__/ [ Kier ] on Sunday 30 April 2006 17:59 \__
> On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 04:35:46 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Even laptops which are "designed
>> for Windows XP" appear to work fully 'out of the box', with Linux. People
>> are just scared to have a go at the setup, due to stereotypes.
>
> Some laptops do work OOTB, but not all, or at least, not perfectly. My old
> Compaq Presario does, though for a while it had problems with Mandrake and
> Fedora (down to that particular version of Xorg, I think). My mother's new
> Dell works with SimplyMEPIS, including wifi. But my Toshiba doesn't like
> Mandriva at all, and though other distros will install, only SUSE and
> MEPIS will recognise the ethernet hardware properly (that said, it *is* a
> somewhat uncommon NIC and Toshiba is not the most Linux-compatible of
> manufacturers).
>
> Everything else, bar 3D graphics, does work well out of the box with SUSE
> on the Tosh, though. The real downer is its poor battery life. Otherwise,
> it's really not a bad laptop, but if I have to replace it in the future,
> I'll go for different manufacturer.
Hi Kier,
In that case, _in the future_, put the horses before the carriage** and pick
a laptop which you know will work with your favourite distribution. A quick
Web search, as well as the extensive documentation about particular laptop
models and Linux distributions, will make this trivial. Distributions tend
to be hardware-backward-compatible (I came across some exceptions involving
the suSE 9.3->10.x migration), so it's a rather safe bet.
The Dell models appear to be fairly Linux-friendly. Whether they confirm the
arrival of their Linux laptop at France, we are yet to find out. There has
been no official announcement, yet. Only the Inquirer had a blurb, which
seems rather reliable.
Best wishes,
Roy
**Have you ever purchased a ticket to a metal concert and had regrets when
you found out that no classical music was contained therein?
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
7:35pm up 3 days 2:32, 13 users, load average: 0.68, 0.71, 0.64
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
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