[wellylug] Hardware opinions

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <1062044971.3f4d852ba1cf9 at www.paradise.net.nz>, Jeremy Z Butler writes:
>>[Hardware for Linux]
>
>Are all makers similar? (e.g. my Toshiba laptop has been pretty good. Are
>Toshibas generally good or have I had good luck?) 

A friend of mine has had good experiences with Toshiba laptops, finding
that everything or virtually everything worked.  But at least one of
the Toshiba laptops I considered had several items which looked like
they'd be a struggle to get going.

Laptops tend to be more problematic than PCs anyway, as they tend to
have more "one off" parts, and also tend to change more frequently, so
some careful comparision of hardware and Linux support is required if
you want to run Linux on your laptop.  (There are some sites which link
to Linux on Laptop reports, eg, http://www.linux-laptop.net/ and
http://tuxmobil.org/ ).  And of course it's hard to change parts in a
laptop!

>Do any manufacturers use/make particularly compatible CPUs or 
>internal modems or CD-RW's or sound cards etc. which are easy to get 
>going under Linux??

CPUs, RAM, hard drives, CD-RWs and the like are all pretty much the same
as far as their interface to the computer system is concerned (and it's
the interface to the computer which causes the compatibility issues).

Things that generally give problems are:
- video cards
- internal modems
- network cards (used to be a big problem; now generally not much
  of an issue providing you use a recent Linux distribution)
- other "expansion cards", especially for less widely used hardware

With those it's typically difficult to say that any given manufacturer
will be fine, as it usually comes down to the individual chipset used on
that particular model.  Often, but not always, waiting a while will let
Linux support catch up.  Internal modems are generally the worst in this
respect -- modern internal modems are often entirely in the software
drivers, which often aren't ever available for Linux.

Video cards support will generally catch up eventually, but it can take
(many) months for support for newly released cards to come out if
they're significantly different from the older ones.  Buying "older
generation" video cards can definitely help with finding support around.

Ewen