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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.
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.
Great idea Tbob!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
How much of £300?
How many Dollars the equivalence that? :D
OMGQuote:
Originally Posted by micericewice
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