List of Successful Laptops

[mfer]

It would be most useful to those of us in the market for a laptop to have a list of machines that people are successfully running Knoppix on.

I now grub V3.2-2003-04-23-en from the HDD of a desktop along with W98. Since all new laptops come with XP, experience with XP is particularly desired.

[aay]

In general Knoppix should work on laptops listed here: http://www.linux-laptop.net/

If you can boot from the CD, hdinstall should work fine. Since this is the case, perhaps you should take a knoppix CD the store and try it out on the laptop before you buy. Most stores won't have a problem with this. If they do, just explain to them what a live CD is and that you want to see if this computer is linux compaible before you buy it. If they still object, tell them that you will be taking your business elsewhere.

Make sure to have a good look around once you get Knoppix up and running.

You'll want to do a "dmesg |less" as well as "lspci |less" and look for any errors. An easy way to check for compatibability is to open kinfocenter. Finally just make sure that the sound card is properly detected and works. You might need to try the ALSA drivers for some laptops though. To do this just boot with this option: "knoppix alsa"

Hope this helps.

[rickenbacherus]

Since all new laptops come with XP, experience with XP is particularly desired.

Bah!- Please be advised that you DO NOT have to buy an OS with any computer. If the sales person tells you so then I'd bet that they also think AOL is a great service and is also the OS for Macintosh.

BTW- many new computers ship with Linux on them everyday. I do like the idea of having a list of functioning laptops tho- I'll add the wife's as soon as I can have a look at what it is. Of course we don't tell her that it boots Knoppix like a dream do we? (windows users.........)

[mfer]

Good advice, Thank you. I've looked at linux-laptop.net and it seems to have mostly older models, not those currently in stores.

By the way, my last paragraph question about XP is answered at
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html
and
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

[aay]

Until recently the only way that windows users with ntfs who wanted to dual boot with Knoppix were able to make room for a linux partition was to use some comercial application like Partition Magic. You had to shrink the ntfs partition and create an ext2/3 and swap partition with Partition Magic. The most recent releases of Knoppix include a Partition Magic like tool that should be able to do this. All you need to do is run qtparted (as root) before you run knx-hdinstall and shrink the ntfs drive. You can then just run knx-hdinstall and create ext3 and swap with cfdisk. This SHOULD work, but be advised to back up any data on your ntfs partition before you try it though.

[rickenbacherus]

All right then- boys night out with the wife's win2k laptop. She's gonna cry when she sees Linux from RAM is faster than M$ from hdd. Anyway- Morphix booted w/ no codes on an IBM Thinkpad 2647 4MU

morph@Morphix:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 11
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Mobile CPU      1133MHz
stepping        : 1
cpu MHz         : 1132.403
cache size      : 32 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips        : 2260.99

morph@Morphix:~$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        255296     136620     118676          0       3560      86880
-/+ buffers/cache:      46180     209116
Swap:            0          0          0

[humberto]

It would be most useful to those of us in the market for a laptop to have a list of machines that people are successfully running Knoppix on.

I've got a fujitsu lifebook P-2120 I like a lot. It's running KNOPPIX v3.2 20030418 installed on the hard drive.

I need to pass the options ide0=ata66 ide1=ata66, but it's well documented on the linux-on-laptops site.

Since the machine has ACPI, you need to recompile a kernel to get battery statistics, and I don't have suspend to disk or suspend to RAM working.

This machine came with Windows XP, and a mini partition magic from fujitsu, so repartitioning is a breeze.

My biggest complaint is that the whiteglass cursor theme is almost invisible. You can use

sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme

to change to another cursor theme.

Does anyone know of a simpler way to change the cursor in KNOPPIX?

[Goner]

Knoppix 2003-05-03 runs OK on Dell Latitude C-640 (also using a docking station) ... sound, video, network, all fine.

Goner

[Steve Cronje]

Running 3.2 with no problems on my HP Pavilion xf328.

No ACPI, but APM is ok, so I can suspend from the CLI.

DVD / CDRW, networking, multimedia all OK. Have not tried modem yet, as I use highspeed connection. "Scrollwheel" on the pad is not working, but I have not made much effort to fix that, as I mostly use a USB mouse most of the time, anyway.

Most of this ran out of the box, and I did a HDD install, so I guess I can no longer call this Knoppix, but its Knoppix that made it so painless!



Steve

[drlizau]

I bought the NEC. I can run knoppix failsafe, otherwise it hangs during boot trying to find a DHCP server (whether a cable is connected or not)
The sound isn't right - it plays two seconds and repeats it endlessly needing 'kill 466' or 'killall oss' for peace.
Because I've booted in failsafe I can't use any USB devices.
a Knoppix noeth option would help me.
I have 4 distros on this laptop and not one works perfectly. Each one has bits that work well and bits that don't work well. One partition is my 'home' and another partition is swap.