[CALUG] Linux Friendly Laptops

[Randy Schrickel]

Eric Gosnell wrote:
> I am saving up to buy a laptop.  I want to use Linux as my primary OS.  (I will
> dual boot so I can still have Windows based games, Visual Studio, etc.)  Are
> some laptop manufacturers better at providing Linux drivers for their hardware?
>  What do you recommend?  Second, are some distributions better for laptop
> support than others?

I've had my HP zt3000 laptop running some version of Linux for about 18 
months. I don't think the machine is anything unusual - centrino for 
wireless, and an ATI graphics card. I've run Mepis, Gentoo, Fedora, 
Suse, and a couple other smaller distros on it. SUSE is the one I've 
stuck with (version 10.0), because it's the only one that properly 
configured everything right out of the box. Mepis did at first, but 
subsequent upgrades broke things. Some handled the wireless, some the 
audio, but SUSE is the only one that does both. I spent more than enough 
time trying to get the others to work, then I'd move on to something 
else. Your mileage may vary of course, but I'd keep SUSE on your list of 
distros to try.

If a distro has a bootable CD that you can try on the laptop before you 
buy, that would be a real good thing to do.

randy