I'm in the market for a laptop. Ideally it would be light, be compatible with Gnu/Linux, and have hardware accelerated graphics. I don't like the idea of paying for a laptop that doesn't let me use its features because I am not running Windows. Now, it doesn't have to be ultralight, but I would not want something that is 10 lbs. I don't want a portable desktop, but if the only laptops with decent graphics have to be the heavy ones, I guess I'll have to just accept it. I also don't want a laptop with hardware that has no driver available for it. For example, if the laptop has builtin wireless, it had better be supported because I don't want to be forced to pay more for PCMCIA cards. I figure that someone here might already be in the same situation and has a solution. It is tedious looking through the Linux Laptop website since they don't sort their links except by model and name. Any suggestions? Your experiences?

I have a Toshiba M40 and after trying a few distros I found that SuSE 9.3 worked flawlessly right after installation. With the others (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora) there was always one little thing such as networking which didn't quite work. In the case of networking I believe it was because of a buggy sk98lin driver in those distros that SuSE had fixed.

Anyways the only problem I have now is getting accelerated graphics. The video card (geForce 6600 go) doesn't seem to use the basic linux drivers that nvidia supplies. Even under Windows I have to use special Toshiba drivers.

Oh, one problem anyone looking into this laptop is at the moment I believe it is only available in Canada. Toshiba offers the similar M45, but the nice video card is replaced with intel integrated.

I have a Dell D600 that works quite well with Ubuntu. At the time I bought it it was the best compromise between size, weight, battery life, and graphics that I could find. Right now Dell is selling the D610, which has the same chassis as the D600, but with upgraded innards. You may want to investigate the Linux compatibility of the D610, as I recall there being some issues with the SATA hdd.

You might find this useful in case of compatability problems. Search Linux forums like Gentoo's to find out people's experiences with different models.

I used to have a PowerPro C-series from PowerNotebooks. They used to offer XP or Mandrake (IIRC), but I don't see that anymore (only XP). I had several flavors of linux on it at one time or another and the only thing I had a problem with was the wireless lan.

my advise is: get a laptop with a nvidia graphics chipset. i have nvidia on the desktop, and everything works ok. too bad i cant say the same about my ati laptop..

My Powerbook works well with Ubuntu, FYI.