[lug] hp laptops

[Ed Hill]

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 03:15, Alex Olivas wrote:
> i'm thinking about getting a hp laptop soon and was wondering if anyone 
> knew of any problems
> loading linux onto it.  a friend of mine told me a while ago it was a 
> nightmare on their desktops.
> something about needing hp drivers for everything and of course they had 
> none for linux.
> aside from this does anyone know about the general quality of hp 
> pavilions?  i've had a hard time
> finding any product reviews.
> thanks,
> alex. 


Hi Alex,

I have virtually no experience with Linux on HP laptops (am a fan of IBM
ThinkPads -- most of which run Linux quite nicely) but heres two things
you could look into:

  1) read the comments at:

       http://linux-laptop.net/

     and:  http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/hp.html
     and see if theres any info on the models you're interested 
     in, and

  2) if you can try out the laptop first (maybe a friend has a 
     similar machine or a display model at a store) then you 
     could perhaps (?) bring a copy of Knoppix:

       http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-old-en.html

     and see how well it runs.  Running Knoppix would give you 
     a pretty good indication of how well supported the major 
     items (most importantly, the video driver!) are with 
     open-source drivers.  And there may be proprietary drivers 
     for some of the hardware (eg. nVidia -- which would not be 
     included in Knoppix) but its a good and *quick* way to test 
     things.

good luck,
Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Room 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
            Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
email:   eh3 at mit.edu,  ed at eh3.com
URL:     http://web.mit.edu/eh3/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464
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