Linux and off the shelf laptops

[baggyeyes]

My seven yr old PC is behaving badly. It freezes in the middle of a loong yum operation, or even in the middle of switching between text apps.

I could try to get it repaired, but as I have dialup (through Airport), getting updates makes me cranky.

So I'm looking at off the shelf laptops, because I can't afford anything on a credit card.

What kind of laptops do you use, and with what distro? I've heard HP is awful, yet on a Fedora Planet entry, a developer said he'd just installed F15 on a new HP, with no problems. I've also noted others using Acer. Lenovo is out of my league, money-wise.

So, out of a mixture of curiosity and part of my on-going mission to get an idea of what is possible, what do you use in laptops? What distros are you using, and were there any gotchas at first?

Edited to add
I'm mostly curious about what kind of hardware people are using; Laptops DEFINITELY, but if you want to talk about your desktop rig and what you've put into it, go for it!


My computer is a Lenovo 3000 J Series. I have an old Nvidia card GEForce 6200, Old Sound Blaster Live! MP3 that still gives great sound - provided I get rid of Pulseaudio. No wireless, it connects via Ethernet to the Airport, which is controlled by an iMac. (not mine).

Comments

[baggyeyes]

I haven't sen many Asus in my area. Sony, HP, Toshiba and Acer are the brands I've been seeing.

I'm also just really curious about what other people are using for hardware. I could even add desktops/video cards, audio cards...wifi. I'm mostly curious.

[pixel]

For desktops I tend to prefer to build myself, I didn't happen to build my current desktop, but it was a homebuilt rig. I've had very good luck with building, but there again it's a matter of 'how much can I afford?' with a dose of google to check for major problems.

I've liked how nicely Ubuntu treats my nVidia graphics card for instance, it detected and automatically offered to install the proprietary driver should I want it, and graphics seems to be one of the major headaches if it doesn't work right.

I find Toshiba makes nice, but expensive laptops, but if I were you, I'd investigate Acer.

[baggyeyes]

I did that for my first desktop, before the Lenovo desktop. I probably could have done the same, but at the time, I really needed it for work, and didn't want to hand pick my components. I love to tinker. I think if I did replace it with a laptop, that tinkering part of me would be a sad panda.