I'm looking to get a Dell laptop that I can dual boot windows 7 and Red Hat Enterprise on. Is it safe to assume that most laptops will be compatible? Basically, I need to be able to install RHEL 5 so I can get a nightly backup of our current server on it. It needs to be portable so that in the case of a flood (I work at a boatyard/marine distributor now ) it can be removed and the business can still function. It needs to be able to support RHEL 5 to maintain compatability with the current server. Beyond that, I don't have many specs. It's running some old green screen legacy system, so...

It's been so long since I've been able to work with Linux, I'm a bit out of touch with where things stand. It's good to be back though.

It probably makes more sense to use a virtual machine, and I know for a fact that VMWare runs RHEL5.

In fact, I'd say that it probably makes more sense to convert your production server to a virtual machine. It'll be easier to make bare (virtual) metal backups, too, and you won't have to worry about hardware compatibility.

Dell notebooks generally run Linux pretty well these days. Everything on them should "work" as normal.

HP/Compaq, Sony, Toshiba etc.. not so much.
IBM/Lenovo: excellent.

Here, I use Dell notebooks. All of them work well with Linux.

Cheers

Oh, BIG caveat for now:

AVOID notebooks with "hybrid graphics", aka. "optimus".

-ml

Thanks for the info guys.

@Bitt: It needs to be booted into linux 99% of the time, windows only on VERY rare occasion. On reboot, it needs to bring linux up, not windows, so I really would rather dual boot. Wine is always an option, but not really what I really want. I have used VMware extensively at my last job, and know its merits, but this just isn't what my boss wants.

@Mark: Hybrid graphics? Ahhh... Did some research. Good tip. I was not aware of this new tech. Makes sense, but it also makes things much more complicated.

OK, cool. I can go shopping now. ;8^)

Is this based on recent experience? Admittedly it's been nearly 6 years now, but back when I still worked for HP, nearly every business line laptop supported Linux just fine. Just wondering if things have gone downhill since then. Bruce Perens helped to get HP on the right track with Linux back in 2000, and his efforts were still seen even once he left.

The historically reliable way to check for Linux support, without actually booting linux, is to count the number of special buttons and glossy gizmos on the notebook. The more of those, the worse the notebook.

Compaq and Sony in particular have been very poor for this. Dunno how much of that has bled off to HP since Compaq got swallowed.

On the plus side, with Intel chipsets pretty much taking over the entire notebook market, and Linux learning to parse ACPI macros, things are pretty good with a lot of machines these days.

Cheers

As an update, We got a Dell Studio 15 and it's flawless. Everything just worked. We're dual booting win-7 and linux and the whole operation took less than an hour. All drivers were automatically installed right out of the box. Even sound, which I didn't care if it worked or not, works great. The only issue I had at all was laptop specific. The Fn key was by default locked on. A simple bios change (odd place to put it, imho) fixed that right quick.

My girlfriend recently bought a Studio 17 with the same totally dumb concept. Why would I need one key access to screen brightness, CRT/LCD switching, wireless switching, volume/mute (when there are dedicated keys) etc as compared with F1 for help, F2 for rename/edit, F3 for search, F4 for edit url/folder location, F5 for refresh (and others depending on application). I'm a keyboard guy when it comes to things like spreadsheets and that "feature" makes me want to throw the thing out the window particularly F2. I know it's a BIOS change, but it's not my laptop.

I'm a keyboard guy, too (I spend the majority of my day in vim, the shell, mutt, and firefox), but I don't bother stretching all the way up to the function keys. I'd actually prefer having the one touch volume controls, and screen brightness.

There are already dedicated buttons for volume, mute, play/pause, CD eject further above the keyboard.

You seriously change the brightness of your screen or change the volume of your music more than you edit?

Admittedly your *nix type tools are less function key oriented. In a Windows world though....

Similar to the argument I have with people turning num lock off to use the edit keys on 101 keyboards when there's a full set of dedicated keys immediately to the left of the keypad. That's *slightly* different I feel since either way is one touch. And at least it's an easy key press as compared with a shutdown, enter BIOS and reboot.

I regularly see insane BIOS defaults. One of the worst was on a Dell server that came with the default for the 4-core CPUs to only activate two of the cores.

If that's the case, then it is silly to map those to function keys.


At home, yes. At work, no, but I do those things more than I use function keys for other things. I have about 4 function keys mapped for things I do semi-regularly in my editor/email client, and that's it. All my other key-strokes (aside from the Esc key; yay vim!) are contained within the regular typewriter keys. And I'm one of those weirdos that maps the caps-lock to Ctrl, and uses a dvorak layout (on a qwerty labeled keyboard).


This is probably the key (haha).

In vim, the only pre-mapped function key is F1 for help, but I use ':help' instead. In Firefox, I use '/' to search, and ctrl-R to refresh the page. I didn't even know there were function key equivalents.