yeah, next thing is Nuclear submarine support for Linux,

My current laptop: IBM Thinkpad T20, 700Mhz, 256Mb RAM, 8Mb S3 Savage.
IBM is the most Linux friendly laptop maker IMHO. Peoples experiences of IBM vary though. Most stuff worked out of the box with Slackware 9.1. I have tried 2.4.22, 2.6.6 and 2.6.8.1 kernels now. I still have huge problems with ACPI, but APM works ok. Unfortunetely I have a T20 with the 3com modem, which is useless in Linux (they did do several with Lucent modems which work perfectly). Mandrake 10.0 worked mostly ok out the box, but it did get a little confused with graphics (got slackware so never really investigated this).

I used to have an IBM Thinkpad 600, 266Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 2Mb Neomagic MagicGraph 128XD.
No real problems here either (with Mandrake 9.0 and 9.1). MWave modem can be made to work in linux (with some effort).

My brother has an IBM Thinkpad 760EL, 166Mhz, 76Mb RAM, 1Mb Trident something.
This worked ok with Slackware 9.1, although X is too slow to really use at the mo (i need to get round to optimising the kernel and stuff i think). ISA soundcard works instantly for most people, but I can't get anything out of it.

My dad has Compaq Presario 2100, 2600Mhz, 256Mb RAM, ATI Radeon IGP Something.
Haven't spend a lot of time on this, but Xandros 2.0 (i think!) worked mostly ok out the box. If you have one of these I hope you don't want to do much with graphics- I haven't tried getting linux performance drivers, but i'm not sure it's worth bothering- it was stupidly difficult to find windows drivers for it! IMHO: avoid. avoid, avoid avoid avoid. That's after me with IBMs though, I don't suppose it's too bad as laptops go.

My laptop's a toshiba (what else is there really? ) 2100, P4 2.0 ghz, 256 ram, 30 gig hd, 15"screen, geforce4 420 go. Just installed Suse 9.1 last night. Install was easy enough. everything seems to work fine, including all the power stuff and such. wanted to see if it would run doom3 better then ol'winblows xp. but now i'm writing this on my old pIII 600 cause i can't get the darn geforce to display properly... but that's what you get for trying to run linux on a laptop i guess. it's hard enough for a noob setting up a desktop, tweaking this laptop is a once in a lifetime experience i hope (dream on... )

My laptop is a dell inspiron 1100, dual booting mandrake 10.0 and windows 2000 server. Had a deal of a time getting it to work till i updated the bios to the latest version, and after that its been pretty smooth.

I have an eMachines M2352 and have enjoyed working on it. I had/have problems with the integrated 802.11g (Broadcom chipset, ugh) and sound (still haven't figured it out, but from reading other posts, it may just be a volume level issue). Despite those problems, it's been a great machine to work on. Good luck!

Good thing I didn't read anyhing about linux before I started using it!
I have an HP ze4125.
I have installed both Suse 9.1(what I currently use) and Fedora core2. Both worked out of the box, for the most part.
Fedora core1 refused to to boot.

Wireless pcmcia card was detected under SuSe, just cant actualy connect(cant get IP address through dhcp). Integrated ethernet card detected, configed by installer perfectly.
Modem was detected, conexant driver software installed(included with SuSe). Have not tested since I use DSL.
I have the battery monitor thingy-no config on my part.
Have not tried any of the other stuff(cpu throttling, suspend/hibernate) since I only use it as a desktop.
ATI mobility integrated card detected-no 3d support, 2d perfect.

Any problems encounterd are user created. I get everything working perfectly then have an irresistable urge to tinker with/break it!

Ps. HCL on SuSe site includes list of laptops either "ready for" or "certified for" SuSe, includes link to testing done for both standards.

I have a Toshiba Satellite A45 S151, and it works quite well with SUSE 9.1 personal. There were very few things that I had to do to get it to work right. My only complaint is that SUSE 9.1 Personal dosent come with some of the software that I use.
I've also had luck running PHLAK .2-1, and installing Mandrake 10.1 CE. however SUSE was the only one that reconigised my WLAN adapter "out of the box".
The WLAN adapter is the Askey AR5212 802.11 abg NIC. And seems to use the MADWiFi driver.
I recently installed Slack 10.0 and all seems mostly well, I have a few quirks to work out and fix, but so far I works great.

On another note I will soon be publishing my guide on my website (adam.burnetta.com)

I dual-boot WinXP and Mandrake 10.0 on a 2.6 GHz Acer Travelmate 244LC with 256MB RAM, 30GB HD.
It works except the usual battery management issues; but since I have it plugged in at the office and at home, I haven't really needed to monitor the battery. Just as well, since it consumes battery power like programmers do coffee.

I've got an aopen 1557 barebook with radeon 9600.

Problems are;
No apparant support for ms/sd/mmc slot
shitty ati drivers
Hav not managed to make acpi sleep work

On a standard suse installation I had to install modules for ati, ipw2200, software wlanswitch, multimediabuttons (I think I have a hardware issue with them as one button hangs) and i had to set up irda manually

The ipw2200 is not in monitor mode so it does not pick up new ap's as I move around (the ipw2100 does)
There are no easy wlan tools!!! I am no programmer (yet)

if you compare it to my earlier dell 500m which now supports linux adequatly, it's a great laptop with great linux support.

Hi Fellows!
I have a DELL Latitude CPi A Series. It is a Pentium II 366MHz XT 125 SDRAM 10GB VIDEOMAGIC video card.
I am looking for help about set up my eth0. I have two NICs PCMCIA... one is A Buffalo and another is an Xircom. Both work well on windows... but any linux distro set it up (just the outdated RedHat 9). I have tryed Debian, Mandrake and Suse... does anyone did it?
I think the problem cames from my PCMCIA card manager... it is a Texas intrument card manager... it seems kernel doesnt recognize it.

Christian Rendon
From Peru

I had a Latitude CPi A series too, only with the 300MHz CPU instead of your 366MHz model. I never had any problems with PCMCIA and with most distributions it worked right out of the box, so to speak. Depending on what your kernel version is, the PCIC should be set to i82365 (2.2, 2.4) or yenta (2.6).


Håkan

I am running an IBM T41p with 2 Gigs of RAM. The screen is 14 " and this puppy rocks!

My O/S is SuSE 9.1 and I had no troubles at all running it (It even auto detected my built in wireless properly)

I run the resolution as 1400 x 1050, which is fine for most of what I do. I use Ctrl + to increase text size (I'm gettin' old!) when reading email or browsing, and kswitcher (a KDE desktop applet) for quick res changes when using an external monitor or projector. Hope this helps

Working with an Acer Aspire 1510. It simply rocks! Linux does a great job on it.

I have spent three months trying to get Linux on my Gateway solo. Yeah that's right, and it's an old one at that, one Gateway doesn't support anymore. I would say I find Gateway's completely execrating, but that may be a little too severe. They are more of an abomination in my view. So please save youself from weeks of torment, don't purchase a gateway, new or old.

Check my Quote

I haven't had any problems installing it. Even got the audio to work under alsa.