[Hudlug] buying a laptop

[Ben Potter]

Michael,

Most laptops will run Linux OK without any problems - the two areas 
which tend to be badly supported are any cdplayer controls/LCD (starting 
to get popular), and more importantly the on-board graphics card.

Given that its very difficult to change the graphics card in a laptop 
(nigh-on impossible) its fairly important to check what level of support 
the kernel and X has for it. While 2D acceleration is often supported, 
3d acceleration is still rare.

If you need 3d acceleration (mainly gaming) your best best will be a ATI 
or Nvidia graphics card, as they at least provide binary (closed source) 
drivers.

Historically there were a lot of problems with SiS (graphics) chipsets 
on laptops, but Thomas Winischhofer has sorted most of these now - but 
still no 3d support

If you can find one that other people are running a specific 
distribution on, you may be able to get help with any problem areas more 
easily

Hope that helps
Ben

P.S. Hope I've spelt TW's surname properly :)

MICHAEL WEAVER wrote:
> If I choose a make of laptop for running Linux, do I need to check to 
> see if the distro I choose will run or if a laptop runs Linux, should it 
> run many distros?
> Also if I were to for example choose Ubuntu, would laptops running 
> Debian support it with the distros being similar?
> 
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