you pay for :-)

[Chopstick]

Hi Folks,
So I finally have my new Thinkpad. First I have to say that I am very disappointed with Lenovos customer service and the way my order was handled: they cancelled my order without notifying me (allegedly because my email address was not "secure" - it just wasn't Gmail...), and after I finally placed the order againthey weren't able to process my creidt card payment and I had to do a tedious bank transfer (with $25 fees). From my initial order to receiving the laptop it almost took a month!

Now I am installing kubuntu, and first I ran into a lot of trouble, presumably because of this UEFI business. I'm not sure if it is because I used an older installation USB or because I chose the option to just used the entire disk (i.e. let the installer figure out the partitions).
After that I made a new (ubuntu) start disk and configured the partitions manually, and now ubuntu finally boots! Now I only have to do the same with kubuntu (that is all with secure boot and UEFI enabled).
But before I do that, I wanted to get some feedback on the partition setup. I want to have this LVM with full disk encryption (although I don't really know what this LVM really is; I always had this before anyway).
So what I have is this:

A EFI boot partition (at /boot/efi ?) and a ext2 boot partition (unencrypted, mounted at /boot) and the LVM mounted at / (root) containing a single ext4 partition.
The first two partitions are currently 512MB (or MiB?), but hardly any of that space is used (the rest is the LVM/ext4 partition). So Iwas wondering how much space I actually need for the two boot partitions, and do I actually need both of them? (I was thinking that otherwise /boot would end up on the encrypted LVM...)

Btw. I already removed the original HDD and put in my SSD before I did anything. So the entire installation process took placeo n the SSD.

Any suggestions?

Ciao,
Chopstick

[JonoBee]

You wouldn't be located in the GTA anyway, would you?

No, I am in Ottawa.

Too bad you'd already ordered. Oh well....

If you need any help with the adapter, let me know!

[Chopstick]

Thanks for the offer JonoBee, I do indeed need a 9.5mm. But I already ordered one from Amazon (very similar to the one Teunis has for $18 with shipping and tax). You wouldn't be located in the GTA anyway, would you?

[JonoBee]

Hi Chopstick;

Canada Computers sells these adapters (9.5mm white and 12.7mm black) for $16. I know because I bought both. I mistakenly bought the 9.5mm one in error. My Toshiba took the 12.7mm one.

And how it is held in, depends on the notebook. My Toshiba has a single screw in the bottom holding in the DVD drive, and the adapter has a screw mount that matches it.

By the way, if yours takes a 9.5mm one, let me know, I have one here gathering dust.

John

[Chopstick]

But then, having the same queen et al.

I was just waiting for this ;-)

[Chopstick]

Thanks for the info, Teunis - this rubber stick technique makes a lot of sense! I would actually prefer this over screws.
Unfortunately Amazon US does not ship electronics to Canada (I know, it is not obvious, and I suspect it has legal/taxation reasons).
We also pay more, although not as much as you...

[MepisReign]

Hello,
Be careful regarding the System76, please review this topic from another forum
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=35793

I would go with Lenovo any day of the week, I'm a proud owner of 2 oldies, a T400 and a T61, when one of those die I will go with Lenovo again.

Bashing on my friends and forum-mates opinions is not intended.

All the Best

MR