Something a little better(maybe) than a Sager 8887

Xbox... heh. Best use for XBox is for linux... Kinda funny

Ok yes I am being a bit exaggerating. At any rate on to your question, I cant think of a reason right off Linux wouldnt play nice with the Core Duo, in fact short of having a definite answer, I will look at other Intel Chipsets that are all pretty well supported in general and lean towards yes it will.

Seablade

By the way, if you are doing coding, I would say,. put more emphasis on durability and portability than on power in general, well for laptops anyways. Then again I tend to reccomend this for any laptop

Seablade

stay away from sony, over priced, terrible tech support (although nice screen). Dell is ok with a good coupon, if anything take a look at the ASUS z96j or something a bit lighter/smaller if you want more mobility.

and yeah, as long as you got an SMP kernel loaded you should be ok.

Most linux distros support Core Duos. Getting support for the other HW components can be an adventure. For example support for WiFi, bluetooth, video cards, etc. will likely be more of an issue, depending on the linux distro. I've always had luck with latest hardware support through Gentoo, but it's also a little more complicated to setup than other distros.

I just went through a similar laptop buying exercise. I researched laptops with nVidia GPUs only, so this doesn't cover all options. I found most WUXGA (1900x1200) laptops were gaming laptops, with big GPUs, which run hotter and drain batteries faster, so I changed my goal to WSXGA+ (1680x1050). I first looked at 15.4" laptops for the lighter weight but the only Core Duo, nVidia GPU, WSXGA+, 15.4" laptops I could find were the Compal HEL80 and the Toshiba Tecra A7. There's also supposed to be versions of the LG M1 Dual Express and Samsung R65 with those specs, but I couldn't find them for sale into the US.

I then started to look at 17" laptops and stopped with the Toshiba Satellite P100. The specs seemed right, Core Duo, nVidia GPU, and 17" WSXGA+ with their Build To Order (BTO) options, coming in right at 7lbs. Plus early users are saying that they run quiet and cool. Toshiba put out a 25% promo for two days (7/10 and 7/11 only), and I ordered a P100, nVidia 7600 w/256mb, WSXGA+ w/Trubrite, 2.16ghz Dual Core, WiFi/BT, DVD Multi drive, with the stock RAM and HDD, and it priced around 1800. Right now the 25% off promo is over, but they are offering a 20% off on BTO P100s.

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/...offBTO&seg=HHO

Lastly I've always liked the features to weight ratio (and looks) of Asus laptops. If you look at the following thread at NBR forums, you will see that their 17" W2J laptop with an ATI GPU will be coming in an WSXGA+ version and Asus provides a 200.00 rebate for it. Here's the thread;

http://forums.notebookreview.com/sho...&highlight=w2j

p.s. My research didn't include looking at Dells, so there may be models there that fit for you too..