light laptop

[bicatali]

Gentooers, I want to buy a new laptop for my job (don't need games). Not more than 2kg and not more than 14" screen. Price does not matter so much.
I would like to use gentoo on it, but without driver headache and starting the fan after 5 min of an openoffice compilation.
Any recommandation? Or forget gentoo and go for a Powerbook with OSX and portage?

[SIR]

I don't have a recommendation for a new laptop (I'm running Gentoo on a vintage '99 laptop here!).

But, as for OpenOffice, there's always the binary package in portage you can get. And, there's the Package CD you can get for a bunch of other binaries if you don't want to wait a long time.
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K6-2 333 160MB
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[bicatali]

My concern is not compilation, but heating. I actually use a lot of software which are quite demanding, and I develop a lot of code.
I am more worried hardware quality and compatibility, especially for the light laptops.

I had a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D 1.2 Ghz for a while, on which I installed Gentoo. Not only it was heavy, but the fan was extremely loud, and constantly running. It use to reach quickly temperatures as high as 75C, therefore shutting down.

[Raistlin]

[warning]user is fond of ibm[warning]
if i were you, i had a closer look at ibm thinkpad X-series

cheers, raist.
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"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

[cato`]

.... or the ASUS S5N series ...
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Don't mess with the Penguin.

[Phage64]

I have an IBM T42 and have it running quite well.. battery life is almost as long as with winders and I managed to get wireless working both without any encryption and with WEP.. The fan rarely has to go up in speed but it does on its own (it gets up to 59C and levels off). ACPI works well and I even have suspend to ram working. Mine has the 1.7Ghz Pentium M (Dothan core with 2mb L2) and has about 3300 bogoMIPS at 1.7Ghz and 1200 bogoMIPS at 600mhz. It actually runs about as fast as a 2.8Ghz P4. So anyways i'd check out the IBM T42 series.. Oh right and real battery life off of the regular battery that comes with it is 4hr 30min under low load (about 10 watts battery drain) and under full load i believe it uses about 21~23 watts total. Mine is also primarily for code development. I know Dell, HP, and Gateway machines are not physically constructed as well which is pretty important for me

[Archangel1]

If you're after something seriously skinny, this looks pretty nice. Price might be a problem though, it's definately not cheap - and may be down on power for what you're after.

Mine's about 1.3kg, and I find that nice - although I'd go lighter given the choice. I think you have to accept that a laptop won't be as powerful as a desktop, but if you're going to be doing serious travelling with it you don't want any excess kilos.

[bicatali]

Thanks all. I am now more focused. Those IBM X or T series seem very good indeed. Any one with gentoo experience on a Vaio S1XP or an Asus M5200N?

[jmk]

I've been running Gentoo on an IBM T23 workhorse for a while, runs fine nothing spectacular on the hardware front.
Everything works ok, I have not bothered about dri on the Savage VGA chip and the modem is unused.
Hibernation can be achived with a bit of tweaking.
The IBM is a good Linux choice but a bit pricey for the hardware you get in my view.
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[cato`]