[NCLUG] A laptop computer

Quentin Johnson quent at pobox.com
Tue Apr 3 15:23:19 MDT 2012


I have an older MacBook Pro with a 32 bit Intel cpu that Apple doesn't support any more. I booted it from an Ubuntu install disk, installed it and it runs just fine. I wiped the disk and Ubuntu is the only O/S on it. Everything works except the camera. I was pleasantly surprised that the special keys for sound and screen brightness just worked as did the wifi interface. If I cared I think I could make it work by copying a library over and tinkering with it. My main beef is with the power management. It runs very hot and the battery only lasts about 90 minutes. It's a new battery too.

On a newer MacBook Pro I run Ubuntu and other distros in Parallels virtual machines which works very nicely.

If I was buying a new laptop just to run linux I'd go with commodity stuff or maybe something from system76.com.

Quent Johnson

On Apr 3, 2012, at 2:28 PM, Sean Reifschneider wrote:

> On 03/26/2012 12:33 AM, Michael Milligan wrote:
>> On 03/22/2012 06:24 AM, Kerry Miller wrote:
>>> I am in the market for a new laptop computer.  I have been told by a 
>>> couple technicians that ASUS makes the best laptop computer.  I have 
> 
> I have a friend with an ASUS and I believe he's said that he's not that
> happy with it, largely because of the touchpad.  I'm surprised he hasn't
> chimed in on this though...
> 
>> Hard to beat a Macbook Pro if you've got the $$.  And they run Linux
>> (dual- or even triple-boot) just fine with a couple additional drivers.
> 
> I have another friend with a Macbook Pro that has told me that the hardware
> in there is not as standard as generic hardware, so supporting it is not as
> easy as it could be, so it's not so great for running Linux on.  He runs
> Linux under a virtual machine in OSX rather than native.
> 
> Sean
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