Best cheap laptop for linux?

[R. A. Bilonick]

On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 18:10 -0700, NoOp wrote:
> On 08/13/2009 05:48 PM, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> ...
> > I bought a Thinkpad a21m off ebay for $100.
> > It's currently running Jaunty rather nicely.
> > 750mb PIII with 512mb ram.
> > I had to put a new hdd in it ($20) and add a PCI wireless card (another 
> > $20).
> > 
> > /tony
> 
> Join the A21M club :-) - 800Mhz/384MB & has outlasted multiple 'newer'
> Thinkpads: T21 & T30's (two).
> 
> 
> 
Depends on what you consider cheap. Netbooks are generally less
expensive than notebooks. (One of the British Linux mags just did a
review of netbooks - almost all but not all work fine with Linux.) But I
just bought a Dell Inspiron n15 notebook that comes with Ubuntu. It has
a 15 inch widescreen display. Prices start at around $600 for a basic
notebook. (You can add bigger drives, faster/multiple cpus, etc.) It
comes with Ubuntu 8.10 but you can easily update it to 9.04. Everything
works perfectly - the wireless, the webcam, etc. I've been using Linux
on notebooks for almost 10 years when I had to fiddle to get Linux
working. (I also have an HP 2133 mini which came with Suse and I
switched to Ubuntu. At first there were problems with the unusual
display but now Linux developers have quickly plugged the gap!.) To get
the Ubuntu version of the Dell notebooks, you need to access Dell
through the Ubuntu web page:

http://www.ubuntu.com/dell

I had an older Dell Inspiron 2200 (about 4 years old now) which I
switched from windows to Fedora. It took a little effort (mostly with
the wireless) but everything worked find. Very dependable and Linux
works great on it. The new Inspiron is even better and Linux integration
is seamless. Linux has really come of age on notebooks.

Rick B.

P.S. I think almost ANY modern Linux distribution will work on the Dell
notebook and HP mini, such as Fedora 11 or SUSE. So you aren't force to
use Ubuntu but Ubuntu is VERY SLICK. I am a long time fan of Red Hat and
Fedora, but Fedora does take a little more effort to work out the kinks.
Ubuntu is kink free (well, as kink-free as software can be).  I usually
can get things working but it often takes some time and effort. As an
example, on the new Dell n15, I was setting up to use a Konica Minolta
multifunction color printer (bizhub c352) - not exactly a common
printer. I had it working before on the old Dell under Fedora 8 using a
postscript ppd file I found on the web. It worked, but it would not do
duplex printing and it always printed the pages from last to first(!).
Using Ubuntu on the new Dell, using the printer set up, Ubuntu searched
for drivers (those already installed and for drivers on the web) and
found the official Konica Minolta driver/ppd file and installed it. I
now can do duplex printing and the page print in order. (In order to get
the full power of Ubuntu, you need to enable ALL the available
repositories - free and nonfree, etc.)