[Techtalk] Linux Laptops

[Mary]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2005, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> Sure, things have improved so that *most* things are going to work out
> of the box, but I'd actually like to have a system where 'Suspend'
> works, where the extra buttons are recognised, where you don't have to
> have MS-Windows installed for everything to work...  I swore I
> wouldn't get XP, ever, and I don't wish to go back on my word.

I can't recommend a single "best" laptop, but I can recommend some
avenues of research.

First, http://www.linux-laptop.net/ . While some of these will be along
the lines of "it mostly sort of works" many of them have a quite decent
breakdown of exactly what does and doesn't work.

Second, check the laptop results at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam . These follow a set template
which means that you can meaningfully compare models. They test against
Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) and Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger). The
laptops marked "Canonical Supplied" were laptops actually supplied by
vendors to Canonical Ltd for compliance testing: that means those
vendors are keen enough to be compliant that they were willing to donate
hardware. (This isn't as altruistic as it sounds, it means they got
volunteer testing, rather than having to pay Canonical to do the
testing.)

FWIW, I have a Fujitsu-Siemans Lifebook S6210 (13" screen) and it works
very well with Ubuntu, including both suspend-to-RAM and hibernate. Only
one component is not working: the smart card reader.

-Mary