linux notebooks..

i`m looking to get a new notebook pc and would like to run linux. which brand would be most reliable running it and around $1,000?

currently i`m looking at the dell inspiron 1000.

the dell inspirion 1150, thats what i have, the only thing is that in knoppix you have to reconfigure the video driver types, but its around $800, thats personal preferance truly

installed slackware on a Sony Vaio PCG-F580 and it worked just fine. it recognized my Wireless Card it would seem however my Access Point is acting up so i havent gotten the chance to use it online yet. i am only using it as a Internet Surfing machine so its not critical or anything.

I have a question concerning linux on laptops.

There is these pages which offer a preinstalled linux. Like for instance
www.linuxcertified.com
or
www.swt.com

Do they charge one too much? And are they reliable? Has enyone any exprerience to share, please?

The reason why I am looking out for linux pre-installed is because I don't want to spend too much time getting all my hardware running. But the main reason is that I am just not expreinced with linux very much so I have basically no clue how to fix problems. So I would have to look in the internet each time...

greetings,
boris

Have you considered an iBook? They are pretty rugged, have nearly all of the advantages of linux and a few bonuses (especially fast user start up, DVDs, etc.).

My youngest kid loves his. I run Fedora Core 3 on a 3-year old, el cheapo, Toshiba Satellite 1800 S204, and it works fine. Whatever floats your boat.

http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2210d.html

THAT's the one. Too expensive? Do you know where I can get it cheaper?

gr, boris

Im running Debian on an IBM Thinkpad T30 at the moment, it works well and the laptop is very good quality IMO, overall i would recommend it. There were a few issues with getting the video card to work (needed to make some manual adjustments to X11.conf) but its been as good as gold ever since.

I used to have a laptop manufactured by a company called "Advent" which ran Redhat 9 ok, but the laptop was terrible quality (its totally broken now) and had a really loud fan - IMO stay away from those things! :)

I would like to add my experience too, I'm currently running Ubuntu on my 4 years old asus LC8400, and it runs very smoothly, no problems at all.

All of my hardware were detected automatically, just one small issue I encountered, when I shutdown the system, I have to shut the screen, otherwise it reboots by itself, no big deal anyway.

I am running slackware 10 on my Toshiba right now with no probs. But my toshiba is out of your price range but what I wanted to say is I used to have a P3 1gig Acer laptop and it ran Mandrake awesome and it played DVD's fine in xine. I also had redhat on it before Mandrake but Red Hat ran slower for some reason. If you could find a acer I bet it would be cheaper than 1000 dollars and I bet Slackware, Debian, or Gentoo would run awesome on it.
Cheers,
Mike