[NCLUG] linux on recent HP laptops

[S. Luke Jones]

On Oct 22, 2008, at 7:21 AM, Brian Wood wrote:
> If I'm looking at a particular laptop I tend to go with the ones that
> have been reviewed in Linux Journal, and are thus known to work well
> with Linux.

Well, the models I want come and go pretty fast. I'm looking to nab a  
Best Buy / Office Depot / ... special some week in the next couple of  
months. That pretty much rules out (usually but not necessarily)  
waiting for a genuine review to come out. And with the big-box  
commodity models, the model reviewed won't necessarily have the same  
parts as the one for sale this week.

> There is also Emperor Linux, which specializes in selling machines  
> that
> they guarantee will have all the functions working properly. There  
> is a
> big difference between an outfit that just slaps a Linux distro on
> something and one that actually works to make sure that every thing
> works, but you pay for that difference.

Yes. I've been using macs since 2003. Great machines, and they "just  
work" but Steve will only sell cadillacs. (Make that "Lexi" :-)  My  
wife, however, can't be convinced I need another spendy computer.  
("Honey," I say, "'just works' isn't free.") So as I look for  
something more portable than our old eMac, it will have to be on a  
budget.

> Most WiFi radios are supported these days, by one trick of grabbing  
> the
> firmware or another. Any standard DVD burner interface is usually
> supported as well. Power control, as you mentioned, can often be
> problematic.

Good news about the DVD burner. I built my last linux box in 2001 (a  
desktop) and finally abandoned my sporadic attempts to get a working  
CD/DVD burner about 2-3 years ago.

> I was pretty astounded that my PPC iBook worked great with Ubuntu, the
> only problem being that I have the older ADB trackpad and had to patch
> the kernel to get trackpad scrolling working with the Synaptics driver
> (you need to get it into absolute mode). It really makes a nice little
> Linux box.


That's my plan B, because I've had such good experience with macs: to  
buy one somebody is unloading (Mac OS X 10.6 won't support PPC,  
apparently) and put Linux on it.

S. Luke Jones - slukejones at gmail.com