*Nix'es on Laptops

[nweissma]

Which laptops/notebooks/.., which can be used for Fedora, FreeBSD, Open Solaris, and Mandriva and which cannot; and why not?

My main purpose is to practice programming (C++, eg), and scripting. The choice will therefore need to juggle emacs, lint, and other ancillaries; and a compiler; and without huffing and puffing.

Money IS a BIG factor.

I am considering several: Asus eee pc 1201N, or other Asus eee pc's, and several that use the Intel N270 processor:

Compare Intel® Products,

what other factors are salient -- for example, "embedded" (as is the Intel N270), hyperthreading, FSB, ...

I solicit your considered thoughts.

[MikeTbob]

In my opinion you can use any distro on any Laptop/Netbook as long as you know what you are doing, have a bit of patience and your hardware is supported. You might have to customize the heck out of it but it is possible.
I also say get the machine you want, not whichever one might run Linux. Then pick the distro that is right for you...not what someone recommends. All the rest of the stuff like emacs, lint, compilers and whatnot will be the least of your worries because you can program and script from any distro.
If you are a New to Linux person, then I would suggest that you start things off relatively simple and look at Ubuntu, Linux mint and Fedora.

[nmset]

Compiling on netbooks may not be wise, the CPU is not designed for this kind of job. You may be wasting money with a netbook.

laptoping.com/intel-atom-benchmark.html

Mandriva would be a good distro also.

[sarlacii]

MikeTbob is correct, nweissma, any mainstream distro will support all your programming and scripting needs.

As such you should perhaps rather choose a laptop that will best support Linux in general (i.e. driver availability, wireless working, extra keys functioning etc.). Check out the Linux on Laptops website for a good source of what works and what doesn't.

Speed/features or portability may or may not be important to you... so depending on what you want you can then choose whether you go the netbook or notebook direction?

Go well.

[nweissma]

Compiling on netbooks may not be wise, the CPU is not designed for this kind of job.

are you saying that this is true for laptops and notebooks too? specifically, what do you mean by "not designed for it"

what about the programming aspect - emacs,lint, etc. - will a notebook/netbook support it?

what are the salient technical features: processor, hyperthreading, embedding, 64-bit, .... : Compare Intel® Products

[nmset]

The CPU of a netbook is built for low power consumer tasks, like fetching email and surfing the web. You may run most applications that Linux can run, but compiling code at one moment would require rapid code execution. Although you will be able to compile a whole linux kernel with a netbook, you would have to wait for hours. You cannot wait for minutes every time you have modified one line of code in your projects. There would be a big computing power difference between a netbook at 300 € and a basic laptop at 600 € with a 2-core low end CPU, you would have 10 times less computing power with a netbook.

The one on which I'm writing this did cost me about 600 € and has an AMD Turion 64x2 TL-60. It's a low end machine but a very decent one, and a few light days ahead of any netbook.

[waterhead]

Nmset is correct. Writing code is not processor intensive, but compiling code is. If you plan on compiling the code that you write, you should choose a laptop based on the processing power.

I have a dual core Intel Atom N330/nVidia ION system running MythTV. I don't do much compiling on it. But I noticed that when it is running the commercial-marking job on a recorded show, I can't even watch another show. This surprised me, as I thought a 1.6GHz dual core would have more power than that. Especially since the ION chip is handling the graphics.

Remember that a larger CPU will consume more power. This will lead to a shorter battery run time. You will most likely want to keep it plugged into the wall when compiling.

[gnuuser]

check out the links of laptops that work with linux
Ive recently got a few acers in the shop that wouldn't work with linux at all
tested on many distros too ( Iv'e got over 150 distros in my collection)

[Rubberman]

I got my wife a Toshiba netbook for xmas/birthday a couple of months ago and it runs Ubuntu as well as Scientific Linux just fine. Cost was under $400 USD. WiFi, Bluetooth, webcam, 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive and Windows 7 Starter edition included. She shrunk the Win7 partition to 1/2 size and now runs Scientific Linux (she is a physicist) most of the time, very happily. All the stuff works just fine! Uses it for C++ development when she is on the road - is heading off the CERN next week.

[sqcomic]

www dot LinLap dot com (sorry, haven't been here long enough to post urls - I'm still a "kiddy" member) has listings of laptops that have been tested under linux. There was another similar page that I looked at years ago when I bought my Toshiba M400 (a great linux laptop, by the way), but I can't remember the address.