[clug] Advice about buying a new laptop

[Chris Smart]

On 21/09/15 18:06, Sharon Doig wrote:
> Hi Canberra Linux Group,I am a lurker here and need some advice about buying a new laptop. I am looking at a sub $800 lap top computer to use for university studies. Can anyone tell me what brands and models would allow me to duel boot Open Suse 13.1 and windows? I am hoping to duel boot on a windows 8 or higher OS. Since I am really new at buying a machine to run both windows and linux on. Could you provide a list of questions for the sale person/manufacturer help line. 

Could be timely, maybe not:
<http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/09/21/1245248/ask-slashdot-recommendations-for-a-reliable-linux-laptop>

In my opinion, you'll have the best support in a laptop if you stick to
Intel based devices like graphics and wireless. Intel wireless is
especially important as often random non-Intel wireless cards require
custom firmware and or out-of-tree drivers and can be a pain. Often
laptops at retail stores don't have the option to get an Intel wifi
card, but sometimes companies like Dell do.

I recommend you take a live image like Korora[1] on a USB3 stick and ask
if you can boot it on the laptops you're thinking of, before you buy, to
make sure the hardware works. You may have trouble with suspend and
resume, and often that's down to buggy BIOS/UEFI which you don't really
know until you try.

There's also companies like System76[2] that sell Linux laptops.

-c

[1] https://kororaproject.org
[2] https://system76.com