[ltp] What to take care of when buying a Lenovo?

[Hamish]

On Sunday 09 March 2008 18:24:04 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Mar 2008, Tobi wrote:
> > Is there anything I should take care of, when buying a Lenovo notebook
> > for Linux? Any trouble with specific hardware components, unsupported
> > features or missing drivers? Any trouble running a 64-bit Linux?
>
> Speaking as one of the people who look at ThinkPads *very* closely from a
> kernel point of view:
>
> 1. Prefer ATI over nVidia on the GPU, at least for the next three years.
>    We should press nVidia to release docs, like ATI is now doing.
>
> 2. Prefer Intel over anything on the GPU if your needs have extreme 3D
>    performance anywhere below "required".  It will work better than ATI,
>    extremely better than nVidia, and it will save a LOT of power over
>    ATI and nVidia.  Buying Intel GPUs and WiFi is a "vote with your wallet"
>    issue, as they provide *FAR* better support, documentation and resources
>    for open drivers than ATI (some docs, getting better) and nVidia (no
> help whatsoever).
>
> 3. Get one with the better FlexView-like displays, non-glossy.  It is worth
>    every cent.
>
> 4. Non-Intel WiFi in Lenovos means Atheros radios, which are good, but the
>    open Atheros driver is not anywhere close to stelar quality yet (and the
>    madwifi driver with that binary-only HAL is a nightmare).
>
>    Unfortunately right now the drivers for new Intel WiFi are not stable
>    yet, but they should get there in less than one year.
>

Agreed whole-heartedly on almost all the above. I think the best thing to 
happen to Intel is AMD... As long as AMD is strong, Intel will front up with 
lots of docs & performance. Competition is very healthy for them (And us :). 

Having said that, I'd prefer ATI over Intel for GPU. Not sure where the 
benchmarks are showing Intel GPU's (On linux of course) are quicker than 
ATI... It would be nice to see some, it's hard to find anything except 
winmarks on the net...

H