Help PLEASE!!! Selecting laptop hardware.

[elludium_q-36]

Hello,

I picked up an old desktop maybe three years ago, an HP Pavilion 3300+ AMD 2.2 Ghz. The reason I mention that is, it just works. Kubuntu 8.04 is fine.

I've had bad luck with older laptop hardware. I tried a Dell Latitude C840 ( Service Tag: 64MS731 ) which didn't work out. I recently tried an old sony Vaio ( Machine Name: PCG-R505TSK ) with Kubuntu 10.04.3 "Lucid Lynx" LTS and it's a total snail!!! I even got rid of Nepomuck/Strigi/Avahi daemon, etc. Not much it takes to clog up the pipes for this ol' Padawan.

I'm really on a budget but my next choice is to try newegg.com and I hoped someone could recommend a couple laptops, say below $475 U.S.D. that would surely work with Kubuntu 10.04.3 and beyond.

Thanks in advance.

[vinnywright]

Re: Help PLEASE!!! Selecting laptop hardware.

I'm curently running on a HP-G62 and all seams well in 11.04 & 11.10 .......the wirless chip is so new that 11.04 and below you must compile the driver but 11.10 has it

Network controller: Ralink corp. RT5390 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe

I think it was around that price and so far is runing sweet the corei3 is seen by the system as 4 CPU's and the 4Gig of ram seams to be adequate for even vid recoding. The HDMI out works great in Kubuntu and was unusable for desktop displaying in windows-7 even after upgrading the display drivers.(whitch was suposed to be the fix)

so far nice box

VINNY

[charles052]

Re: Help PLEASE!!! Selecting laptop hardware.

I'd also go with HP. The just seem to work with Kubuntu. I bought me a new DV6 and tried out Ubuntu and everything crashed. Tried out the Kubuntu 10.04 cd and it ran fine with the exception of the wireless card, but again, this is from the cd and I'm sure the driver for the card is in the repositories.

My wife also has an HP DV7 running Kubuntu 10.04 and I've got samba shares and pulseaudio server running a bluetooth link to a wireless receiver. Everything seems to work on that thing.

Seriously, from my experience, HP works. I think GreyGeek runs a Sony with no problems.

[ardvark71]

Re: Help PLEASE!!! Selecting laptop hardware.

I'd also go with HP. The just seem to work with Kubuntu.

Seriously, from my experience, HP works.

Hi all...

I would agree for the most part. Kubuntu has been solid with a couple minor issues on my dv9830us. I suspect this has to do more with the fact that most the chipsets are either Nvidia (graphics only) or Intel.

Regards...

[claydoh]

Re: Help PLEASE!!! Selecting laptop hardware.

Dells usually have decent support as well, due to their ubiquity. pentium4 laptops, such as your dell will run like an old, tired dog, unless there is more than 1gb ram, though it is usable with 1gb. The video in that should be supported, but which driver (free or non-free) is better? Same for wireless, depends on the card. Either case, something may not work out of the box, but there are many of them out thee, so googling brings up tons of stuff (good and bad). My Compaq laptop with similar hardware runs OK, as a surfing machine, maybe text editing.

The Sony is just too old for modern Linux variants. There are other lightweight linuxes out there, though so all is not lost.

laptops in general, especially older one, due to non-standard and unique hardware configs have always posed problems, but it is much better the newer you get. My 2008 Dell dual core unit (200 bux off ebay, ) worked 100% out of the box, with the exception of having to enable a non-free driver for the wireless.

To make it easier in choosing, intel hardware is usually best supported - in video cards and wireless chips. Though the gpu's aren't as powerful as the ati/nvidia ones, they do quite well overall. It is usually the viddeo and wireless that cause the most problems as far as I see these days. Older laptops with ati graphics have better free driver support than older nvidia, ati usually don't even have proprietary drivers available for these anyway, which is probably why But the new free nvidia drivers are getting better all the time.

Clear as mud,as usual