[SWLUG] "Best" laptop for Fedora Core 5?

[Mark Summerfield]

Hi,

I want to buy a laptop to run Fedora Core 5 and was wondering if anyone
has any comments/advice, or has a laptop running FC5? I'll be making it
dual boot because although I do all my work under Linux I have to test
cross-compiled stuff on Windows. (I'm looking to get 60+GB disk, 0.5GB
RAM, 1280x800 screen, and don't mind a "slow" processor.)

In the past I've used a Toshiba which was fine, and a Fujitsu which was
fine but had a v. short life (2+ years). I have an old Panasonic which
still works after 6+ years (but new Panasonics are too expensive
unfortunately).

Thanks.

PS I've been following the discussion about distros for newbies. I
recently trashed my machine so tried various distros from scratch:
- Kubuntu 6.06. Easy to install from DVD, looks good and works fine
  (apart from the microphone in my case). But suffers from the problem
  that has put me off Debian-based distros: you either have the standard
  stuff which often has libraries and apps which are slightly too old;
  or you add "universal" (or testing if using pure Debian) and end up
  with a system that doesn't work.
- OpenBSD. Not Linux of course, weird way of handling the disks; looks
  great if you want a console based system, but you need to be more of a
  sysadmin than I am.
- OpenSUSE 10.1. Boots great of the live DVD, but when I entered install
  it doesn't actually give you anthing that says "install me on your
  hard disk".
- Fedora Core 5. I've used FC4 for the past year and although yum and
  Pirut are nowhere near as good as apt-get and Adept, whenever I
  updated everything worked. The only annoyance for me is that the
  openoffice cursor blinks (which makes is almost unusuable for me): it
  didn't under Kubuntu. Wasn't easy to install: despite verifying the
  DVD it hung everytime it started installing packages. Solution was to
  burn CD1 and install from that, and when it asked for CD2 put in the
  DVD.

(BTW Earlier this year I asked about broadband and people's response
was: "get a router". I followed the advice and am glad I did, since it
was v. easy to set up. It is a BT Voyager 2110 and I get broadband from
plus.net--too early to comment on whether they are good or not.)


--
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd., www.qtrac.eu