Charles Lockhart wrote:
I'm looking for a laptop that'll run linux really well, is pretty
powerful, and has a BIG screen, something like the new Vaio 16" laptop
monitor. I seem to be finding a lot of info, but none that I really want.
Anybody know of an info source for laptops that could help me narrow it
down some?
Thanks,
-Charles
Before you buy anything, you will want to check a few sources to make
sure it will run Linux well.
* http://linux-laptop.net
List of many brands and models of laptops and experiences of many people
using those laptops.
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi/
Any modern laptop NEEDS ACPI for power management or you will quickly
eat battery power and always run at 100% power (HEAT!). Unfortunately
ACPI isn't mature yet, although the ACPI kernel patch from this site is
approaching that goal. Read through the acpi-devel mailing list
archives looking for success/failure stories about laptops you are
looking at. Most laptops do work well now with this ACPI kernel patch
and tools, but you will need to build your own kernels as currently no
Linux distributions ship with ACPI kernels. (Red Hat 8.1 beta has ACPI,
but it is an older version that generally doesn't work properly on many
systems.)
* Video card should ideally support 3D hardware acceleration.
Surprising few laptops support 3D hardware acceleration in Linux. I
*think* all nVidia Geforce Go graphics can be made to run using nVidia's
proprietary drivers, but that probably would have problems with custom
kernels with big changes like ACPI.
Currently the only laptops that I know support 3D hardawre acceleration
with Open Source drivers have integrated i815 chipset video. This isn't
very fast but at least compatible. Perhaps there are some Radeon
laptops that can do 3D hardware acceleration, but I don't know which.
On the bright side if you have no intention of running 3D games in
Linux, you can probably save $500-$1,000 dollars and buy much cheaper
laptops whose components all work fine with the kernel ACPI patch.
(Also look at the DRI homepage for a list of video cards that support
open source 3D hardware acceleration.)
There are a few more things to think about, but I can't remember them at
the moment.
Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
