Laptop for Linux

[Phillip Waclawski]

Hmmm, well, I know I tried to get both the wireless, and the ethernet to
work on an HP Pavillion dv6563cl from CostCo the day/night before my
trip to the LinuxWorld Expo.

Had a lot of odd problems. The Fedora DVD that Dennis Kibbe let me use
would boot up, but when you chose "CD" for media, it suddenly couldn't
see the CD/DVD drive. Then the Ubutu disk he lent me basically gave an
odd TTY error and hung.

So, I could boot up Knoppix on it just fine, but after installing that
(I KNOW they say it's not for a HD install, but this was already
approaching 1am and I was getting desperate ;), but I could not get the
network working.

So, I downloaded and burned the CD's for CentOS 5 (I was already running
CentOS 4.5 on the laptop that was dying) and got it to install. I could
not get a straight answer on any website as to which driver to use for
the Intel device 4229 rev 61 , but most recommended ipw2200  and
following the instructions....well, at 4am I gave up, cleaned the
partition, got up at 10am, returned the laptop (with Vista utterly wiped
off of it) to CostCo for my money back.

I know laptop installs can be fun. I'm not really happy about laptops no
longer having PCMCIA slots, I could have used the ethernet or wireless
card I already had.

I would prefer to install Fedora/CentOS on a laptop that has decent
graphics, DVD+-R, wireless and ethernet support that works.

As I no longer have to rush, any advice you have would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Phil Waclawski
(prepping for the Linux Class starting Monday ;)

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CIS Faculty: Phil Waclawski
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~waclawski
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