I'm looking for a linux laptop, medium spec. I want to pay roughly around £800. I'm intrigued by www.dnuk.com, since they offer laptops with linux preinstalled, but their prices seem a little higher than I can afford.
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net)
Ricardo
I'm looking for a linux laptop, medium spec. I want to pay roughly around £800. I'm intrigued by www.dnuk.com, since they offer laptops with linux preinstalled, but their prices seem a little higher than I can afford.
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net) --
I'm looking for a linux laptop, medium spec. I want to pay roughly around £800. I'm intrigued by www.dnuk.com, since they offer laptops with linux preinstalled, but their prices seem a little higher than I can afford.
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net)
-- I have always found Dell to be good for running Linux on. Maybe a 2nd hand one?
Regards Darren
On Friday 26 Apr 2002 9:37 am, Darren Casey (Personal) wrote:
I'm looking for a linux laptop, medium spec. I want to pay roughly around £800. I'm intrigued by www.dnuk.com, since they offer laptops with linux preinstalled, but their prices seem a little higher than I can afford.
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net)
Ok, I'm going to try and post this again, somehow kmail changed my FROM and REPLY TO address :/
If you look in <SWEAR> Dixons, currys or PC World </SWEAR> you'll find a great laptop with the brand name of Advent, which is priced at 700 quid upwards. I have one and its perfect for running linux. Im sure for 800 you'll get 1ghz Celeron, 256mb Ram, 20 gig HDD, DVD, openGL gfx card and an internal LAN NIC. Everything worked first time after installing slackware, with the exception of the damn WinModem, but I have a Psion Gold card going for 25 quid (minus the cables tho, cant remember where the buggers got to)
IMHO. Advent is a very good laptop for running linux, and its priced great too.
John Freeman wrote:
If you look in <SWEAR> Dixons, currys or PC World </SWEAR> you'll find a great laptop with the brand name of Advent, which is priced at 700 quid upwards. I have one and its perfect for running linux. Im sure for 800 you'll get 1ghz Celeron, 256mb Ram, 20 gig HDD, DVD, openGL gfx card and an internal LAN NIC. Everything worked first time after installing slackware, with the exception of the damn WinModem, but I have a Psion Gold card going for 25 quid (minus the cables tho, cant remember where the buggers got to)
IMHO. Advent is a very good laptop for running linux, and its priced great too.
I seem to remember that when I tried to install Linux on my brand new Advent PIII 700Mhz laptop at one of the ALUG meetings at Syleham (there were witnesses to this!), the screen suddenly went dead and I couldn't use the laptop ever again. It was working absolutely fine with Windoze beforehand.
Much later on, when I received my brand new replacement machine from PC World, I was using Mandrake 8.0 and then suddenly many I/O errors appeared on the HD and I stopped using Linux on it immediately. Once under Windows everything was fine. I quickly got rid of the laptop and replaced it with a Sony Vaio and have been happy ever since.
Regards,
Martyn
On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Ricardo Campos wrote:
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net)
you can shoehorn Linux/BSD onto most (all) laptops, if you go for a new one then i would go for something light with a decent screen and battery life. Try and make sure weird things like the Cardbus/PCMCIA controller is supported under linux and try and go for something that someone else has got working before (fiddling with modelines to get your TFT screen working is not fun, especially as you can damage them!).
Personally I would be thinking more about the overall usability of the laptop than specific linux compatability, i.e. what do you want to do with your laptop? do you want to take it on the train? will you have to carry it lots? (a heavy laptop more often than not will get left at home) how long do the batterys last for? I have a nice Sony Vaio picturebook with Transmeta Crusoe CPU and a screen resolution of 1024x480 and i love it as it isn't heavy and is a nice size to put into a rucksack etc and everything works under linux including the camera and jogdial!.
Oh and one other thing if you buy a secondhand laptop be careful in case the battery is knackered and you need to get a new one, although old IBM stinkpads are always a good buy as the better ones (T series) are much more robust than other laptops and you can always get spares for IBM kit.
HTH Adam
On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Adam Bower wrote:
how long do the batterys last for? I have a nice Sony Vaio picturebook with Transmeta Crusoe CPU and a screen resolution of 1024x480 and i love it as it isn't heavy and is a nice size to put into a rucksack etc and everything works under linux including the camera and jogdial!.
Could you give a model number?
Cheers, David
david casal --0+ --- d.casal@uea.ac.uk --9+ --- www.ariada.uea.ac.uk/~dcasal --)+
On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, david casal wrote:
On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Adam Bower wrote:
how long do the batterys last for? I have a nice Sony Vaio picturebook with Transmeta Crusoe CPU and a screen resolution of 1024x480 and i love it as it isn't heavy and is a nice size to put into a rucksack etc and everything works under linux including the camera and jogdial!.
Could you give a model number?
Its the C1-VE, although i think that was superseded by the C1-VN (faster, bigger disk, and bluetooth) and there is now a newer one that has even better screen res and things etc.
Adam
Ricardo Campos wrote:
I'm looking for a linux laptop, medium spec. I want to pay roughly around £800. I'm intrigued by www.dnuk.com, since they offer laptops with linux preinstalled, but their prices seem a little higher than I can afford.
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net)
Ricardo
Alan got himself a Rock machine last year and has been happily running SuSE on it ever since. He chose the machine as it was very small and light, but still had a 1024x768 screen (or was it 1280x1024? hmm) anyway it was a good resolution for the physical size of machine. It did come with a winmodem but there is a fix for that particular card, and Rock were quite happy to offer help on this point.
Jo
On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 08:30:02AM +0000, Ricardo Campos typed the following...
I'm looking for a linux laptop, medium spec. I want to pay roughly around £800. I'm intrigued by www.dnuk.com, since they offer laptops with linux preinstalled, but their prices seem a little higher than I can afford.
Has anyone got any tips? Should I go for a second hand laptop instead and struggle with the install myself? (yes, I DO know about www.linux-laptop.net)
...and that's all Ricardo Campos wrote I'm afraid
I'm happily running Debian on a Dell Latitude C600 that I got from their 'Outlet' which sells returned machines (various returns reasons no doubt, they don't give you details on specific machines) that have been checked out and fixed where necessary.
http://www.euro.dell.com/countries/uk/enu/dfo/default.htm
The only issue I have is that it uses a MiniPCI Ethernet/Modem from 3Com/USR and the modem is not supported by Linux (not an issue for me). One particular thing I like is that the 10/100 ethernet is built in to the case and not at the end of a flimsy and easily lost PCMCIA adapter cable.
The only problem with buying new laptops is that 95% of the time it will come with pre-installed version of Windows, thus paying Micro$oft a license fee :(
However, buying direct from the manafacurer will probably get around this issue.
-J-
Can i pipe up about Apple here?
I've just got an iBook, having never used a Mac before and am very impressed with OS X. Granted it's not Linux (although Darwin is Open Source), but it can run pretty much any Linux app you care to throw at it, plus if you really want you can install Linux on them, which apparently works quite well, though I haven't tried it myself yet.
It's very easy to get at the BSD layer underneath the gui, in fact i spend as much time in the console in the Mac as I do on my desktop (running Debian).
They may be a little more expensive than an x86 laptop, but they're well worth it imo.
Andrew
Andrew Bayliss a.bayliss@uea.ac.uk wrote:
Granted it's not Linux (although Darwin is Open Source), [...]
Unless something has changed, Darwin is *not* Open Source in the OSI sense, ie it is not Free Software (free as in freedom). This sort of confusion is why I intensely dislike that term these days. Anyway, you're paying inflated hardware prices, inflated software licence fees and have given up your freedoms. Not many cool points for you ;-)
MJ Ray wrote:
Unless something has changed, Darwin is *not* Open Source in the OSI sense, ie it is not Free Software (free as in freedom). This sort of confusion is
I'll bow to your superior knowledge of such matters here, but at least it's freer than Windows.
why I intensely dislike that term these days. Anyway, you're paying inflated hardware prices, inflated software licence fees and have given up your freedoms.
Inflated hardware prices: well, not really by much, if any. Find an x86 machine at the same price as an Apple one and you'll probably find that the performance/features are about equal.
Inflated software prices: Inflated from free (beer), yes, but (from Dabs): Windows XP Pro: £234 Mac OS X: £92
And just for comparison (yes, i know there are licensing issues with the other 2): Red Hat 7.2 Deluxe: £58 Red Hat 7.2 Pro: £140
As for freedom, I can't say as i'm in much of a position to go hacking around with any of OS X at the moment, plus, i can run linux on it if I want (SuSE, Debian, Yellow Dog, Mandrake).
Not many cool points for you ;-)
Damn...
Andrew Bayliss a.bayliss@uea.ac.uk wrote:
Inflated hardware prices: well, not really by much, if any. Find an x86 machine at the same price as an Apple one and you'll probably find that the performance/features are about equal.
On laptops, it's probably not so noticeable actually.
Inflated software prices: Inflated from free (beer), yes, but (from Dabs): Windows XP Pro: £234 Mac OS X: £92
These are prices for one installed copy.
And just for comparison (yes, i know there are licensing issues with the other 2): Red Hat 7.2 Deluxe: £58 Red Hat 7.2 Pro: £140
If this is redistributable still, these are prices for one media copy, which is not the same thing at all. What is more, you cannot be forced to upgrade by a termination clause.
On Thursday 25 Apr 2002 11:25 pm, John Freeman wrote:
The only problem with buying new laptops is that 95% of the time it will
come
with pre-installed version of Windows, thus paying Micro$oft a license fee
:(
However, buying direct from the manafacurer will probably get around this issue.
Alternatively judt ask how much they will knock of for no OS fitted. it's surprising how many will do this.
Ian
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Adam Bower -
Andrew Bayliss -
Darren Casey (Personal) -
david casal -
Ian Thompson-Bell -
jo＠yee-ha.demon.co.uk -
John Freeman -
Martyn Drake -
MJ Ray -
Paul Tansom -
Ricardo Campos