[CALUG] Linux Friendly Laptops

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

Anything that says Intel Centrino Mobile has an IPW2200 in it, as does 
the IBM ThinkPad T42, which I used at my last job. And altho Broadcom 
cards have been tradionally unsupported, people have recently written one.

I would burn a copy of Knoppix, and boot that in anything you are 
considering buying.

As mentioned by others, (K)Ubuntu or SuSE tend to have better wireless 
support than most.

Several distributions have a "rescue" mode, and some of them will offer 
to start the network interfaces. If you can get an address via DHCP then 
you can load a working system.

Finally, if you want to cheat, you can do what I do with my desktop 
systems at home. I buy "gaming routers", which have an ethernet and a 
wireless card in them. A bit unwieldy for a laptop, but it gets you 
connected.

JIM

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 am only slightly better than a novice at Linux administration.  I am a
>developer and I use it frequently at work.  This is my attempt to force myself
>to become more adept at it.)
>
>Thanks,
>Eric
>
>  
>