Which popular notebook manufacturer best supports Linux?

I have decided that I will buy a new notebook after the Intel Sandy Bridge architecture is released in January, and I wanted to get some opinion dynamics on what notebook manufacturer best supports free and open-source software (FOSS), with hardware (i.e. not virtualized) GNU/Linux installations in particular. I know that I am going to be getting and using the Intel integrated graphics processing unit as opposed to NVIDIA or ATI because I want to support Intel for their prominent and unrelenting support of FOSS, because it will undoubtedly increase battery life and because I know it will 'just work'.

If you'd like, please post some supporting details on why you chose who you did.

Things to consider before voting:

• Acknowledgment of FOSS
• Hardware Support
• Usage of FOSS
• Technical Support
• Out-of-box Functionality
• Personal Experience

To note: I am not including far-less popular Linux-only manufacturers like System76 or third-party vendors like EmporerLinux since this is a question of popular/high-visibility manufacturers only.

Thanks,
Andrew

 

My best bet is with Acer.
Because of their generic hardware it is mostly Out Of Box.
Plus the hardware is pretty cheap.

1)Just don't get Optimus not sure about ATi State on Linux.
2)Check that the WiFi is either Atheros or Intel not sure about Broadcom.

I am using an Acer Laptop running Fedora mostly out of box except Nvidia Binaries.

 

May I have a moderator/administrator edit my poll to allow multiple choices? I wanted to do this, and I could have sworn I checked the box, but for whatever reason it is only single choice... I apologize for my carelessness.

Thanks,
Andrew

 

Just stay far, far away from anything with optimus. Ironically, I find lappys with NV gpus tend to get along easier/better with linux than ATI, though they're both good once you have them setup.

 

It seems at though the poll type cannot be changed to multiple choice after it has been created. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

My Acer (Gateway LT2320U) Worked right "out of box" with several distos of Linux.

My Sager/Clevo in sig did as well, except for my nVidia driver for my 260M -- which was automatically found for me, then I installed

FYI: Clevo is the ODM and Sager is a brand put on Clevo's -- in other words they are the same thing.

 

According to my experience Lenovo and Dell are the easiest to come along with on the technical site. This is why I won't vote for one or the other.
Dell accomplishes this via their configurability while Lenovos have always been pretty Linux friendly.
But with Optimus already being on the market and Sandy Bridge coming up, I don't know how valid that will be in the future.

When it comes to FOSS friendliness I must clearly say that Dell performs pretty poorly. Their Ubuntu program never was something better than a bad joke and even got worse by today. And all their RHEL advertisement in the business branch is simply a lie.

 

debguy....how is suspend/hibernate working for you with Debian (m6500)?

 

Older Dells and Acer are my choices. anything with Optimus is useless for Linux right now and Nvidia is no longer our friend with drivers. Acer is great because its basic does not do stupid BIOS whitelists etc. and normally takes little work to get running.

 

I'd go on a limb and say Dell, Lenovo, and then others... Asus and Acer, to me, have linux products but I am not sure how much they are contributing/supporting the community...

 

Frankly, I'm not sure. I don't use it. I tested it mid of october with squeeze and both was working fine. Some weeks later, maybe early november, I accidentally hit the suspend to disk button instead of the shutdown button but next time the laptop booted from scratch.

Do I understand you correctly that there are already laptops on the market which check for "allowed" OSes? I knew this would come sooner or later when TPM is established, but I didn't think it would happen so quickly.

 

I think the whitelist reference is about aftermarket components, like wireless cards in specific. Some manufacturers will only allow their own brand (or whitelist) of components to be used.

I could be wrong though, it might be a reference to a different kind of whitelist, but usually here on NBR that's what I see referenced in general.

 

But still that means that the BIOS (or some other component) dictates what the user can change?
I don't like that idea at all. Denying support is one thing, but intentionally crippling a computer is a whole new dimension.

btw:
I see kitty has a new job.

 

I'm not aware of it for the nitty gritty details, since that tends to be on HP machines, which I've never owned. I think there are ways around it with BIOS mods, but since a lot of systems are moving away from traditional BIOS to UEFI I can't say if that's still true or if I'm totally full of crap. Either way, the BIOS is limiting what you do, but this isn't much different from the BIOS limiting your multiplier or RAM speeds/voltage, throttling, etc, since it's all closed architecture to begin with. The BIOS is generally set to parameters that the manufacturer dictates, which are usually tuned for the least amount of warranty returns and the maximum amount of profit.

And yeah, I launched the holiday 2010 assault on groceries... figured it's about time to get into the mood.

 

I had some luck with Broadcom chips in the past, but they were a PAIN most of the time.

 

If you need packet injection abilities Atheros is number 1!
Let me provide examples of what it means by whitelisting.
Example on a Laptop if you bought a broadcom wifi card SKU and want to change it to Atheros
For Acer, just remove, swap and it is done.
For HP, Lenovo after swapping and you turn it on, it will display error wrong device etc and refuse to start.
By rights in the BIOS only VGA BIOS and Ethernet LAN BIOS is embbeded inside(Because of PXE Boot abilities outside of a OS).
WiFi Cards are NOT required to be checked in the BIOS as the Computer loads the driver AFTER it boots the OS so it is not required but HP and Lenovo put them in anyway.
BroadCom should be getting better since they made the decision to opensource the drivers.

 

As said above about the whitelist. Last laptop I purposely used linux on was an HP didnt have much of a choice...pos.

 

Hmm...

Close poll. I didn't expect to see Acer there. I had a bad experience with an Acer netbook but I'd give them another chance if Acer wins out here.

Dell is interesting, but every time I go to a Linux forum there seems to be someone complaining about them.

Lenovo was the one I thought was going to win. I never see anyone have problems with them on Linux forums, and from what I've heard, they are nice to put Linux on.

I am now deeply interested in Acer's TimelineX series though.

Thanks, and keep voting!

 

Thinkpads win just because of the community here: ThinkWiki

I haven't owned a thinkpad in 15 years and I still find interesting stuff on there every time I look.

 

The main suggestion I have is to stay away from consumer class and go with a business class notebook. Those are the machines that will have the higher quality components that are more likely to work with Linux.

 

That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?
I have 3 laptops, two consumer class and one business class. All work fine with only free drivers, except for WLAN. And the only one where I intentionally cared for Linux compatibility is the business machine.
In the end the internal components in consumer and business class laptops are all the same. What varies is the build quality (chassis, cooling, display, keyboard etc.) and the support. But that has nothing to do with the compatibility.

 

I think it depends on how literally you take the question. I think it's good advice if you want to shoot for compatibility to stick with business class notebooks, since they won't have low-cost components like broadcom or ralink chipsets and off-brand touchpads with strange problems or other cheap components. There are differences in build quality but most of the components in a business class machine are closer to the server/desktop end of what gets mainstream support fastest in newer kernels.

All of my machines recently have been mainstream or gaming ASUS machines that have a good price to performance ratio. I can't recommend ASUS at all for the linux friendly factor, especially after they took so long to release their Eee source code for Xandros, and GPL violations, but I have had great experience with my machines. My next system will likely be a business class ASUS, unless I wait longer for Ivy Bridge in which case I can't predict what I'll end up with.

 

Agreed. When I said "dramatically" I was referring to Pitabreds "stay away" which sounds pretty absolute to me.

Well, my 2800 Euro Dell has a Broadcom WLAN chip. I could have had an Intel chip, but since I knew I wouldn't use WLAN with this machine I just didn't care for Dells internal codes. And this was the default module.

If I were them I'd have been reluctant to release the sources too. It's already embarrassing to see the binaries. I have no idea what they thought when they knocked that thing up or if they thought at all.
I stopped my support on Xandros problems long ago. All I say is "Install Windows!".

 

Yeah dell loves to brand broadcom chips as DELL SuperAwesomeCard9000 and still charge for it. Hopefully after some bugs are worked out the new brcm80211 driver will be usable and broadcom will become a safe choice. The broadcom STA wl module is truly horrific.

 

+1 for Thinkpads. Also, most of Dells should be good too.
Things that should be avoided: Radeon GPUs, Broadcom WLAN chips and Nvidia Optimus crap.

 

There is no business class components vs consumer class components which has "Linux Compatibility".
It just depends on the model you are using that all.
Intel Chipset/Processor, Atheros/Intel Wireless, Nvidia Graphics without Optimus (for 3D acceleration), Intel Graphics if you do not need good 3D performance.
You don't go by the "consumer/business" branding, learn to read the specs.
If you can learn how to use Linux, you can learn how to read specs...

 

While I would agree with you, I think you also see to fail where this comes from. The past is litered with details, that have formed impressions in people.

Brands have in the past and most likley still do, build desktops and notebooks for Business customer markets which are offered in both Windows, Nix and adding a third, no os shipped. These units are usually built with components targeting the operating systems they intentd to support. Versus an off the shelf HP laptop with zero support from either HP, the hardware vendors, or linux community developers.

Remember when 802.11A was actually an option needed, wasn't for the consumer market.

Linux itself has come along way as well, the vendors and the community have put out alot more support for the every man then there used to be. Meaning less need to worry about whats supported and whats not.

 

The thing is that NO ONE guarantees support in Linux.
Linux comes with NO WARRANTY.
So you have to be smart about it and learn what will work and what will not work and start filtering your laptop criteria using that.
When I see sites such as ThinkWiki on recent laptops you need to add some stuff to adjust brightness control. On Generic simple computers like Acer with their defacto ACPI there is no need to do stuff like that.
Linux likes simple standardised specs and there are consumer brand which do just that.
The more you have the more likely you will encounter problems so stay simple.

 

I agree, there's no such thing as these brands or manufacturers looking at 'Linux compatibility.' There's a few that have open drivers or give some proprietary assistance but basically, you have to look at individual components in the laptop and see if those are supported or not.

I wouldn't worry about brand and compatibility. Just the indiividual components. Intel has been traditionally good for their Linux support with their wifi and gpu hardware. Atheros has good open support for wifi. Nvidia seems to be going the other way with their Optimus tech. and ATI.... depends on who you ask.

 

I've already decided what the core components of my PC will be;

Intel i3, i5, or i7 non-ULV processor
Intel integrated graphics
Intel Ultimate-N 6300 Wireless
Intel X-25M 160GB SSD
Hoping for Intel audio
Hoping for Intel NIC

Did I mention I like Intel?

To be honest, i really do love Intel. Every Intel product I look up has support easily available, and every Intel product I look up explicitly mentions it supports Linux. This is very reassuring and I will choose to support them as long as they continue to do that, even though they are incredibly popular already. I've never had a problem with them, and they always work out of the box. Yes, I'm a fanboy...

Anyway, to put my fanboism aside for a minute (sorry), I thing it does matter, to a certain extent, to pay attention to brands that 'work' better than others. Things like function keys, brightness controls, ACPI, suspend/resume, motherboard... they matter and vary from manufacturer to manufacturer from what I've seen. That's why I started this poll!

 

I think this approach is very practical. If one isn't going to game or do intensive graphics work then it makes sense.

I think if your budget is limited, it might be the only choice as well.

I am wondering one thing. If you get a laptop with an Intel wifi card and it's the Intel® WiFi Link 1000BGN card, is the 6300n card considered an upgrade? I notice a lot of the 1000n cards in laptops I'm looking at and I'm wondering two things:

1) is this a good card and
2) can one upgrade it to 6250 or 6300? is that an option?

I suppose further research might provide the answer but just wondering and confirmation would be great.

I'm not an Intel 'fanboy' by any means but it might be a way to ensure linux compatibility.

 

I'm comparing:

HP 15.6" Intel Core i5-460M Laptop (DV6-3134CA - Black
With ATI HD Radeon 5470 switchable graphics

HP Pavilion 15.6" Intel Core i5 460M Laptop (DV6-3114CA) - Gold

Sony VAIO 15.5" Intel Core i5 460M Laptop (VPCEB3AFDBJ) - Black

Others:

ASUS A52F-X1
Asus X52F-X3

Can someone comment on the laptops above? I had Asus in the mix but the one I listed above, I couldn't find much info on and it's not even listed on the Asus website!

But, these are decent laptops, right? I think maybe Asus cheapened out, though, with no eSATA port or comparable features to the HP or Sony laptops? But, maybe the rest of the hardware is okay?

Anyway, 'would like a comparison of them if anyone is interested!

 

Dell winning from Lenovo and the Acer at the moment. Which is what I'd expect.

Dell have marketed linux laptops in the past and Lenovo is the other main contender. And Acers just seem to work well.

I think that reports of problems with Dell are because Dell's linux reputation is so good that everyone expects them to work first time, every time.

 

My employer has tons of Dells, mostly Latitudes, all from the pre-Optimus era. Half of them run under Suse Linux 10.3 upwards, some under Fedora or Gentoo. I never heard of any complaints that couldn't be solved by our IT guys.

 

I just purchased a used Dell Latitude D800 for my daughter and installed Linux Mint on it... everything worked right out of the box, not a single issue.

I am now looking for a D620 or D630 for my mom... and i just ordered a Dell M2400 for myself

I don't have enough Linux experience to put a vote for best manufacturer, but boy do I like the Dell Latitudes and Precisions