Debian Administration

I don't care what the make is, I do care that the machine is fast, reliable, light and doesn't explode. Assuming the hardware is okay I next care that Debian will install correctly on it and all the bits work.

I have no brand loyalty at all - they don't care about me so why should I care about them...?

--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam

Well, I voted Thinkpad as I've had pretty good experiences with some of them in the past.

However, had this poll come later on this year my thoughts might be different. Most here probably know this already, but I had to bring it up anyway -- Dell have recently stated that they will (again) start selling PC's (laptops included AFAICT) with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Hopefully this will include work on the drivers needed, and with Ubuntu's habit/promise of folding their work back upstream into Debian, our favourite distro should also be pretty well supported on Dell laptops...

We can but hope that it's a roaring success and other manufacturers get on the bandwagon.

Cheers
:wq

I have two notebooks: Acer 9301 and Hp Pavilion 9100, both 17'' 16:9, Turion 64x2, ...

Debian runs great on Acer: there's a gpl'd module for every device.
Unfortunately I cannot say the same for Hp.
The onboard wifi card Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 works only with ndiswrapper and win drivers, audio card doesn't work well and so usb hub.

I don't think I'll buy an hp nb again!

My current laptop is a Toshiba Satellite with Centrino Duo - interesting that I had to configure the kernel with a rewrite of bios dsdt to get sound to work properly - the original Phoenix bios compilation seems to exclude OS outside of Microsoft. A trivial fix, but annoying to find.

I won't be owning another one.

iBook of course!

And yes, PowerPC. You kids with your newfangled x86's. It's a fad; mark my words.

;-)

Gateway. I'm surprised you haven't included Gateway on the list.

The Gateway 74xx series (based on the ARIMA K7 platform and AMD Athlon64 CPUs) rock for Linux.

The only sh*tty part is the included MiniPCI Wi-Fi card which is Broadcom, so you need to use windows drivers through NDISWrapper.

Last 3 years I've been working on Thinkpads - R32, then R51e and R50. Briefly also T30.

I have to say it's very reliable piece of hardware, and Linux is well supported. I've tested quite a few esoteric options, including:

1) suspend-to-ram (worked after quite a bit of fiddling )
2) cpu frequency scaling ( worked )
3) bluetooth ( command line works, but intergration with Nautilus is missing in Debian )
4) IRDA ( quite a bit of work, bu finally I could control XMMS , MPLayer and my mouse with a regular remote control unit )
5) wireless ( works easily, the Intel 2100 or 2200 drivers and in the kernel )
6) Cardbus ethernet card ( IMHO the userland is very messy -not to say bizarre - but works )
7) 'tpd' driver for all the extra Thinkpad buttons (works easily )
8) of course, all the standard works: X with right resolution and either ATI drivers or the 'radeon' X.org driver work; ethernet works, sound, usb, acpi, serial port.

I didn't try:

1) firewire ( but should work easily )
2) suspend-to-hdd ( probably that would be hard fight )
3) modem ( AFAIK no free drivers - only closed source from Conexant, but who uses modems these days? )
4) parallel port ( should work easily, besides who uses that now )

Beryl 0.1.99pre-something was crashing with radeon drivers.

Overall, very solid system, reliable, mechanically very well built. Best source of information: http://www.thinkwiki.org

Asus

Using a thinkpad t-30 for 6 or 7 months. Am mostly pleased, but with some distros there is a problem with the ati 7500 video driver. I've tried most all other distros and have settled with debian -- it offers more options and software. I'm only fashioned and don't like the sudo thing with Ubuntu.

I have a problem with the fan rattling (will probably need to replace it someday) sometimes when the t-30 gets too hot. Less of a problem with this in debian than any other distribution. Debian also seems faster...

MacBook Pro Off course!
Very fast notebook :)

OS X with VMware for Linux rulez

T43, T43p, T60, X40

I love the suspend to ram feature.
Debian runs fine, Kubuntu is even better.
Put the cd in and it all works.

If you take a look at the module for the thinkpads, it is impressive what all can be done like for example turn on/off the little light that lights the keyboard(think light).

Note: On a x40/kubuntu, don't let the SD Card in the machine or it won't properly suspend.

Thinkwiki.org is very helpful.

respectfully, lters

No flame intended, but pure from a linux/OSS standpoint; Why buy a Dell ?

Dell has never supported OSS. HP/Compaq, IBM, etc. sponsor numerous OSS projects (HP even sponsors kernel.org for crying out loud :-) ).