Getting a new laptop - what shall I get?

[bridgman]

Yep, and as long as the setup is implemented the way we recommend then the laptop works with fglrx.

It's not confirmed yet, but it appears we're dealing with a few laptops which were not implemented the way we recommended, ie did not include the BIOS options to disable one of the two GPUs for use with Linux and other OSes. Until we find out exactly what happened, the simple and safe answer is for Linux users to look for a single GPU laptop or one which has BIOS options to switch between integrated and discrete GPUs.

[Kano]

@bridgman

Of course when you are in a shop you look into the bios before you buy something, do you?

@Qaridarium

AMD laptop chipsets basically have all IGP even when you buy a system with dedicated vga chip. Usually the video driver switches over to IGP when running on battery until you disable that.

[Kano]

Linux does not support switching gfx on the fly. Best select one of it and it should work. Compare

lspci -nn

Without installed nvidia binary it would be possible to boot with any chipset selected, just no 3d active vor nvidia then. If i would have such a laptop i would write a on boot install/uninstall of the correct driver however

[Ant P.]

Responding to the first post, skip anything by Asus; they've sold out completely to Microsoft now and openly attack anything non-Windows.

[BlackStar]

I've had very good experience with a Dell D830 on Linux. It's a bit bulky (15.4''), but offers an excellent 1680x1050 screen, keyboard and great Linux support (everything works straight out of the box).

I'm using it for programming all the time.

[Kano]

As always the same thing can be hard to use for a noob and easy for a pro, so it is not clear what to suggest for others. But some things are faulty by design and that is called fglrx...

[joeelmex]

I got an Asus G50Vt-A2 with an 9800 GTS in it. I got it running Ubuntu 64 bit on raid 0. There are a couple of guides out there. I even got the mini LCD working given out system information on it.