[Gllug] Linux laptops

[Philip Hands]

On Mon, 5 Dec 2011 23:17:31 +0000, Avi Greenbury <lists at avi.co> wrote:
> John G Walker wrote:
> 
> > My years-old Thinkpad has died on me, so I need a new laptop. I only
> > use the laptop for word-processing, spreadsheets and web browsing, so
> > I don't need anything sophisticated.
> > 
> > What are the current suggestions for laptops running Linux?
> 
> I know of several Lenovo Thinkpads on which Debian, Ubuntu and/or
> Fedora have Just Worked. Not so sure about the only-free-firmware
> Debians.

I have a Lenovo X200, which I'm very happy with, and I'd imagine that
they are still available cheaply via gumtree/ebay and the like.

The wifi is slightly grumpy (one needs to unload/reload the driver to go
from an encrypted to open AP, so I have a script to do that on every
attempt to use wifi in my wicd setup), which is presumably because it's
non-free software, and so difficult to fix:

=-=-=-=-
phil at poker:~$ dmesg | grep 'firmware:' | tail -1
[589628.749583] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode

phil at poker:~$ dpkg -S iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode
firmware-iwlwifi: /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode

phil at poker:~$ dpkg -s firmware-iwlwifi
Package: firmware-iwlwifi
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: non-free/kernel
Installed-Size: 4320
Maintainer: Debian Kernel Team <debian-kernel at lists.debian.org>
Architecture: all
Source: firmware-nonfree
Version: 0.28
Suggests: initramfs-tools, linux-image
Description: Binary firmware for Intel Wireless 3945, 4965 and 5000-series cards
 This package contains the binary firmware for Intel Wireless 1000, 3945,
 4965, 5100, 5300, 6000 and 6250 cards supported by the iwl3945 and iwlagn
 drivers.
 .
 Contents:
  * Intel Wireless 1000 firmware, version 128.50.3.1 (iwlwifi-1000-3.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 3945 firmware, version 15.28.1.6 (iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 3945 firmware, version 15.32.2.9 (iwlwifi-3945-2.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 4965 firmware, version 228.57.1.21 (iwlwifi-4965-1.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 4965 firmware, version 228.61.2.24 (iwlwifi-4965-2.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 5100, 5300 and 5350 firmware, version 5.4.A.11 (iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 5100, 5300 and 5350 firmware, version 8.24.2.12 (iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 5150 firmware, version 8.24.2.2 (iwlwifi-5150-2.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 6000 firmware, version 9.193.4.1 (iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 6005 firmware, version 17.168.5.1 (iwlwifi-6000g2a-5.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 6030 firmware, version 17.168.5.1 (iwlwifi-6000g2b-5.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 6250 firmware, version 9.201.4.1 (iwlwifi-6050-4.ucode)
  * Intel Wireless 6250 firmware, version 41.28.5.1 (iwlwifi-6050-5.ucode)
Homepage: http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi&n=downloads
=-=-=-=-

but as you can see, the firmware is packaged, and so trivially
installable if you can bring yourself to add non-free to your
repositories.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
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