Need official website for Linux on laptops

English Hardware
1

This is about Linux installation on laptops for private or small company use. This is only a wish.

One factor reducing Linux’s use to around 1-10% of computers is that there is no official website about how Linux will work on a specific laptop.

Some Linux organization must take the burden and do the tests.

I need to know how Linux will work on a laptop or other small device that I would like to buy or recommend. Every time I am facing this puzzle and taking risks. Aren’t there enough professionals (we speak about a few people) who would do the work full-time?

The website must be official; there is no need for another fragmented website full of advertisements. Descriptions must have an author, model, date, and list of working, partially-working and non-working features. There is no need to do a thorough test, only check installability. There is no need to test all laptops and tablets, a few from each category, perhaps 40 per year, would be enough. This is what will differentiate it from various other websites with partial information. The “Popular Photography” magazine with its very small team is able to test all worthy photocameras entering the market. Important thing in their work is that they test all important models, on time and most quite thoroughly, giving readers a good review.

Candidates, in my opinion, are The Linux Foundation, Samsung, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Rad Hat, Oracle, one of Linux journals. The Linux Foundation, for example, has 11 workgroups and several programs. The hardware compatability list on SUSE’s web site was useless and I have stopped looking there years ago.

What a major help it would be, if I could oder a laptop with assurance from openSUSE or Linux Foundation that somebody was able to install Linux on it!

2

On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 12:36:01 +0000, ZStefan wrote:

> What a major help it would be, if I could oder a laptop with assurance
> from openSUSE or Linux Foundation that somebody was able to install
> Linux on it!

This would be possible if laptop models were stagnant - but keeping up
with the sheer volume of laptops produced, new versions being released,
and such - it would be just as difficult as doing this for desktops.

It also would be possible if Linux stood still, and all distros produced
the same results on the same hardware (ie, all used the same compile-time
options), included (or didn’t include) the proprietary firmware
consistently, and so on.

The best thing to do is determine what you need and then try different
laptops yourself and see what fits your needs.

I’ve personally installed Linux on the following makes/models

Dell C610
Dell C640
Dell D610
Dell N7110 (my current laptop)
HP g7 (my wife’s current laptop)
IBM Thinkpad T42p

And whatever my son’s laptop is (I forget because it’s been a while, but
he still uses it).

Each had its own things that worked great, and their own things that
didn’t work well (there were two versions of the wireless card for the
C610 and C640, one worked brilliantly, one didn’t work at all).

My N7110’s touchpad didn’t work properly initially (it was recognized as
a generic mouse). Then there was a fix for the issue, and now it works
fine.

There’s no way any organization could keep up with the changes, bugfixes,
and variations in hardware and distributions to make such a site feasible.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

3

as much as i like OpenSUSE
for a small business i would not use it

SELD/S or RHEL

buy the non free SUSE enterprise Linux Desktop and or Server 12
or the non free
RedHat Enterprise Linux 7

BUT
if you already have the INTERNAL tech staff to do your own IN HOUSE support
/* well you would not be asking this question to begin with */

then use OpenSUSE 13.1 LTS

or
CentOS 7.0

but laptops and RHEL do not mix too well
DOUBLE CHECK!!! with the redhat certified product list and the Novell certified list for SELD
( the sales rep can help with that)

Candidates, in my opinion, are The Linux Foundation, Samsung, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Rad Hat, Oracle,

non of these make hardware except “Samsung”
and these two"The Linux Foundation, Samsung" do not even make a operating system

4

On Sun 01 Feb 2015 09:08:04 PM CST, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 12:36:01 +0000, ZStefan wrote:

> What a major help it would be, if I could oder a laptop with assurance
> from openSUSE or Linux Foundation that somebody was able to install
> Linux on it!

This would be possible if laptop models were stagnant - but keeping up
with the sheer volume of laptops produced, new versions being released,
and such - it would be just as difficult as doing this for desktops.

It also would be possible if Linux stood still, and all distros
produced the same results on the same hardware (ie, all used the same
compile-time options), included (or didn’t include) the proprietary
firmware consistently, and so on.

The best thing to do is determine what you need and then try different
laptops yourself and see what fits your needs.

I’ve personally installed Linux on the following makes/models

Dell C610
Dell C640
Dell D610
Dell N7110 (my current laptop)
HP g7 (my wife’s current laptop)
IBM Thinkpad T42p

And whatever my son’s laptop is (I forget because it’s been a while,
but he still uses it).

Each had its own things that worked great, and their own things that
didn’t work well (there were two versions of the wireless card for the
C610 and C640, one worked brilliantly, one didn’t work at all).

My N7110’s touchpad didn’t work properly initially (it was recognized
as a generic mouse). Then there was a fix for the issue, and now it
works fine.

There’s no way any organization could keep up with the changes,
bugfixes, and variations in hardware and distributions to make such a
site feasible.

Jim

Hi
Yup it varies from month to month with hardware…

Let’s see from here;

IBM Thinkpad T42 - openSUSE 13.2 32bit. MBR boot. [In use]

DELL Inspiron 1545 (upgraded to T6500 cpu) - SLED, this needs the
broadcom-wl driver. MBR Boot. [in use]

DELL Latitude E5510 - openSUSE and SLED, this need the broadcom-wl
driver. UEFI boot, could select the boot order in UEFI mode. [Gone,
died, power surge]

Compaq CQ56 (upgraded to T4400 cpu) - openSUSE 13.2 MBR Boot. [In use]

HP 2000 Notebook - openSUSE and SLED, used atheros ath9k driver, UEFI
boot, need to press F9 to select efi file if multibooting. [Gone to
nieces and nephew]

HP ProBook 4525s - openSUSE and SLED, needed the broadcom-wl
package UEFI boot, need to press F9 to select efi file if multibooting.
[Gone to BiL]

HP ProBook 4430s - openSUSE and SLED, used atheros ath9k driver, UEFI
boot, need to press F9 to select efi file if multibooting. [Gone, sold]

HP ProBook 4440s - openSUSE and SLED, one had atheros and the other
realtek both supported fine. UEFI boot, ability for secure boot and
custom boot, easy to setup for multibooting. [One gone sold, one still
in use]

HP ProBook 455 G1 - openSUSE 13.2 at present, has the realtek RTL8188EE
wireless adapter works fine. UEFI boot, ability for secure boot and
custom boot, easy to setup for multibooting. [Just acquired this
weekend, still setting up]

The only things that affected me for a short time where backlight
issues with the 4430 and 4440 systems which were simple fixes in the
kernel options until fixes appeared in updates.

All my HP systems have 8GB of RAM and mixture of SSD’s and rotating
rust.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 13.2 (Harlequin) (x86_64) GNOME 3.14.0 Kernel 3.16.7-7-desktop
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