On 14/09/11 14:45, Craig Sanders wrote:
support for laptop-specific stuff (graphics switching, etc) on linux is still problematic. If you choose your laptop carefully, it works great. But if you just buy one without researching it thoroughly, you'll probably be disappointed.
Most people I know who aren't serious techies just have laptops. I have gone through quite a lot of laptops too. NONE of them have managed to work out-of-the-box properly with Linux. Usual suspects are the wifi or suspend not working, but if it's not that, it's something else like sound or accelerated video.
The second-hand market is great for Linux use. Unless you want something exceptionally fast and shiny and new, a 3 year old laptop will probably work just great with some more memory and maybe a new battery. I was recently gifted an old HP nx7010 (which is maybe a little older than 3 years) and Ubuntu "just worked" with the exception of tv out which required a tiny bit of fiddling. Wireless, graphics, touch pad, all good. When doing repairs on laptops I often boot off a Linux USB stick to test things and haven't had problems except for some very new models, although a USB recovery stick hardly equates to production use - I'm guessing if I wanted accelerated graphics I might have more trouble with the newer stuff. James