buying a laptop specifically for Gentoo

[Dr Croubie]

ok, so i've never owned a laptop before, for various reasons, so some of these questions may sound like i'm an noob (and indeed, i am with respects to laptops), but i'm fairly proficient with the rest of the computer world, i've been a gentoo user for many years (and have an elec.eng. degree, and used to part-run a computer business, just never dealt with the laptops, and definitely not in relation to linux).
and i know some questions may be very easily solvable with a quick google, but i'm currently living out of a backpack and internet is a luxury for me sometimes (no idea how long this will take to write).
Also, a lot of my opinions/experiences were formed many years ago, if you find yourself thinking "yeah, that was the case 10 years ago, not now", don't worry, i expect it (i've just noticed all you kiddies tend to say 'notebook' these days. shows how old i am if i keep saying 'laptop').

so anyway, to begin. i'll try organise all my questions to make it easier to read and reply, and leave anything out that won't need to be done until after i've bought it.
and i suppose that not all of these relate specifically to Gentoo, but you're all such a nice bunch of people when it comes to answering questions that i'll lump the whole lot in together

Previous Experiences:
simplest first, who's got Gentoo running on their own laptops? what make/model/etc? what problems did you have with hardware compatibility? did you buy it specifically for gentoo (or any linux), get sick of winblows and switch after you bought it? share your stories...


Hardware Compatibility:
This is gonna be my main issue. i've only ever used desktops, mainly because i like the customisability. having used linux for a number of years i certainly like that if a piece of hardware doesn't work and i can't patch it, it's just as easy to pull it out and replace it with a card that does work. not so easy with a laptop, so i want to buy something i know will work straight up. (and as the aussie dollar is now worth toilet paper and i'm living in europe, i can't afford that approach either).

Wifi
so most importantly, i'm going to need a wifi card/stick/chipset whatever that works. the amount of places i've been that advertise 'free internet' which turns out to be wifi only is highly annoying.
i know there's a list of sound card chipsets that are compatible with linux (i think it's here, haven't looked at it in a while since i gave up on my mobo chip and went back to seperate live! card).
but is there a similar list of supported hardware for wireless chipsets? and more to the point, is there a list of what brands/models use what chipset? last time i checked manufacturers don't hand that info out to Joe Consumer too readily.
last resort i suppose is buying an external usb/pcmcia/expresscard, which would be a nice way to control when wifi is connected, i've never used wifi before either, except to prove to myself how insecure it can be (got bored one day in an RFeng lecture few years back, designed a cantenna, spent the next weekend using my neighbours' net, but that's another story.)
my sis' laptop i'm on now (hp pavilion dv6000) has a nice little slidey switch to disconnect the wifi, if i'm using internal i'd definitely want something similar, or is unloading the kernel module sufficient to disable the hardware, any thus attempts to hack in?

Video/Chipset
So i'm not a fanboy, but i'm definitely getting an nVidia, just because i always have (ever since my 16MB Viper550 TNT, didn't plan to, just turned out that way), and i've never had any problems i couldn't fix.
but what's the deal with laptop video cards? i know you can get seperate cards, but can every laptop take one? i'm not a gamer, definitely don't care for anything more 3d demanding than the occasional planetpenguinracer, but i do like my digital photography and may move into video one day (when i can afford an eos5Dmk2, yeah right).
so i'm definitely going to want the ability to drive a big (ie, at bare minimum 1680*1050) monitor via dvi or hdmi, a nice inbuilt screen would be nice too, 14/15 only considering i have to travel a lot with it (i'll buy a nice big monitor when i settle somewhere). can 'inbuilt' (ie, chipset) graphics do this easily? and if if i get one with chipset graphics can i add in a seperate card later on should i so decide (or is that a very model-specific question)?
i'm gonna be fairly focused on battery life too, so what would be the least-consuming of the three options? (chipset graphics, chipset graphics disabled with extra card, ungraphic chipset with extra card). the only reason i'm wondering is that i know some desktop video cards can reduce power consumption really low when not doing 3d, instead of being 'always on' like some chipset graphics

Other hardware
basically, i'm easy. CPU can be core2duo/turionX2 or better, i do really prefer AMD's architecture (IMC/hyptertransport), but i do know that core2s have both the performance and powersaving edge on them. amd desktops are (were) a crudload cheaper (last time i looked, was pre-phenom release), i don't know how turions compare price-performance wise. performance would be nice for a big ebuild, but if not i'll deal with it, battery life probably more important, i don't emerge -uD every day even at home (only when i'm really bored and wanna watch code fly by).
if i can, i'd like to downclock in the bios like i did with my athlonX2 to save power, and clock up when i have to do a nice big emerge like openoffice or kde. (Can you do that? no idea how bioses work on any pre-built system, letalone laptops, i've only ever built my own systems, never bought pre-built anything).

HDD, as long as it's big and sata (>100gb would be nice, suppose they're all PMR now anyway).
with those new hybrid drives that are coming out, is it possible to seperately partition them? i'd love to have 20~30GB of [/boot, swap, /] on flashmem and the rest as [/home] on regular disc, suppose that's asking a bit much though.
2 hdds would be nicer, i've always ran with a small hda1 [/boot, swap, /] and big hda2 [/home], can you get that in anything under 17"? (there's another question about using reiser with external usb enclosures that i'll link to here when i've written it)

screen, like i said, don't care, 14/15 pref, 17 is too big and 13s get more expensive. higher res the better for my photographs, but they can wait until i settle and buy a nice big external monitor.
definitely want a dvd-everything burner for backing up of said photos, bluray is superfluous (hell, i never even had a dvd drive until early last year).
sound, don't care that much, although it would be nice to listen to the 10 cds i have on this side of the world or watch one of the 3 dvds. if i can't, i'll live.
bluetooth, never used it, not about to.
cardreader would be nice, except that i use xD, and last i checked it's a closed standard that doesn't seem to work with linux easily. i can always use camera as reader though, worked on my desktop at home easily enough. if it don't work, i'll live.
network cable, definitely want this to work (especially during install, finding someone nice enough to let me plug it in is another thing), if it's an nVidia chipset i've never had a problem with any desktop version.
I think that's all that goes into a computer these days. (keyboard/mouse i'm just expecting to work, god help us all if they don't these days).


Barebones & Custom vs M$ Tax (ie, reselling vista)
this is another big one, seeing as i'm on a budget.
last windows i bought new was win98, and i only used 2000 until i switched to gentoo, so bear with me here. from what i've heard, XP was hard (or probably 'officially illegal') to resell. and i presume vista even more so. it's way too late to buy anything with xp on, afaik, so does anyone know the rules and possibility these days of onselling mandatory microsoft tax? (my sis' bf uses ubuntu in their office, they just buy laptops from dell and peel the windows stickers off, and don't onsell it. but they're a big company who can afford it)
the other option is barebones, but i know there's not that many places who sell them, and might turn out more expensive anyway (although i'd rather pay for overpriced hardware than a bill gates ivory backscratcher, especially if it means i get something that works).
and custom built seem to be mostly built for insane gamers and very steep, does anyone know any nice people who build cheap normal-specced laptops without OS (or with any kind of linux just to prove it works, i'll format and install from screatch the second i get it anyway, that's the point of gentoo, right?)
(aside, i do seem to recall ibm/lenovo selling laptops with redhat/fedora or something on a fair few years back. but they were more expensive than the same system with xp. hope that's still not the case.)

Specific software
ok, this is gonna be short, coz most of it can wait until after i've bought.
but one thing i definitely wanna check up on is personal firewalls and wifi security. i've only ever had my desktop (and nothing else) running via cable to an old pentium200 running an ipcop.org firewall, cabled to my dsl modem. no wifi, no personal firewall needed. so if i'm going to be using this thing in free-wifi hotspot cafes and hostels, can i set up some kind of personal firewall easily on a laptop? at this stage i don't care what i have to do or use, as long as i know it can be done.
other random stuff like whether java and 64bit firefox actually work together yet, and what's happening with reiser development since he went on a shooting spree i'll leave for later/other threads.



so i think that should be all for now. thankyou for reading, thankyou especially for anyone who replies to any section of this, i have no real time limit on buying it, may even wait for post-xmas sales if it takes that long to decide what i want, although if i get it next week that'd be nice too.
cheers
richard

[Schwinni]

I didn't read your whole post, but I can answer your question which notebook(s) work very well with Linux:
Thinkpads!

Because of tp_smapi all the buttons and functions keys not covered by the button module are working, it is kinda easy to set up.
There is also a great wiki with many detail information: http://www.thinkwiki.org.

Not to talk about the quality of the hardware itself (robust, stable, hard drive active protection system, ...)

Best regards
Chris

[pdw_hu]

[szczerb]

I can confirm that the N200 works great. I just bought one 2 months ago and I even have native res with vesafb. Hibernation is fine also. The only thing (besides the 56k modem) that I can't use is the fingerprint scanner and that's just because I'm using stable gcc - there is nice software (with pam modules) for it in the wrilsch overlay (but it needs gcc 4.3). Attaching a secondary monitor works great with xrandr - without restarting X.

[Schwinni]

How did you get the function keys to work?
My brother has a 3000 N100 and the only fn key which works is the sleep button.
All others don't trigger any acpi events.
Do they just work with the button module for you?

[szczerb]

What button module? Hmmm....the mute, volume, power keys work in X. Hibernation key works only in console but in X I always used the battery applet to hibernate so I didn't notice.

[Dr Croubie]

thanks for the replies already guys.

that's one thing i forgot to put in there, all the extra buttons and ACPI sleep modes and stuff. basically, i don't mind if any button doesn't work bar the power-on switch (i always runlvl3, startx, quit, the shutdown -h now anyway), actually disabling annoying things like 'auto-sleep-when-lid-closed' would be best, just turn it into a desktop-behaving system, if that's possible. anything else like volume control knobs would be a nice addition though.

but ACPI would be nice to control, i've never been one to sleep or hibernate before like i said, but making sure it downclocks properly automatically would be nice to control to save battery life...

[JanErik]

ThinkPad, T- or X-series, not the consumer crap. Probably some nice second-hand deals if you look around. I have an X40 and it works just perfectly with Linux.

[krovisser]

Anything with Intel, really. I have a Dell E1505 Inspiron that works... okay... Wireless card is an Intel 3945, and has some issues with firmware. ATI X1400 chipset has lots of driver issues (at least, if you want DRM) (oh, and you can't have a frame buffer and X work at the same time... arggghh), but otherwise it works.

I also installed Gentoo on my Dell D510, which has intel everything. It works fine, except I can't seem to set the intelfb resolution, and neither can anyone else... Wireless works perfect, USB, Sound... I'm still working on sleep modes, but haven't really tried all that hard.
_________________
http://www.krovisser.com/

[jcat]

IBM Linux support is good (for obvious reasons).

From my own personal experience, I got a Dell XPS M1530, and it works great with Gentoo. Some people do seem to report issues with the WiFi (3945), but most of these issues seem to be down to configuration from what I've seen. The biggest problem with the WiFi for me is that the areal isn't quite as sensitive as some other laptops, but is fine for normal use.

I will make some obvious suggestions. In my opinion it's always worth getting a 7200rpm hard drive, it will drain the battery a little more, but the performance is so much better. If you like a bling desktop, get a dedicated graphics card, rather than integrated graphics with shared system memory. I believe that nVidia has always been considered more straight forward than ATI, but ATI is now owned by AMD and the driver is being made open source (something nVidia may never do). As for CPU, in laptops Intel is more freely available, I have a Core2Duo which works great, controlled by different cpu governors depending on battery level etc.



Cheers,
jcat