[NCLUG] linux on recent HP laptops

[Brett Johnson]

On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 21:29 -0700, S. Luke Jones wrote:
> I'm considering getting a new HP laptop (Pavilion dv4-1123us) but I go  
> far enough back with Linux that I'm nervous about nothing working.

/me puts on his HP hat :)...

With a consumer laptop (i.e. Pavillion), it's pretty much a crapshoot.
Stay away from broadcom wireless (which means staying away from AMD
processors, since broadcom is the only option in that case).  Shoot for
Intel graphics, if you don't mind having somewhat lower 3d performance
in order to get better laptop support.

FWIW, HP does "certify" linux on biz laptops.  You can go to this
obviously mnemonic URL:
  http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/321146-0-0-0-121.html

And see which laptops/desktops/workstations have been "certified" with
various distros.  Usually "certified" is a pretty low bar though.  It
basically means that the distro installs, boots, and runs some minimal
regression test.

>  I  
> figure on a laptop that might include: (1) networking, (2) sound, (3)  
> optical drive (esp. burning), (4) everything else. (I take it for  
> granted that power management doesn't work on any laptop anywhere  
> except macs.;-)

Actually, with modern distros, power management works quite nicely
thankyouverymuch.  I have a HP 6910p running ubuntu hardy, and pretty
much everything works power-management wise.  I can suspend/resume, get
reasonable battery life, etc...  The only problem I have is that getting
external video to work properly with the stupid ATI proprietary fglrx
driver (and I'm too hooked on compiz to use the radeonhd driver, which
doesn't do 3d acceleration yet).

> I've consulted "linux-laptop.net" and the ubuntu forums, but this  
> particular model isn't mentioned anywhere. (I think this is a function  
> of all computer models these days having a shelf-life of about 3  
> months. They have dv4's and dv5's and dv7's, but the particular model  
> number is all that's relevant. And probably not even that: it's not  
> like they guarantee an -1123us will have the same parts this week that  
> it did last week.)

That's one big difference between a "consumer" grade laptop, and a
"business" grade one.  With the "biz" laptop, you can get a list of all
the hardware used in it, and can know that that same hardware will
always be used in that model number (google search for "quickspecs
<model>" for HP models).  With the "consumer" laptops, whatever hardware
and/or OEM is cheaper for a given factory run will be used.  That means
that for the same model number, there can be many different variations
in hardware and OEMs used to build it (which is why you'll find it
nearly impossible to find any documentation WRT what hardware it is
actually built with).

-- 
Brett Johnson <brett at hp.com>
 Irritated at Outlook's plain-text quoting?
 http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/