Which laptop to run Gentoo on?

pmazer · n00b Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 22

This is sort of an off shoot from the "Would you run Gentoo on a laptop?" thread. I'm looking to buy a laptop when I go off to college in the fall, and I was wondering people's opinions on which to buy. I'm looking to run Gentoo as the main operating system, but perhaps not. I'm also thinking about buying a Powerbook and just running MacOSX + Darwin.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter, or recommendations for a laptop? I was considering the Thinkpad T42 until I read that IBM is selling off the brand, and I'm worried about quality and support now.

teppomies · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2005 Posts: 3

I have ferrari 3000 with gentoo .. Everything works fine ..

I think laptop with Athlon xp-m processor and Ati mobility radeon is good choice.. (cheap and useful for normal use)

Powerbook is good choice too if you have some money

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pilla · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 12:50 am Post subject:

Would you put Gentoo on your laptop is a good place to start
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mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3224

Just one thing, I will never buy a Mac again. I have had nothing but problems with my iBook. Right now it is in the shop for the 3'rd time with the same issue. I also am not very fond of OSX... even though many people praise it, and it is heads above Windows, IMHO Linux is far better.

I know several others with iBooks and PowerBooks, and some of them have had problems and others have had everything work great, so I guess it is really a craps shoot. I unfortunatly have had by far the most problems of all of them.

One laptop that looks totally sweet is the Toshiba Protege R100. It only weighs 2 lbs! Although it may be more of a challenge to install gentoo on it since it had no cdrom, and apparently you can't boot off the USB drive.

pmazer · n00b Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 22

S_aIN_t · Guru Joined: 11 May 2002 Posts: 488 Location: Ottawa

this has been anwered countless times. you can put gentoo ona toshiba, ibm, compaq, ibook, powerbook...whatever..

good luck.. :D
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pmazer · n00b Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 22

ktm · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:

If you want a laptop to run gentoo on why buy a mac? Just get a cheap x86 with centrino. Unless you're planing to play games or run really heavy applications, you don't want amd's cpu. They use too much battery.

Lotu · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 8:57 pm Post subject:

Buy one that has an NVIDIA graphics card* and is recommended in http://www.linux-laptop.net/. There's not more to it. Many use Macs, but my choice was a cheap Compaq. Explore the mentioned site, it's great.

*) Rumour has it that ATI is releasing a new driver with better support. Stay tuned and hope the next one comes sooner after the next version of Xorg.

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spb · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject:

iTux · Guru Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 586 Location: Toronto

I'm using Gentoo on a iBook G3 700MHz. Very good combination hardware/software (especially where silence, mobility etc. are important factors).

The problem with the recent Macs laptops reside mostly around the wireless card (Airport Extreme g) that is unsupported and has been unsupported for several years, so don't expect support anytime soon... Mine have an Airport (non-extreme b), so it works #1.

So until Apple changes their provider this is a big disadvantage, especially for laptops.

iTux

ktm · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 11:32 pm Post subject:

spb · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 11:37 pm Post subject:

curtis119 · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:40 am Post subject:

masseya · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:22 pm Post subject:

I'll second that. I recently bought a powerbook and my previous laptop was a Compaq that was very highly recommended at the time. It ran linux well, but the hardware quality is just not on the same level as my powerbook. Plus, OS X is cool and you can to play around with Gentoo for Mac OS X.
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iTux · Guru Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 586 Location: Toronto

slikdigit · n00b Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 73 Location: US

masseya · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 9:31 pm Post subject:

pmazer · n00b Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 22

masseya · Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:39 pm Post subject:

petlab · Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2005 10:21 pm Post subject:

I suggest checking out the Sharps with the Efficeon and Efficeon 2. They are ultraportables. You can get one sans optical drive with a 9 hour run time. Or, if you are on 1337 street, buy the MP20 WITH the optical drive, the Efficeon 2, and 4.6 hours run. It is so small you can put it into your pocket :twisted:

Okay, Cargo Pant pocket.

They measure 8 1/2" by 11" by less than 2 and weigh like nothing. yeah, I wish, still saving up.
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Xithix · Apprentice Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 228

For reference on battery life... I get about 4 hours on my Dell Inspiron 5150 (in Windows) when not using internet or 3d graphics.

About 1-1.5 hours playing very intense 3d games at 100% processor.

I only use SpeedStep (tunes down cpu frequency to 1/2 or 1/4 when it's very idle or just doing simple tasks) when I'm not plugged in of course... Battery is 96 Watt Hours.
Haven't tried putting Gentoo on it because I've heard bad news about its hardware and the wireless card I use for it (netgear WG511T)

pilla · Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 12:53 am Post subject:

thatguyiam · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2004 Posts: 23

I have Gentoo running on my recently bought iBook (I'm a college freshman). As for recommendations, all I can say is, I bought the iBook because I also like OS X, and the iBook isn't very expensive. If those two things aren't a factor (ie: you have a lot of money and don't care about OSX), then don't buy an iBook. Overall they're pretty good, but the support is less than an x86 laptop. The important thing to remember is that it's a LAPTOP. Way too many people in my dorm bought these bleeding edge, top of the line, 2.8GHz laptops, and they (a) weigh a metric ton and are as big as a large textbooks. In other words, they just looked at specs and bought the best sounding one. (b) because they're huge, they never leave their desk, so they might as well saved a couple thousand and just bought a desktop. (c) They get no battery life, none. (d) They overheat and shut down, a lot. So, in conclusion, I recommend a small, perhaps slightly older laptop that has a good battery life and can be put in a backpack. The iBook does fit that description, so if that's what you want, I'd say go for it.

Also, upgrade the iBook hard drive. After the default installations of linux and OSX, the 27G they give you isn't much at all. That's why I upgraded to the 60.

*EDIT* One more thing I'd like to add about the iBook. There are a lot of mac related quirks (like remapping the keyboard to have useful buttons) and the new Airport cards don't work yet. Just to keep in mind.

=sasha= · n00b Joined: 05 Mar 2003 Posts: 52

Hi,
I don't wanna rain on your mac and ibm Txx parade, but I have Asus L5800 with Mobile AMD 64 3000+ in it and it is by far much better choice. It is heavy artillery when it comes to cpu power. but then again buttery last 2.5 hours which is good since it is ment to be desktop replacemnt. It is also equiped with everything you can think of, check the specs yourself on the net. And yes, it is very affordable, when I looked at price I couldn't believe it. I looked at the price, then at specs, at price... couldn't be right I thought, but it IS.

And regards Gentoo, everything works, I have fully operational Gentoo notebook, wireless works great too, nvidia as usuall, and so on. (Only thing I had problems with was internal modem).

So go ahead, buy heavy branded stuff for sky high price if you want.
Or... you can think again:)

cheers!

ps. Asus L5800 is not only example of great notebook for a price, open your mind and search:)