laptop and wifi

[trackrat]

Just a quickie, I am looking to buy a new laptop, in the £300 range but as there are a proliferation of wiFi chipstes I am unsure of which one to buy.
Can anyone suggest a laptop that will work with Linux without having to install extra drivers.
I am in the UK.

[MikeTbob]

Even if you buy a Windows machine you are more than likely going to have to install WIFI drivers, that's just the way it is. Thankfully Linux has come a long way in a short time, most WIFI cards are supported but as you noticed, you must install a driver for the majority of them. The absolute best thing you can do is to burn a LiveCD of you favorite distro and walk into the store, pop the CD/DVD into and see what happens when you reboot it.

[MASONTX]

Great idea Tbob!

[trackrat]

Much as I like the idea of going into a store and booting from a distro CD, in the UK they would have a fit if you asked to do that.
In the UK all the stores sell laptops with Win 7 pre-installed and will not allow you to enter the BIOS to change the boot option to CD first.
That is why I asked for recommendations.

[rokytnji]

Not sure if they sell it in England but my Wifes Acer Aspire 5534 has booted up and connected wirelessly with my persistent Linux Flashdrives (AntiX and Puppy) OK. I did not test every thing ( like hotkeys) as she would wring my neck if she caught me messing with her gear. Other than that. Out of the box everything worked. Tap, Sound, Internet, Flash.

[jayd512]

Just to add to that, I've found that most Acer laptops have fairly standard gear... nothing exotic that might give you a hard time.
I have an Acer that is a couple of years old, and Ubuntu picked up everything. Installed and that was the end of it.

I hear that Lenovo has a pretty good reputation for playing nice with Linux as well.

[MikeTbob]

I think my wife also has an Acer 5534 or very close, I have managed to pry it from her fingers long enough to boot several distros and they all worked after getting the required drivers/modules/firmware installed.
Adding to what Jay said, I think Lenovo also sells Linux machines.

[hans51]

The past 8+ years I used almost entirely various Acer latops - all worked out of the box with opensuse linux
acer offers since many years on asian market various laptop models with linux preinstalled - a sign that common hardware is linux compatible by default

years ago I purchased ones a smaller acer laptop with Acer Linpus Linux preinstalled - and replaced it with opensuse linux
now I have HP laptop also out of the box all working - this one was declared as opensuse certified laptop

you may do a Google search for something like
linux certified laptops
or
linux laptop

or
if you favor a particular linux distribution, you may add the distro name to above query

[micericewice]

How much of £300?
How many Dollars the equivalence that?

[hans51]

How much of £300?
How many Dollars the equivalence that?

OMG
that is NO question for a forum!
did you ever hear of a search engine named Google or even Yahoo ??

a simple Google search with correct keywords

pound to dollars conversion

gives you precise results ON the search result page without ever clicking a single link, instantly in seconds and without wasting forum resources.

a similar Google search often reveals instant solutions to many questions asked in forums as well