notebook-friendly distros?

[questio verum]

I lost all of my rigs to a housefire last week. My brother is shipping me an old (2002) Compaq notebook to press into service for the short term. I've not really spent a lot of time with linux-powered notebooks though. Is there a distro that works well with notebooks?

Also, since I'll be buying all my gear again from scratch, I need to make sure this time around that it's all linux-friendly. Anyone know of a list, website, etc., where this stuff is tracked? THX.


qv

[SkittleLinux18]

I lost all of my rigs to a housefire last week. My brother is shipping me an old (2002) Compaq notebook to press into service for the short term. I've not really spent a lot of time with linux-powered notebooks though. Is there a distro that works well with notebooks?

Also, since I'll be buying all my gear again from scratch, I need to make sure this time around that it's all linux-friendly. Anyone know of a list, website, etc., where this stuff is tracked? THX.


qv

Wow man! I'm sorry for you misfortune there. Here a couple good sites for hardware compatibility:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/
Linux.com :: Is my hardware Linux-compatible? Find out here

As far as notebook compatibility with Linux, I can't give you the best advice because the computer is going to be kind of old. I know some distros are designed for older hardware like Damn Small Linux and BackTrack. I have not had the best luck with Debian-based Distros on my laptop (i.e. Ubuntu, Sabayon, Sidux, ect.) Mint did work pretty well though. So did PCLOS. But my laptop is also four years younger than yours.

That's all I have to offer. I'm sure someone can offer better, but I hope this does help.

[questio verum]

The first site appears to be no longer maintained. The second site was helpful though. Thanks. Looks like for starters it'll be an M-Audio soundcard, rather than a Soundblaster. That's just fine with me.

I did look around and found some helpful info on notebooks at the Linux for Laptops site. Did you use the default desktop with PCLOS? Does it include xfce with the default config?


qv

[darkrose0510]

I hope you had insurance? At least now you can have a bit of fun building something new though.

You might want to have a look at TuxMobil: Linux Laptop & Notebook Installation Guides: COMPAQ as well, as there's probably someone who's put Linux on that laptop before...

Generally I just stick Damn Small on older laptops, as it works well.

[Freston]

Sorry to hear that! That's terrible!

On the up side a 2002 lappy can be a pretty good workhorse. But remember that a lappy, especially an older lappy, requires more configuration then a standard desktop.

Think touchpad, wireless (if any), ACPI, and I hope you have an ethernet card inside it.


As a tip, please stay clear of the well known fully featured mainstream distro's like Ubuntu and Mandriva and Sabayon and such... they will preform terrible on that machine. Their merit is that they put modern hardware to good use. What you want is something more geared towards performing on an older box.

I don't want to sound like an advertisement, and I don't want to start a distro-war... but I have good performance on older machines with VectorLinux. You may want to see if that suits you. Zenwalk, Xubuntu and DSL are other good options though, and there is no arguing about taste.

I've recently upgraded a Compaq 1Ghz 128MB RAM sold second hand with an illegal copy of Win2000 to VectorLinux 5.9 Std, only to improve performance tenfold (biased estimate).

But if you want to seize this as an opportunity to make a fresh clean start building on previous experience and such... of course the only truely valid advice is to try several and see which you like best.

Just remember, as said, that lappies require some extra work.

[Thrillhouse]

You might also want to look here.