[lug] How to purchase a dual (linux/windows) boot machine

Mon Jan 22 21:35:01 MST 2007

On 2007-01-22 20:52 -0700, Siegried Heintze wrote:
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE></TITLE>
> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
> <STYLE type=text/css>
> <!-- 
> .message {background: white; font-size:9pt; font-family:'Arial';}
>  .message p { margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em; }
>  -->
> </STYLE>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY class='message' bgColor=#ffffff>
> I just had a prospective client tell me I might need to supply my own notebook computer to work 1099.<br /><br />For my work, I need to be able to work with both windows and linux.<br /><br />begin horror story...<br /><br />In the spring of 2005 I went to PC club and explained that I wanted a dual boot desktop machine. I gave them a long list of requirements like dual monitors, redundant disk drives etc... They insisted I put money down on the hardware and I reluctantly complied.<br /><br />When the machine arrived in early May I tried to install linux and I could not get it to install. So I took it back to them and they explained that for $300 they would install linux. Finally in August I was tired of waiting and took home a machine that could boot linux but did not have the linux video drivers or linux nic drivers loaded and could not use dual monitors in linux. After a lot of work I finally finished the installation of fedora core 4 myself with the proper drivers.<br /><br />end horror story....<br /><br />Needless to say, this was an awful experience. The problem was that once they had my credit card, I could not get a refund on the hardware (which I asked for). I'm not too hopefull that anyone would build a machine with out money down. What do you think?<br /><br />How can I prevent this from happening again? I was thinking of hiring a lawyer to draft a contract so I could be assured to get the features (e.g., boot linux (suse) and windows vista via both primary and secondary drive bays and via USB 2.0) the retailer or vendor agrees to?<br /><br />I wonder if Del, or IBM or toshiba would sign such a contract after I pay a lawyer to write one? Lawyers are not inexpensive!<br /><br /><br />Thanks,<br />Siegfried<br />
> </BODY></HTML>

It is hard to guarantee that Linux will run to your satisfaction on any
given laptop without doing just that - running Linux on a specific
laptop.  There are a lot of documentation projects and mailing lists
that can take some of the guess work out of which laptop models have the
driver support by your distro of choice.  Here are a couple:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html

IBM specific:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

Google will point you to sites that focus on getting Linux on the other
laptops you mention.

You could also go with a commercial solution:
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.shoprcubed.com/

Linux Journal featured a review of the R Cubed LS1250 in their January
'07 issue that might be of interest.

As for your legal draft of requirements - unless you are a VAR working
on 10s of thousands of units, I don't think you are going to get very
much traction with any reputable manufacturer.

I think with some reasonable hardware requirements and a little time you
could find a laptop that will work great for what you want.

In the future, please send plain text email and don't respond off-topic to a
thread - it's better to start a new one.

I hope you find the laptop you are looking for.

-- 
-Nick Golder