Barebones laptop/netbooks

ginggs said:
Certified by whom? Is is certified by the manufacturer that it will run Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, or is it certified by Canonical that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will run on it?
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Canonical under Dell name. Even so, I have yet to see the laptop that won't work under Ubunti & derivatives, except for the MacbookPro that required a small tweak in the form of a tiny install from an official repository. You will also see that the Cleco machines only have a few Canonical (Dell) certified ones but that most of their machines have not been tested. As for myself, it does not really matter as, unlike eight years ago, everything just works on Linux. This is true enough to serve as a generalisation. I did experience a Mac wireless adapter that needed a fix in Linux Mint, the adapter is a Broadcomm product. Broadcomm sometimes need tweaking, also in Windows.

The inmortant thing is that hardware drivers for the bulk of peripherals and components come written into the kernel, meaning these devices need no installation of drivers. There will always be an exception, more so with old hardware of a decade ago or so. Even my 9-year old Acer laptop has an ancient AMD Radeon that still is supported by Linux Mint 17.1, the very latest release.

On both Mac and Windows, my own personal experience is that peripherals will work on Linux (Debian/Ubuntu family) but then not on these two major OS's. I even had to go buy new devices to please 64-BIT Windows and Mac just failed to accept each and every USB HSDPA dongle that I had. All these worked fine on Linux.

Mac had compliancy issues with its own OEM branded products! My Macbook pro just as my iPhone 5 both rejected the original cables and chargers they were shipped with, over and above the third party devices. Mac updates also stopped wireless networking on my iPhone. Mac hardware is top quality and its super smooth software is marred only by Apple staffers who roll out broken updates. Otherwise, a most pleasant product to be working with.

Also printers: ask the techie at my local Incredible the many comebacks they had on HP peripherals that had inadequate drivers for 64-BIT Windows 8, same as I had seen on 64-BIT Windows 7.

I think that more than three decades on the field had taught me something. I hardly ever deal with opinion but rather stick to facts, especially when repeated personal experiebce can confirm. It is ludicrous to even think that Mac is 100% hardware compliant. Even their own dealers are, to this day, reluctant to recommend scanners, printers, MFD's, etc.
 
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ginggs said:
This would be fine (FTFY):

At least I would be able to see where your link is going without having to click on it.
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Point taken. I started obfuscating when I wrote business plans and made presentations. There, it looks tacky. I never thought it could make someone uncomfortable, but then my audiences usually are decidedly non-ICT people. I will try to be more civil when posting links in future, at least on MyBB.
 
Hamster said:
No. Still something I think about. At the moment there is December and a womanz depleting my savings :p

...and no, no pics you dirty bastid.
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Whatever you decide upon, should the queen of your heart leave you enough crumbs, bear in mind that you really require very little drive space for the Linux OS. My MacbookPro i5 2.5Ghz is slow on Mavericks as the 1TB drive slows it down and then it is a much slower OS than Linux. Unless you have mountainloads of personal data, you could even get away with a very fast & cheap 64GB SSD. A hybrid drive such as WD Black may be more ideal, with its 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD but it costs well over R3k and is overkill. Unless you load every game and full HD video you can lay your hands on.

I have Linux Mint 17.1 on an external 40GB hard drive as well as a 160GB internhal HDD. Poor little Linux seems to be hiding in the far corner, almost invisible. With three browsers, a mail client, various graphic imaging & photo editing software, PDF reader, music and video players, a full office suite and lots more, it fills just over 4GB of drive space. Add my user data and entire photo collection and it grows to just below 10GB. A terrabyte will be overkill.

I'm a nerd.....no pics of your existing lappy then? Oh, the girl....no need to post pics, I have my own one as reliable as Linux, as polished as Mac and as "comprehensive" as Windows!
 
Hamster said:
I'm looking to get a laptop or netbook I can run Linux on. Where is best to buy one these days that doesn't come with windows installed?
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Hi

Why not simply convert the windows laptop.... I converted my windows to Ubuntu, and now Kali
Easy to do
 
Anyone bought one of those Wootware laptops (Wootbook) that doesn't come with an OS installed, and booted a Linux distro on it?
 
About three months ago bought one of those Gigabyte gaming laptops - this one actually - https://www.wootware.co.za/gigabyte...tel-760p-m-2-ssd-1tb-hdd-ms-dos-notebook.html

Bought from rectron and not Wootware though. Added an additional 8GB of memory.

It comes pre-loaded with MS-DOS. Just installed Windows on there and saved a few on getting the version with Windows installed.

Can run Linux on almost anything nowadays without hassle. For shits I booted mint on that same laptop and everything worked fine.
 
There seems to be decent budget deals on Bid or Buy for used laptops. If chosen carefully, used can provide as much value for money as buying new.
 
lol @ ancient thread.

Unrelated...I've had good luck with an old 2nd zenbook + fresh battery. The old top end ones have high res screens >1080...don't recall how many Ks....and they're fanless.

When I was looking at new chromebooks (720p) vs old cutting edge zenbook that was a very easy choice.
 
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