Notebook Advice to a Linux Newb

Hi,

I have been researching laptops for quite some time, and would like a relatively fast, light notebook with a long lasting battery. Thus I have found the Fujitsu S series notebooks-- scroll down to the thin and light section to check them out.

There are three models-- the S2000 with an AMD XP-M, the S6000 that is fully centrino branded, and the S6000D a centrino without the official centrino WiFi chip (therefore it becomes an Intel Pentium M)

I haven't found anyone who has posted any findings on these laptops yet, and would like to get some advice on the following:

Intel currently the chipset, but supports doesn't support the WiFi. They are making no promises here. Therefore the S6000 is currently without wireless.

The S6000D has a broadcom 802.11b/g WiFi card (the g is based on current final draft specs for the g standard).

I really haven't found any good info on the XP-M in terms of its Linux compatibility.

I don't know which basket to put my eggs in!

I don't have the Linux experience/foresight to know which option will be the most supported (by linux of course) in the future. Any advice, comments, hints or whatever will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

oh, and a random quickie--if anyone has any distro suggestions for this laptop, lemme know. I am currently thinking SuSE.

Don't go with the centrino, it'd be a waste of money for the WiFi. I'd go with the AMD-XP laptop myself. Also I'd put on Gentoo Linux. During thier install it tells you how to detect the proper proc flags to use in your make.conf for march=" ". They also have a large selection of maintained kernel types for playing with. The portage system is nice too.

The XP comes with a WiFi card--the biggest difference to me is the fact that fujitsu claims that the Centrino gets 4.5 hours on a single battery, while the XP-M gets 3.5 on a single battery. Pretty big difference, but would I be able to reap these longer life benefits with Linux?

I emailed Scott McLaughlin of Intel, and he sent me the following reply:

-------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Jansen -
thank you for the note; you are certainly not alone in
sending me your comments. I have forwarded your note
to the Centrino team so they can log your vote.
Although we have nothing more to disclose at this
point, your feedback is very helpful.
Regards,
Scott
=====================
Scott McLaughlin
Intel Press Relations
=====================
-------------------------------------------------------

If anyone else here is interested in centrino support on Linux, you know what to do! (his email address is easy to find)


Thanks for your replies!

Read a review in the Linux Format mag (UK) (URL) of 7 laptops tested with Debian 3. These machines were:
Sony Vaio; Toshiba Satellite; Compaq Presario; Acer Travelmate; Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook; Mesh Explorer; and Evesham Voyager.
Of these, the reviewers rated the Acer as a 10 for features, performance, and value for money and a 9/10 for ease of use. The Compaq received the lowest rating.
Unless you are willing to spend some time hacking around with different config files you would probably be better off installing one of the standard one-size-fits-all distroos, like a SuSE or Mandrake or Red Hat.. I'm using a Mitac clone laptop, running Mandrake 9.0, and so far so good. I did install Slackware 8.1, and managed to get XWindows working (eventually), but didn't trust my knowledge of building up the security (e.g. firewall using ipchains) from scratch (no hand-holding in Slackware!!!), so deferred to a distro with a less steep learning curve.

If yer gunna buy a nice shiny laptop, get all the power you can out of it and use a source distro, like Gentoo. Mmmm, proper use of processor instruction sets, mmmmm.