[LAU] Linux Laptops?

[Robin Gareus]

On 02/14/2011 11:41 PM, Josh Lawrence wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> After getting scorched by purchasing two laptops with almost zero
> Linux support (battery status? what battery?), I have decided to go
> looking for a laptop that is sold by a company that supports Linux.
> I'm looking for any pointers to companies that sell Laptops that run
> Linux here in the US.  (I'm already familiar with System76.)  Bonus
> points if you've done business with them and have praise or warnings
> to go along with the pointers.  Feel free to shill for your own
> company if you want, just make sure if you recommend a laptop that
> Linux can read the damn battery status.  :)

LOL, Are you serious? I'd rather expect more audio-related constraints
here :)

IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad: They got about everything right:
from the inside: hardware IRQ routing: 1394 and at least 1 USB IRQ is
not shared with other devices - some models even allow to re-assign
these in the BIOS: that's great for connecting external audio interfaces
and achieving low latency;
the VGA (or DVI) out works OOTB on GNU/Linux; as does Wifi (double check
options when configuring/buying), suspend/resume; heck it even reports
temperature of the battery and allows to set high/low water-marks for
battery charge cycles.

to the outside: the keyboard and mouse-buttons have a healthy
press-depth and perfectly balanced resistance. There's even water drain
in the keyboard(!), very very robust casing, easily replaceable HDD,
almost no fan noise, etc.

On top of it: they do have low power consumption (long battery life) and
are "green" in terms of environment and recycling. Besides: GNU/Linux
support is amazing: thinkwiki.org

I do like the screen contrast, although the only disadvantage I can
think of is that it's sometimes not bright enough for a green on black
terminal in direct sunlight :)  Oh and the built-in speaker (at least on
this X60s and also on the T401) is total crap.

Alas it's not a cheap solution, OTOH it really pays off.

Check the list-archive this is a recurring subject: just a few weeks ago
there was this "Firewire linuxaudio laptops, recomendations?" thread.

2c,
robin