[PLUG] Need information on Linux Compatible Laptops

[Mayuresh]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 12:29:27PM +0530, Pirate Praveen wrote:
> If any of you have a new laptop released this year, please add them to
> h-node.org It is a crowd sourced database, so the more people
> contribute the more useful it becomes.

Curious whether whether Linux works on a laptop has still remained a
variable. It's good to be cautious but may be a better approach is to
select a laptop based on specs - budget consideration and just ensure that
the chipsets mentioned in the specs are supported on your favorite
distro's recent version.

I wouldn't advise this but personally I did not even do this much due
diligence in 2 of my purchases.

In my purchase a few years back, Linux was still maturing, it took several
days to figure out how to get things working on Linux, but they all
eventually did and that laptop still serves me after 11 years of use. In
my recent purchase a week back, Debian 8 OS worked just out of the box.
There were some non free firmwares to be installed, though availability
wasn't a problem.

I normally use NetBSD and it is nearly impossible to ensure workability up
front with a new hardware, on such a niche and small userbase system.
In such case, as is happening with my most recent purchase, I participate
with developers, help them test, send logs, stack traces, try their
patches and so on, just a small contribution to great work those people do
to ensure that OSes run on variety of hardware. But with Linux I am not
sure whether this approach works so well.

I'd also consider buying those that do not come with pre-installed Windows
as cost of Windows adds to the price (unless you want Windows).

Mayuresh.