[LAU] Linux Laptops?

[Ken Restivo]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 03:29:52PM -1000, david wrote:
> Ken Restivo wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 04:41:25PM -0600, 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.  :)
>>
>> I bought an Asus laptop (Core 2 Duo, 2.33Ghz) 4 years ago and it is
>> still my main audio production station on Linux. There was some
>> weirdage with the ATA support; a SATA drive would have been a better
>> choice, but that wasn't their fault, it was mine in configuring the
>> machine.
>>
>> I also have an Asus EEE in which everything "just works", better than
>> any hardware I've ever had... probably because Asus used to actually
>> ship the EEE with Linux.
>
> A friend of mine's family has a number of Asus EEE PCs, they all work
> very nicely with Linux.
>
>> I have used ThinkPads before, and they do indeed work well on Linux,
>> but I absolutely HATE HATE HATE that damned nurple. I will never buy
>> a Thinkpad again. Gimme a trackpad or trackball or a real mouse any
>> day, and please, no nurple.
>
> Decades ago, at a previous employment, I borrowed a Thinkpad laptop to
> take notes at a meeting. It had the IBM Trackpoint in the keyboard. I
> used the laptop for about 45 minutes, went back to my desktop machine
> (also an IBM, but no Trackpoint in the keyboard) - and found my fingers
> automatically reaching for the Trackpoint. They are incredibly
> efficient. Sorry you didn't like it.
>

I guess some people actually do like it.

ThinkPad + focus_on_mouse + typing anything with a 'g' or 'h' in it == TROUBLE.

-ken