[ale] May need purchase Laptop - Linux Friendly

[Greg Clifton]

Tom,

Intermittent problems are always a pain, but I would suspect thermal,
memory or power issues. Try cleaning the fins on your CPU heat sink.
Laptops have very fine fin pitch that makes them effective dust filters.
Most laptops have some sort of access panel that can be removed to gain
access to the heat sink. Assuming you can get to the heat sink, brush the
accumulated dust off with a toothbrush and you may have your problem
solved. Another thing to check is the RAM, remove it and gently run a
pencil eraser over the gold contacts to clean them up a bit and re-install.
One or both of these procedures may "resurrect" your ailing machine. If
not, it may be the DC-DC power supply and if that is failing, you probably
need to start looking for a new(er) machine.


On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 9:58 AM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fedora 19 loads fine onto a 2008 Macbook pro. Good use for the older
> hardware. Case is pretty solid and has a nice screen. You'll need to first
> load refit, do some partition resizing, keep the Mac partition as it's
> needed for firmware flashing later. You'll need to use the rpmfusion repos,
> free and non-free, to load in the nvidia modules for the screen, the
> nouveau does NOT work on this chipset, and the broadcom-wl wireless driver.
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 9:29 AM, Tom Freeman <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net>wrote:
>
>>
>> I've been running an ASUS my daughter gave me (she couldn't stand Windows
>> 7 and went back to Apple) with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Unfortunately, there seems
>> to be some instability developing (not sure - it isn't very common), and my
>> local pusher of used laptops has closed up the nearby store front. Assuming
>> that I can not get to the bottom of the ASUS's challenges in the next month
>> or so, I will be looking for a laptop.
>>
>> My preference from the past is a 2-4 year old ThinkPad. Solid builds with
>> 2-4 years of life left with fine linux compatability in my limited
>> experience. Assuming I find one of those from a dealer I have some history
>> with (or will have with), this question is probably wasted/redundant.
>> However...
>>
>> Is there a line of new Laptops in this era of Windows 8 and the fancy
>> security boot scheme which is 1) Linux friendly enough to trust a
>> distracted individual with (me) 2) robust enought to risk loading on the
>> back of scooter transportation?
>>
>> Thanks to all for the use of their bandwidth
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>
>
>
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> *
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> - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
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