[kwlug-disc] Laptops.

[Darcy Casselman]

I'd suggest looking into pre-installed machines.  Hardware support is
probably Linux's #1 obstacle for long-term adoption, and getting
hardware suppliers (even if they're just OEMs) to confront the problem
seems like a better approach to me than having hackers reverse
engineering everything all the time (however talented those hackers
might be).

I mean, there's Dell, for one...  I'm sure you've considered them.

I'd really like to recommend System76 (http://system76.com/).  I
bought a machine from them a little over a year ago.

They take barebones laptops and have them custom assembled overseas.
The prices are pretty reasonable too.  They have their own support
forum on the Ubuntu forums
(http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=158) and are very
responsive to support issues.

Soon after I got my machine (a Darter Ultra, ver. 2), though, some
Linux kernel developers decided to remove some sort of hack that was
keeping power management on my machine running smoothly.  It's never
been satisfactorily resolved, even though System76 donated machines to
Canonical kernel devs.  Which is kind of a bummer, but not really
their fault.

It seems like a really small operation, but they seem to be doing good things.

Darcy.