[Lust] Linux Laptops

[Trevor Jenkins]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, Norm Fasey <nfasey at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Its time to upgrade my hardware and am thinking about a laptop with
> Linux already installed. Anyone have any recommendations?

I couldn't find a per-installed Linux laptop *with real support* when I
wanted one a few months ago ... so I defected a little and bought a
MacBook. Not quite Linux but the FreeBSD basis to Darwin gives me that
UNIX command I love. And I certainly wouldn't have gone to Windoze.

All the open source stuff I use on my Linux workstation is available for
Mac OS X (includes OpenOffice.org, R, Scribus, FlightPlan, The GIMP(shop),
Inkscape, Eclipse --- though I prefer Apple's own free Xcode as a program
development environment, TeX, FireFox, Thunderbird, and, of course, vi &
emacs depending on my mood. Plus Mac OS X comes with python and ruby
pre-installed. Only hiccup was it took Apple a while to issue a patch to
Samba but then I don't share out the disk on my MacBook.

> Dell are selling laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed at a reasonable
> price. Has anyone had any experience with these? Also any other good
> deals on pretty high end laptops with Linux pre-installed or a
> recommendation of a Laptop that can easily be swapped over to Linux with
> the minimum of fuss (i.e all its components are supported correctly)
> would be useful.

Whether six months later I would still make the same choice is another
matter. But despite the difference in price I think the MacBook would win.

Regards, Trevor

<>< Re: deemed!