Researching Linux laptops

English Hardware
1

Hi guys,

my apologies if this is replicated somewhere else I’ve done my best to have a look around and it appears the last post like this was from 2008:

It’s less of a support question than a reccomendation question.

I’ve been researching laptops and I now know roughly what I want. A core i7 cpu with a mid-high end graphics card with 1gb or VRAM and 4gbs of DDR3 and a 720p+ screen. I’d like to start learning how to use Linux and Suse seems a fairly good distro, though I’d also like t dual boot it with windows 7 professional (x64).

The obvious choice is Lenovo but my budget doesn’t stretch much beyond £1200.

I am tempted to go the easy road of buying a probook 1310s which is already certified for Suse and would save me a packet but there would be a load of compromises hardware wise.

I quite like the new Dell XPS 16 laptop with the core i7 chip inside and also the HP envy 15 (though I’m slightly put off by the streams of hotrunning poor customer support stories related to the consumer side of HP laptops).

What I’d like to know is if anyone has any experience of the XPS 16 (I’ll be upgrading it with an intel wifi card) or the envy and whether I stand a chance of getting Suse to work with such new laptops? I’d also welcome any recommendations (up to ~ £1200).

2

You can get a new lenovo from ebay for around £400- £500 if you order it from ebay.com- the us version of the site.

I’ve done just this only my lenovo t500 laptop has 4GB ram, 2.53GHz processor, 160GB hard drive. It cost me $869- $69 which was international shipping from the US to London, UK with ebay.

Give it a go!

PS- Lenovo’s thinkpad range of laptops only provide its world renowned quality from the T range upwards.

lenovo t500 laptop, great deals on Computers Networking, Specialty Services on eBay!

New Lenovo ThinkPad T500 2.4GHz 2GB 250GB XPPro 22428QU - eBay (item 370306007907 end time Jan-11-10 20:26:26 PST)

3

Thanks for the advice Ariaane, I was looking for something with a little more graphical grunt and a higher res display optimally, and if I give up on the graphics card the probook doesn’t seem like such a bad option comparitively.

4

If you are looking for small and thin laptops, around 13.3 inch in screen size, I’ve compiled Linux compatibility information on some of them:

Acer Timeline series like 3810/4810: very good price for the value, but issues with suspend to RAM and some other small issues.
Sony Vaio Z series: very good Linux compatibility but at a high price.
Dell Latitude E4200/E4300: good price for the value, perfect support all around including suspend to RAM but not very stylish and no discrete graphics card.
Lenovo ThinkPad X301: pricy but very good quality, almost 100% Linux compatible but no discrete graphics card.
Asus UL30/UL80 series: very good price for the value, discrete graphics card and almost perfect Linux compatibility.
Some other laptops to consider: Toshiba Portege R500/R600, Samsung X360, HP Envy 13/15, Dell Adamo, Toshiba T100/T110/T135 series and HP dm3 series.

http://linux-macbook-air-killers.blogspot.com/

5

I own a HP dm3 and you can check the HCL for issues about the laptop. I also came across some forums where user complain about the buggy BIOS in HP Envy series when running Ubuntu.

If you want 100% Linux compatibility, I think you can go the Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu route (and of course you would like to replace that with openSUSE :P).

6

Cheers guys. I’ve decided to go with the Dell XPS 16 in the end, Core i7, (ATI graphics…), DDR3 and an intel wireless module, I’ll deal with chipsets etc later.

Anyway I’m going to give it a go and I’ll post here to let you guys know how it goes. My standard approach to things in life seems to be to dive in waaay above my head and things generally turn out OK after a whole load of work to find out what the heck it is I’m meant to be doing :stuck_out_tongue:

Wish me luck, I’m starting to think I’ll have a working linux operating system in 12 months or so…

7

I forgot to say, in the end I steered away from HP consumer laptops because the overwhelming feeling I get from trawling is that the BIOS isn’t too friendly and the heat is chip destroyingly high inside.

8

Ok I have it ordered!

It’s going to take a month to come because I’ve ordered an intel wifi card and I doubt they’re shipping any at all at the moment as there seems to be a problem with the BIOS/Power adaptor and issues of throttling when the system’s being worked.

Got my shiny linux dvd’s burned to play around with (Suse/Ubuntu/Fedora) and now I just have to drum my fingers and cross my fingers I get a fully functioning system that I can play around with.

I’ll post again in a month when I will either be trying to sort out installing one of the linux distro’s or emo raging about a broken laptop rotfl!

9

mark dsp wrote:
>
> ATI graphics… . . . Wish me luck
>

with ATI graphics you will certainly need a lot of luck!

–
palladium

10

And here I am, too late. Don’t need any hard words, ATI thinks it can miss us as customers.

Instead of going for CPU power, I would have gone for SSD instead of the 5400 rpm HDD you’re buying now. My € 500 laptop with € 140 SSD performs much better than most expensive high power laptops. And the NVIDIA chip does the job at least as nice as my 9800GT.

11

> And here I am, too late.

well…a ‘new guy/gal’ drops in here on 3 Jan…asks a question, gets
answers from two different first time posters here (within four hours)
(within 8 hours) and only one with any longevity here…and, then
within three days the original questioner has ordered a laptop brand
(and graphics brand) which NO one recommended…

what’cha wanna bet he ordered a Win7 laptop, and didn’t try to find
the Dell that is BORN with Linux inside…

i guess he will be back moaning about all his problems . . .

–
palladium

12

While I understand where that quote comes from, I also believe there is more to this.

Frankly, nvidia have a HORRIFIC reputation for providing reliable hardware in laptops. The percent of broken laptop returns due to nVidia hardware is SIGNFICANTLY greater than Intel and greater than ATI combined !! nVidia in a shareholders meeting accepted a multi-hundred million dollar write-off because of the MASSIVE number of returns of their broken hardware.

I am a BIG nVidia fan and I WILL purchase nVidia hardware for a desktop (where it is easy to swap out a failed card) but in a laptop it is often VERY difficult to swap out a failed graphic card. Given the current PATHETIC reliability of nVidia hardware compared to that of Intel and ATI, I will NOT purchase nVidia hardware for a laptop. And I prefectly understand anyone else who makes the same choice to avoid nVidia in a laptop.

So what does that leave ? Intel ?? No way.

Frankly, the current state of Intel drivers for Linux is worse than that of ATI. Yes, some drivers work well for one kernel release, and then fail miserably for others. ATI may “seem” to get more complaints than Intel, because there is significantly more ATI hardware on the street than Intel, but I would not buy Intel for Linux given the current sad state of their drivers. A number of Linux on-line articles have been written about the sad state of Intel graphic drivers for Linux.

So what does leave? IMHO it leaves ATI, … despite the fact that their drivers, while better than Intel, are worse than nVidia.

13

It’s ok I’ve not entirely bailed on the idea of buying something else if anyone’s got a suggestion!

I’ve got 7 days where I can try the laptop out and return it free of charge if I don’t like it after it arrives in February.

I thought I’d just clear up a few issues first of all:

It’s a 7200rpm (I believe it’s a Seagate) HDD. I really cannot bring myself to the point where I think and extra £250 for an SSD is a good idea yet.

Yes it has windows 7… but I didn’t much fancy Vista and XP is a bit old school and I work with windows and windows apps most of the time at work. I get Office enterprise and visio for the cost of shippping the CD to me under our company purchase scheme; I think it works out as £20 or something, saving me around £350.

The laptop isn’t arriving till mid February so that gives me plenty of time to hear people’s opinions. If it’s a none starter I can just return it but if it isn’t it’s saved me the month and a half it takes to get shipped to me.

Just to reiterate what I’m actually looking for: I’m looking for something which is fairly well built has a good quality screen but doesn’t have to be insanely good, for picture editing and things of that nature and that can handle most modern games at moderate settings (I know there’s a throttling/PSU issue with the XPS 16 but I’m counting on them fixing it for the moment). Most importantly it can’t cost over £1200 and that’s with a copy of windows 7(sorry guys but I’m completely new to linux and I need my microsoft crutch till I can find my feet).

I did have a look at the Envy 15 which some people are trying to sort out with linux at the moment but I’ve read on other forums that there’s a problem with BIOS which destroys linux installs and also affects windows to a degree, although I think they’re working on it.

Some people seem to have got the XPS 16 running with linux and reports are that that particular model’s i7 + chipset plays nice where others are having problems.

Don’t get me wrong I would love to buy this laptop with Ubuntu or Suse preinstalled but I have a choice of about 3 laptops in the UK and none of them are particularly high end.

Has anyone any experience of the new Asus M60j at all? It’s around the price/performance mark but I’ve heard the battery life is pretty abismal and the build quality isn’t fantastic.

I apologise if I sound like I haven’t listened or waited. I’ve taken into account what we’ve got so far but the main let down has been to do with either performance or in the case of Lenovo, prices which frankly I can’t afford till I put some time between me and uni!

I absolutely accept my high levels of ignorance when it comes to linux but I’m doing my best to enlighten myself and as such I am willing to listen to any ideas or feedback you guys can come up with. Thanks btw anyone who’s posted. When I do get this thing and if I haven’t already decided to send it back, I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes with dual booting linux.

14

One other question actually:

How bad are proprietary drivers from ATI? I know they have a shocking history but I read, “Part of the reason why 2009 was not as exciting as past years with regards to Catalyst Linux driver improvements is because AMD has nearly reached feature parity with the Catalyst Windows driver, so there is not a whole lot of missing features”, on Phoronix.com. There is a proprietary driver for the potential graphics card so despite being more of a faff am I really losing out that much (4x crossfire drivers and eyefinity functionality loss aren’t going to keep me awake at night on a laptop)?

To be honest, windows wise, I’ve always been fairly happy using ATI once I got my head around the uninterrupted joy which is the catalyst control centre and when your graphics card is soldered to the motherboard reliability is something you tend to think about…

15

When they works, they are pretty good though not as good as they SHOULD be.

nVidia does provide decent drivers for their hardware though. The same game I run using wine in openSUSE is faster than on Windows with the same hardware. Furthermore compatibility issues with new version of X and kernel isn’t so big and are worked on pretty fast. However, I have seen KWin drawing corruption issues when KDE4 first came out not being prioritized by nVidia and was fixed finally after a little bit over 1 year.

16

Thanks for the info Michael. I’m beginning to think I might just return this and go for a laptop with Nvidia.

I dug a little deeper with my research beyond just the specs and performance of the different i7’s and some worrying patterns are emerging regarding power consumption and throttling. A turboboosted i7 can pull around 70w, Intel Core i7 for laptops: first review | PC Pro blog, leaving little wonder why temperatures are high, power supply units are appearing insufficient to run laptops with dedicated GPUS and I’m rather glad I didn’t order a pavillion, who’s motherboard can’t cope with the load apparently at the moment.

There’s a new 11" Alienware coming out with a decidedly lack lustre screen but it is under £1000 and somehow they’ve managed to cram in a mid/high end gaming GPU from Nvidia, so I’m thinking about possibly going for that especially as it is rumored to have one of the lower voltage/ smaller die size i7/i5 cpu’s inside.

17

As I noted, I like nVidia and I use their graphic cards on my desktop PC. A failure of a graphic card there is easy to handle, as I have many PCs at home and can easily jump to another PC, while sorting a failed card.

But a graphic card failing on a laptop, when I am likely away from home and depending on how reliability is another matter. nVidia for a laptop for me ? No way. And you may find the pickings for a laptop with nVidia hardware is a bit slim, because many laptop manufactures are upset with nVidia about the quality problems. Ask G0NZ0 and some other users on our forum who had the laptops fail because of a nVidia card overheating and frying the motherboard.

But read up on this yourself so you can judge what is important: [ul]
[li] Inquirer: Every Nvidia Graphics Card With G84 or G86 Chipset Is Ready to Die | Gizmodo Australia[/li][li]Nvidia g92s and g94 reportedly failing - The Inquirer[/li][li]and some GeForce 8 series info: GeForce 8 Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/li][li]and read this for certain >> NVIDIA Fights Two Class Action Suits over GPU Failures - InsideTech.com[/li][li]http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=62407[/li][/ul]
Nvidia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Defective mobile video adapters

In July 2008, Nvidia noted increased rates of failure in certain mobile video adapters.[21] In response to this issue, Dell and HP released BIOS updates for all affected notebook computers which turn on the cooling fan at lower temperatures than previously configured in an effort to keep the defective video adapter from reaching higher temperatures. Leigh Stark of APC Magazine has suggested that this may lead to the premature failure of the cooling fan.[22] This resolution/workaround may possibly only delay component failure past warranty expiration.

But at the end of August 2008, Nvidia reportedly issued a product change notification announcing plans to update the bump material of GeForce 8 and 9 series chips “to increase supply and enhance package robustness.”[23] In response to the possibility of defects in some mobile video adapters from Nvidia, some[which?] manufacturers of notebooks have allegedly turned to ATI to provide graphics options on their new Montevina notebook computers.[24]

On August 18, 2008, according to the direct2dell.com blog, Dell began to offer a 12-month limited warranty “enhancement” specific to this issue on affected notebook computers worldwide.[25]

On September 8, 2008, Nvidia made a deal with large OEMs, including Dell and HP, that Nvidia would pay $200 per affected notebook to manufacturers as compensation for the defects.[26]

On October 9, 2008, Apple Inc. announced on a support page that some MacBook Pro notebook computers had exhibited faulty Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics adapters.[27] The manufacture of affected computers took place between approximately May 2007 and September 2008. Apple also stated that it would repair affected MacBook Pros within three years of the original purchase date free of charge and also offered refunds to customers who had paid for repairs related to this issue.

… if having a failure in a laptop is not critical, then go for nVidia. I know I would, as I like nVidia cards and drivers for Linux. Just pay for the extra warantee when you buy the laptop, as sometimes it takes 2 to 3 years before the failure. Sometimes it happens within a month or two of new laptop delivery. With a warantee, you are covered.

BUT if a failure is critical, and you can not afford the time to return the laptop to the shop, you may wish to consider this a bit.

18

Thanks oldcpu for the info. I’ve read all of the articles and it does look pretty ****ing for NVIDIA.

I’m not going to pick a laptop or indeed return one on GPU alone unless there are definite indications of deficiency. I’d have hoped that NVIDIA learned there lesson from this costly incident but on the other hand it certainly makes ATI more appealing.

My real concern lies with the state of the new i7 processors at the moment when under load, which makes me think I might put off a purchase and return this one, although I’m prepared to give it a fair trial.

19

I think you mean some chipsets with the i7?

I’m typing this from my desktop, which has an Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with an Intel Core i7 920 cpu and 6 GB of RAM, and this PC just flies under openSUSE-11.1 and 11.2. No issues that I am aware of.

20

I really meant i7 mobile cpus not their desktop counterparts. The problem being they draw an awful lot of power which causes havoc when in combination with discrete graphics in terms of heat output and inability to draw enough power from some adaptors.

I think this is probably the best documented case: S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation.

There are a number of factors including chipset, BIOS throttling rules that could have been written by a monkey, resistors on motherboards in the case of the HP Dv6 and underpowered PSU adaptors. Whilst the problem isn’t of itself related to the i7 cpus, rather laptop manufacturers abilities to adapt their designs to the new CPUs, it is an issue that surrounds core i7’s in laptops at the moment.