[nmglug] advice on purchasing a new laptop

[John Osmon]

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 01:35:52PM -0600, Mark Galassi wrote:
> 
> I might want to buy a laptop in a hurry from the local Best Buy or
> Office Depot or Staples.  It would be an inexpensive ultrabook and I
> would install the GNU/Linux operating system on it.


Unless you have specific needs to run on bare metal, you might consider
the path I last took:
    - Get a CPU that supports x86 virtualization (i3/i5/i7 and others)
    - find something with more than 4G of memory
    - Run whatever OS comes with the laptop so you know you have access
      to drivers for the hardware
    - Run whatever OS you want virtualized

I've been quite happy for the last year with a cheap Acer i3 with 6G of
memory.  It happily runs Windows 7 and I run various flavors of linux
via VirtualBox.  When in "full screen" mode, it is hard to tell that it
is running virtualized.

I *do* have to use Windows to setup the wireless networking -- but then
bridge it to /dev/ethX on the linux side.

You may be able to find a laptop for under $300 if the above will work
for you.