[PLUG] Hardware question from "fly-over country"
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
Tue Nov 29 15:32:42 UTC 2011
On Mon, 28 Nov 2011, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I'm in RURAL SW Missouri. A local used/surplus computer store is
> offering a Dell Latitude D620 (4GB memory, 80GB hard drive, Intel
> Core Duo @ 2.4 GHz) for ~$500. It reportedly has the majority of
> manufacturer's warranty.
A Latitude D620 runs all the Linux distros I use (CentOS, Debian,
Fedora, Ubuntu) mostly trouble-free. The biggest sore spots, depending
on distribution, are
1. Wireless drivers
2. Power management
3. External monitors
4. Battery life
The Latitudes can be ordered with Intel wireless cards or Dell
wireless cards. Drivers for the Intel cards are usually solid, but the
Dell cards are hit-and-miss, depending on the exact version you're
getting. In general, Ubuntu is distribution that provides the most
pain-free wireless installation, but any of them should work with a
little elbow grease.
Power management in Linux is just not that polished when compared to,
say, Mac OS X. I've had so-so luck getting Linux systems to reliably
suspend or wake. The newest Fedora releases seem the best in that
regard to me, but the bar is pretty low.
Connecting and disconnecting external monitors is more of an X11
problem than a Latitude issue, but expect hiccups if you plan to
do so repeatedly during a single power cycle (docking and undocking,
or connecting to a wall projector). I can't say that any single
distribution is better than the others in this regard, but perhaps
someone on the list knows better.
Finally, expect to replace the Latitude's battery every 20 months or
so. Even if you treat the battery with kid gloves and obsessively do
full drain and recharge cycles, the battery's lifecycle will slowly
spiral downward. It's not you. It's the computer. :-) I've had mixed
luck with third-party manufacturers of Latitude batteries; I tend to
buy them from Dell these days.
--
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/
More information about the PLUG
mailing list