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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much everyone I know who runs Linux on their laptop uses a Thinkpad. They don't come with Linux installed but they tend to have good driver support and pretty good quality.

You might also consider system76, but I don't have experience with those.

EDIT: I'm currently running Linux on my T410. Suspend was broken with Ubuntu 10.4, but everything works perfectly now with 10.10.

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I second the ThinkPad recommendation. Do some research on different models. The X301 is a lightweight option. ThinkPads are the best laptops for Linux by far. Another great thing about them is that they seem to me to be tougher and more reliable than other PC laptops like Dell or HP. I've dropped them before w/o incident, and they take a beating better than any laptop I've ever used. Also, the keyboard on a ThinkPad is an order of magnitude better than on a Dell or HP.

The 301 is pretty far out of date now, and with the X201 and X201s options doesn't make a whole lot of sense in my opinion.

Well, that was one option I mentioned because they are not cutting edge-- you can pick up one for a good price on eBay easily. The X201 series are indeed up to date, but Lenovo is currently sold out of the X201s model. Those would also be very good choices.

I love my x301 but I do agree.. it is out of date unfortunately. It was the perfect balance between the 12" and the 14" ThinkPads. My only gripe is that it's limited to 4GB. Anyone know if it's possible to exceed this limit?

A coworker of mine just got the T410s and I've gotta say I'm jealous. If I was buying a new laptop, I would go with the T410.

Got a T510 here (with the extra-high-res 1920x1080 display) and it's great. Everything works in Ubuntu 10.04 (I don't have any problems with suspend-to-RAM or -to-disk).

I spent a while looking into MBPs and it seems the Linux support is still fairly laughable - the latest models won't even boot it, and even the older ones require a kernel recompile to get sound working. I'd buy an MBP without hesitation if I wanted to run OS X, but not as a Linux machine with a nicer case.

Same here. I got mine about two months ago. I also installed 10.04. I love the trackpoint (the red pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard) and the mouse buttons just below the space bar (don't have to leave the keyboard to use the mouse). The only major issue that I have now is the inability to control the backlight. This seems to be due to a bad driver by nvidia [1]. The backlight controls work if you use non-nvidia drivers. This will shorten your battery charge considerably. Other than that, everything works out of the box. I use the 64-bit version.

[1] http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=150069

Yes, the backlight is the only thing that doesn't work so well. I can control the backlight - I think I had to tweak some setting that I found on Google, but I don't remember which - but its auto-darkening on inactivity is pretty broken. When I move the mouse or type a key, the screen brightens again, but only about halfway back to what it was before the auto-darken, so I then have to manually jack the brightness up each time this happens.

Hoping some new driver release will fix this some time, but it's only a minor irritation.

BTW, your link [1] seems to be broken?

I love the trackpoint. I've disabled my touchpad completely.

Yes, the forums' website is down. Here is the google cache [2]. The link [1] entitled "NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M on Lenovo Thinkpad T510: NVIDIA Backlight Control Causes Buzz" is the first result in the search for "t510 backlight" [3].

The issue has also made it to Canonical's launchpad [4]. The link [1] is mentioned in comment #27 [5].

[2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4dJW3r_...

[3] http://www.google.com/search?q=t510+backlight

[4] Bug #562005: Backlight controls of laptops with NVIDIA NVS and Quadro FX 880M GPUs no longer function while using proprietary drivers https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-dr...

[5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-dr...

Is there a particular wireless chipset I should choose that works better with Ubuntu? Options seem to be: ThinkPad bgn Wireless and then various Intel Centrino variants.

When I got mine, I had an option for "Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN". That's what I selected and it works flawlessly. I don't know about the others.

Intel wireless cards should be a safe choice.

Broadcom wireless cards ought to be avoided at all costs (except they finally saw the light and released an open driver for their latest 802.11N, yay, but likely it's not integrated in any distro yet).

I've no idea what "ThinkPad wireless" actually is.

I think the reason suspend didn't work for me was that I had the new version of Intel graphics whereas with a 510 you probably had NVidia graphics. Still, given that the new Intel graphics system had only been out for a few months when 10.04 came out I'm not really complaining too much.

Speaking of longevity of the brand, my backup system is an old IBM Thinkpad T42 (circa 2004). It runs Ubunutu 10.04 fine. Sure it's not super fast, but the keyboard is still solid. The screen is a bit dim, but it always was. My next buy will be a thinkpad.

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