Article on Linux on Laptops worth a read for anyone considering it on their laptop...

[seablade]

Ok before I post the link, lemme say the first half of this article is useful, the second half I COMPLETELY disagree with(The distro reccomendations) If you want good distro reccomendations ASK here. Better yet, search first, then ask, this topic has been covered many times, and there are IMO several better distros than the ones named in this article for most folks.

And the concept that commercial distros always trump free ones for hardware detection is laughable at best....

http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/233/42/

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[adoroar]

I have to agree on this, driver support doesn't have anything to do with distro, a distro is just a set off install scripts, startup scripts and maybe a package manager(most likely stolen from debian or redhat) :lol:
The only thing maybe is when some developers only release redhat packages for their binary drivers it can be abit tricky, but always doable.

Although he does say device detection, and to that I don't really know, since I havn't tried most distros, and I don't want to try them, although Ubuntu sounds very impressive I really like what their doing for the community, I even saw a free ubuntu cd in a local computer store which is really cool :D
I've never tried ubuntu though and I never will. hehe :cool2:

<SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE> :surreal: Debian :surreal: </SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE>

[Siul1313]

Dosent ubuntu come from debian? Will edit once I read the article.

I havent tried linux, so I dont really have an opinion, but is there really that much harder to put linux on a laptop than on a desktop?

[adoroar]

Ubuntu is based on debian, in their own words, their making debian more userfriendly :)
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/relationship?highlight=%28debian%29

IMO installing Linux on a laptop isn't very diffrent from any desktop.
The thing that always comes again and again it seems is those 56K soft modems, and if your crazy about hibernation and standby and such it probably requires some experimenting.

[seablade]

Heh most of the major issues get covered in that article, bluetooth and the like is another one.

Ubuntu is a derivitive of Debian, and personally I find its hardware detection to be the best, though there is always some debate, more people have luck with it in my experience than with paid distros like Suse and the like. This is more coming from the amount of questions and how to install things I answer from various distros.

While the actual setup/config process is pretty similar, there are some laptop issues that become more troublesome in as far as hardware support, thus why I thought the article was a nice overview of a few of the issues you may come across and handy ways to avoid them when choosing your laptop, or wether or not to try linux and knowing what will/wont work before hand.

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