[opensuse] Laptop recommendations
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day. I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is. What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use). Thanks, Tom -- Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. - Douglas MacArthur ^^ --... ...-- / -.- --. --... -.-. ..-. -.-. ^^^^ Tom Taylor KG7CFC openSUSE 13.1 (64-bit), Kernel 3.11.6-4-default, KDE 4.11.2, AMD Phenom X4 955, GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Nvidia 325.15) 16GB RAM -- 3x1.5TB sata2 -- 128GB-SSD FF 27.0, claws-mail 3.9.2 registered linux user 263467 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Thomas Taylor wrote:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
We have some IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads, all overdue for upgrade, and a couple of Toshiba Satellites. They all run openSUSE/KDE. No idea what the customer service might be like, haven't had any use for it. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (6.9°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free dynamic DNS, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 7:25 AM, Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> wrote:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
I've had good experiences with Lenovo (T410 and T420) and openSUSE. You can pick these up used for reasonable prices, and drop in a decent sized SSD to speed them up. They work quite well where you're just looking for a workhorse laptop... trade off is they are not ultrabook sized/weight, and they are either Intel video or Nvidia Optimus (which still sucks in Linux). What is high quality video to you? Intel is the easiest route to go on laptops. It usually "just works" for various definitions of works. I've seen Intel choke on some systems when you plug in an external monitor. Intel video also does not have good gaming support (although it's improving). What defines good customer service to you? That can mean simply taking it into Frys, Future Shop, MediaMarkt, Saturn, or whatever consumer electronics shop you purchase at and having them deal with it... or it can mean something like Dell does with courier pickup for repairs/service. C. -- openSUSE 13.1 x86_64, KDE 4.13 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
El 15/05/14 01:25, Thomas Taylor escribió:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
Thanks, Tom
Some Thinkpads are certified for use with SLED, I heard positive results with them. SLED 11 GA is not openSUSE though, but something similar to an older openSUSE release. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 02:02:36AM -0400, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:
El 15/05/14 01:25, Thomas Taylor escribió:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
Thanks, Tom
Some Thinkpads are certified for use with SLED, I heard positive results with them.
SLED 11 GA is not openSUSE though, but something similar to an older openSUSE release.
Thinkpads are the laptop of choice here at SUSE and work nicely. ;) Ciao, Marcus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
I just buy an asus S400C that works nicely with openSUSE 13.1. It have windows 8, UEFI boot and 500Gb hard drive screen is 1366x768, I can have 1920x1080 on external screen with windows, but rigth now not with openSUSE - intel graphics.touch screen works (but no application have use of it) so eventual problems for any computer can be * external video card/definition * UEFI boot - my computer is ok, but on some others install is sometime difficult jdd -- http://www.dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 05/15/2014 01:25 AM, Thomas Taylor wrote:
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad E520 a couple of years ago. It works well. ThinkPads tend to be well supported in Linux and there's also a Linux ThinkPad mail list. Another advantage is they have that "TrackPoint", so you're not forced to use that %@#$@# touch pad. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 5/15/2014 4:49 AM, James Knott wrote:
On 05/15/2014 01:25 AM, Thomas Taylor wrote:
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad E520 a couple of years ago.
If you can find the Dell Inspiron 9400 line of laptops these work well with Opensuse. The AMD x1400 video card works well with the community drivers. These machines were designed to be user serviceable. You can easily get at all the parts you need to, disk drive (no disassemble required), video card, wifi chipset, and memory. I've jacked mine up ti 6gig of memory and every part of the machine works as well or better than the original deliver of XP. (This machine ran XP for exactly 3 days, just long enough for my replacement hard drive to arrive. I was preserving my warranty, in case anything went wrong, and a new (bigger) drive was cheap insurance against a warranty denial due to replacing the OS.) There are a lot of these to be had, because they were so durable. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 05/15/2014 12:25 AM, Thomas Taylor wrote:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
Thanks, Tom
I've got a Gateway that I have used for several years. For the most part it only gets used when we travel out of town for a day or two. Other than that I fire it up every so often to get latest updates. I don't use it "hard". It's an Intel dual core and intel chip set. Everything just seems to work "right out of the box" with Linux. Even that row of touchpd type switches across the top of the keyboard. As someone else suggested, I took the mechanical hard drive out and put in an SSD. POST takes longer than the system boot now. Can't say anything about service. Had it probably six or seven years and never had a problem [ knock wood ] although I probably should buy a new battery. The only things ever done to it are a bump in memory and the new SSD. Those I did myself. -- I may be crazy, but crazy is better than stupid. _ _... ..._ _ _._ ._ ..... ._.. ... .._ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
* Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> [05-15-14 01:27]:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
I have a 15.6 acer v5-552p-x637 amd a10 radeon hd8650g/512mb 8gb 1000gb which came with win8, converted to 8.1. Runs factory from flash drive but need to disable UEFI to start. Haven't taken time to shrink windoz and install as usage is mainly web for news and mail which I read from cygwin ssh to home box, and transferring photos from camera to external usb3 drive for transport. And I get a good 4+ hrs battery when not using external drive. Unit is light and compact, no dvd drive and was US$499 at Sam's Club. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 08:33 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> [05-15-14 01:27]:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
I have a 15.6 acer Hi Problem here with acer is that they bios disable virtualisation: no xen or kvm. Can't do 64 bit vm's of any type either. That's Spain. YMMV.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
* lynn <lynn@steve-ss.com> [05-15-14 08:52]:
On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 08:33 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> [05-15-14 01:27]:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
I have a 15.6 acer Hi Problem here with acer is that they bios disable virtualisation: no xen or kvm. Can't do 64 bit vm's of any type either. That's Spain. YMMV.
I hve vbox session of openSUSE Tw installed and runs fine???? Maybe the bios problem is from earlier editions? -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 09:14 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* lynn <lynn@steve-ss.com> [05-15-14 08:52]:
On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 08:33 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> [05-15-14 01:27]:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
I have a 15.6 acer Hi Problem here with acer is that they bios disable virtualisation: no xen or kvm. Can't do 64 bit vm's of any type either. That's Spain. YMMV.
I hve vbox session of openSUSE Tw installed and runs fine???? Maybe the bios problem is from earlier editions?
32bit vm's are fine. I think it's a spain prob with the bios. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2014-05-15 15:28, lynn wrote:
32bit vm's are fine. I think it's a spain prob with the bios.
I have learnt not to buy acer. I don't know about other countries, but in Spain their laptops are bad. Displays, on the other hand, are good: I have one at home. Well... not completely, the integrated webcam of mine does not work on Linux. Friends I know typically have problems with getting drivers for their video card, in Windows, if they dare to use a different windows version that the one installed by the manufacturer. And in Linux, the few that try, have problems as well. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iF4EAREIAAYFAlN1MfwACgkQja8UbcUWM1zspAD9Hqdy1QcNLnJd63FNNE7kRo4L 2hovjZjuN5ieu8wH4CAA/1OimVkkAgwKDlbOQ7MUdAed0WCxgHU4v/OxIl21fJeo =C1+K -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Hi, I have a Lenovo G505 stuffed with AMD products and stuffed with problems. I can boot oS 13.1 only in recovery mode, energy saving (suspend and híbernate) are highly problematic, screen saving also. Though interestingly there was one place where screen saving worked in a wifi environment, and I don't know its reason. Virtualization is permitted by BIOS, I use vB (Oracle) but only 32 bit systems can be installed. UEFI and secure boot is OK. In fact, I could use only os WITH uefi AND SECURE BOOT, i totally failed with other ubuntu based distros. This is not a dual-boot system, it has 13.1 with KDE 4.13 and XFCE and Win7 in VB. Tried dual bootwith win 7 but it would havew a major task to collect drivers from vendors site, since win7 does not contain drivers for this machine. Albert Idézet (lynn <lynn@steve-ss.com>):
On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 08:33 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> [05-15-14 01:27]:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
I have a 15.6 acer Hi Problem here with acer is that they bios disable virtualisation: no xen or kvm. Can't do 64 bit vm's of any type either. That's Spain. YMMV.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
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On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 15:34 +0200, oszko@chem.u-szeged.hu wrote:
I use vB (Oracle) but only 32 bit systems can be installed. This is the same with acer. Only vBox and only 32 bit.
Hi Problem here with acer is that they bios disable virtualisation: no xen or kvm. Can't do 64 bit vm's of any type either. That's Spain. YMMV.
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On 05/15/2014 05:51 AM, lynn wrote:
On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 08:33 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> [05-15-14 01:27]:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
I have a 15.6 acer Hi Problem here with acer is that they bios disable virtualisation: no xen or kvm. Can't do 64 bit vm's of any type either. That's Spain. YMMV.
I have an acerv5-122p with a AMD 1450. there were instructions on the internet to enable it on UEFI. You might want to check it out for your laptop. -- Joseph Loo jloo@acm.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 14 May 2014 22:25:29 -0700 Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> wrote:
I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Currently the wife and I share an old Dell which is setup for dual-booting Winblows and openSUSE. We frequently end up bargaining on who gets to use it on a given day.
I would like a laptop that can run Linux well, has supported hardware, high quality video (CAD drawings), is light weight, and preferably under $US 1000. Brand is not high on the priority list but customer service is.
What laptops are list members using and how was your experience (installation & use).
Thanks, Tom
Thanks for all the recommendations. Has anyone used a Lenovo Yoga 2 with openSUSE? This is about the size, weight, and price I'm looking for although the lack of an internal DVD and non-expandable RAM are drawbacks but not show-stoppers. I've used Lenovo laptops before at work but that was always with windblows (XP & 7). I've heard they work well with Fedora and assume they would also work well with OS. Thanks, Tom -- Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. - Douglas MacArthur ^^ --... ...-- / -.- --. --... -.-. ..-. -.-. ^^^^ Tom Taylor KG7CFC openSUSE 13.1 (64-bit), Kernel 3.11.6-4-default, KDE 4.11.2, AMD Phenom X4 955, GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Nvidia 325.15) 16GB RAM -- 3x1.5TB sata2 -- 128GB-SSD FF 27.0, claws-mail 3.9.2 registered linux user 263467 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 8:21 AM, Thomas Taylor <linxt@comcast.net> wrote:
Has anyone used a Lenovo Yoga 2 with openSUSE? This is about the size, weight, and price I'm looking for although the lack of an internal DVD and non-expandable RAM are drawbacks but not show-stoppers.
I haven't used that specific laptop, but a comment on the lack of internal DVD... I've got a laptop with no DVD and it's not an issue at all. You can pick up a very cheap external USB DVD drive (they are really slim and light) and keep it in your laptop bag. I use mine maybe once in 6 months... if that. It's really not worth basing a laptop purchase on whether there's an internal DVD or not these days. The DVD drive is rapidly becoming obsolete. For storage/backup (a reason people cite for needing/wanting a DVD drive), you can pick up something like the 2TB WD Passport drive.. USB3 and really small. The RAM... on the Yoga 2, you can get up to 8GB of RAM... that should be more than enough for more laptop needs regardless of OS. For resources on that laptop, check: http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_ideapad_yoga_2_pro http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=3270 Basically.. it seems to work OK with Linux. C. -- openSUSE 13.1 x86_64, KDE 4.13 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (14)
-
Billie Walsh -
C -
Carlos E. R. -
Cristian Rodríguez -
James Knott -
jdd -
John Andersen -
Joseph Loo -
lynn -
Marcus Meissner -
oszko＠chem.u-szeged.hu -
Patrick Shanahan -
Per Jessen -
Thomas Taylor