It's a lot easier to make the leap from Windows to GNU/Linux on a desktop machine (or even a server) than it is a laptop. Laptop computers are far more likely to contain unsupported unique or proprietary hardware than desktop machines, so laptop computers in general can be difficult to get your favorite free software operating system onto. Confused as to what distro you should use, or what computer you should buy? Here are some tips to make your decisions easier.

Most common laptop OS problems

Any modern (released within the last 6 months) desktop GNU/Linux distribution will almost certainly mostly work. It will install, boot, and the majority of your devices will work without incident. But there are some hardware components that consistently cause trouble:

• Modems -- or more specifically, "winmodems." Such devices often achieve much of their functionality from proprietary Windows-only drivers or other software. Good modems rely on hardware for everything. PCMCIA modems are more frequently supported in GNU/Linux than internal modems are, so if you really need a modem and the one built into your computer doesn't work, you can buy a PCMCIA replacement for a reasonable price.
• Wireless network cards. Before you buy a computer with onboard wireless networking, check the network chip against this list from the linux-wlan project. It's a little out of date, but the information is still good. There are other projects to accommodate other wireless NICs, like Intel's Centrino chips (the IPW2100 and IPW2200); and the madwifi project for Atheros-based cards. Some manufacturers of AMD-based laptop computers (and non-Centrino Intel laptops) use proprietary wireless LAN chips that are as-yet unsupported in the Linux kernel. One common workaround is to use the NDISwrapper to make Windows wireless network drivers work in GNU/Linux. If none of these solutions will work to your satisfaction, you can buy a Linux-compatible (using an Atheros or Prism 2/2.5/3 chip) wireless LAN PCMCIA card for around US $60-$80. Commercial GNU/Linux distributions are likely to have all of the above-mentioned wireless drivers and workarounds already installed -- including NDISwrapper. Non-commercial distros will probably require more legwork on your part.
• Video cards. Laptop video chips are always significantly different than their desktop counterparts, and driver development can occasionally fall behind. If you buy a top-end laptop computer with the latest ATI or Nvidia graphics processor, you may have to wait a while before you can have hardware 3D acceleration. If you want to check, ATI provides a compatibility list, but it can't be directly linked to. To see it, click here, then click on Linux Display Drivers and Software, then Notebooks With ATI Graphics, then ATI Proprietary Linux x86 Display Drivers, then RELEASE NOTES, then ATI Mobility Product support. For Nvidia, click here, then click on the topmost driver -- that's always the most recent release -- then click on Supported Products List in the box on the left.
• Special keys. All of those fancy keys and buttons on your laptop computer that aren't part of the standard keyboard set -- things like a sleep or suspend button, multimedia controls, and Web and email buttons -- might not work in GNU/Linux. Many people don't use these extra buttons anyway, so this isn't a big deal. Certainly if there is no support for the power-saving functions of your computer (see the next point for more information), the corresponding buttons will not work.
• Power-saving, suspend, and sleep functions. I haven't found a good way to figure out if a computer will support these functions in GNU/Linux without actually installing it. All of the ACPI resources I've found are light on details or out of date. Your best bet is to do a Google search for the laptop model you're interested in and Linux. There's also this site, which documents which distros have been tested with various laptop computers. Or go to some of the more popular GNU/Linux discussion forums and see if anyone else has experience with the machine you want to buy. Sometimes you just have to take a risk, and if ACPI ends up being a no-go, it will be supported eventually -- very often in the next release of your distribution of choice.

What makes a good laptop OS?

If you're really motivated, you can make just about any modern operating system work to some degree. It's usually a good idea to go with an OS that you know isn't going to give you trouble when you're in the field or otherwise dependent on your notebook computer and don't have the time to spend messing with problems.

Commercial desktop GNU/Linux distributions are always going to trump the free ones when it comes to automatic device detection, proprietary hardware drivers, and time spent installing and configuring everything. Aside from supporting the above-mentioned problematic hardware, it's also nice to have some of the proprietary extras that most computer users are accustomed to.

You may not be able to use your desktop distribution on your laptop computer. I, for instance, use Gentoo and FreeBSD on my workstation, but have SUSE OSS 10.0 on my laptop at the moment. I like a challenging operating system, but when I'm on my laptop computer, I need to focus on work before the battery runs out. I also need to be able to find open wireless networks quickly, and SUSE's NetApplet makes that happen. Aside from SUSE Linux, here are some excellent distributions that are generally laptop-friendly:

Mandriva Linux: Like SUSE, Mandriva has a NetApplet-like utility for finding and joining wireless networks. Mandriva PowerPack Edition comes with all of the software that you'll need, has decent support for ACPI, video card, and proprietary wireless NIC hardware. Installs quickly, but requires large and frequent updates.

Linspire: This distro used to have a laptop edition, but apparently its laptop-specific functionality has been integrated into the main distro. Linspire also has a NetApplet-like utility for detecting and joining wireless networks. It installs quickly and seldom requires updates, but the software packages in its Click N Run database are sometimes several versions old. Speaking of CNR, you will have to pay an annual membership fee for it.

Xandros: It's like Linspire, only the CNR-like application installer has far fewer programs than Linspire. Xandros seems to have superior wireless networking capabilities than the others.

Your favorite distro here: Every time I recommend distributions, people complain that I didn't include theirs (hello Ubuntu trolls!). Like I said above, you can make just about anything work if you're willing to sacrifice time and possibly functionality. But that's not really why we have laptop computers, is it?

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Copyright 2006 Jem Matzan.