[Lich]

There is a young gentleman I know looking to make the switch to Linux after having an experience with Vista.

He bought a new laptop - as mentioned in the subject line of this thread - which came preconfigured with Vista Home Premium. Of course, he can't run any games on it such as Diablo or Resident Evil, and this seems to be commonplace if you read various internet forums. It seems Vista Ultimate handles these games well, but a lesser Vista is ridden with graphical glitches, sound errors, and the like. He's already experiencing system slowdown / crappy performance too. After 3 weeks.

In any case, I googled Linux on Laptops, and found a list of all different vendors. Under Compaq however, the C751NR was not listed.

What do you think? Ubuntu? Mint? Does anyone have any direct knowledge of this notebook?

[prylux]

I have just gotten this exact laptop. I put the 64bit version of Ubuntu 8.04 on it and everything works GREAT, except the wireless modem.
Compiz works great with all the normal effects working (I don't use them all) except don't check the Bicubic filter setting, it makes the desktop disappear when you spin the 3D cube.
As for the Wifi, I'm confident that I will get that running soon, I have seen post about this. By the way Linux reports the Wifi as AR5006EG when it's actually the AR5007.

The computer is very fast and loads quickly. The Pentium 2330 chip supports 64bit OS which is one of the reasons I bought this laptop, even though I knew the Wifi was going to be a hassle (Wouldn't work out of the box). I got it at Best Buy for $400 (Found out recently you can haggle at Best Buy on big ticket items)
Suspend and Hibernate works, the Powerbutton brings up the shutdown menu, closing the lid turns the screen off.

As a matter of fact I'm writing this on the laptop now using the Ethernet connection.
I will let you know if there is anything else that I come across, as of now though only one problem and that's a problem shared by many other laptops (Built in Wifi)

[Lich]

Yes, please keep me posted. I'd appreciate it.

[danthrax]

Hey, I have this exact laptop and am using Ubuntu on it right now. It was a bit of work to get the Wifi going, but I was eventually successful using ndis wrapper within the first evening.

Compiz runs amazing, there are some things that don't quite work on the laptop but in general it works well.

- Can't turn down the display brightness / doesn't auto do it when I unplug the laptop.
- Sound works in general but there's the occasional glitch.
- Function keys don't work for turning the audio up/down.

Minor issues, I'm pretty happy with the laptop in general. I'm going to say I had so many issues with Vista, comparably Ubuntu is pretty dope. Compiz blows any vista eye candy straight out of the water.

I also tried putting XP on it but XP install CD didn't recognize my hard drive controller.

[prylux]

I installed Virtual Box (link: VirtualBox ) and use Windows XP that way. Both the OS’s run fine at the same time. I gave XP 384MB of RAM and the GFX card 64MB. The 2 problems I have so far is the USB ports don’t work for XP (not a big problem, I just move the files from Ubuntu to XP) and while I can mount a CD in XP and there is an unmount button, it seems I have to reboot XP to get it to see the new CD. These issues may just be me as I am very new to the program. I do like it though, being able to run both at the same time is worth these minor irritations as compared to dual boot.

PS The laptop is stock... I do plan to upgrade the RAM in the future though