Re: Subnotebook?

On 2025-02-10, David Brown wrote:

On 07/02/2025 20:43, Carl Fink wrote:

Anyone have a recommendation for a Linux-installed, or second-best
Linux-compatible subnotebook? I'm defining a subnote as having a 10" or
smaller screen, and I'm looking to buy new, not refurb or used.

[...]

Generally, most hardware works out of the box with a fairly modern
distro (vastly more than with Windows), but there are some things to
watch out for if you get a very new design.  The most common issue, I
think, is new laptops or notebooks with Wifi chips that are not
supported by the kernel versions that come as standard with a
mainstream distro like Mint or Ubuntu.  That means upgrading the
kernel, which can be a pain without a working network - and these
machines often don't have Ethernet.  So make sure you have a USB C
docking station or Ethernet adaptor handy for putting it all together.

IMHO wifi chips are one of the major things to check out when comparing
or buying, because at least some brands or models of NICs will mean
networking performance will always be bad.

In my experience, this means avoiding anything that has a Broadcom WLAN
NIC. I've had enough fighting with drivers and firmware that it's not
worth a try to me anymore. (See also [1]. I think someone else reported
somewhere that Broadcom told them they had a defective card when faced
with this or a similar issue, but I was able to test two different NICs
with the same outcomes, which makes it more likely that Broadcom is to
blame here...)

Personally, I'd go with something that includes Atheros or can be easily
upgraded to have Atheros (no list of allowed internal expansion cards,
PCMCIA, fast USB?). No idea how out-of-the-box Atheros will work with
recent kernels and NICs, though.


(Do take note, though, that part of what I'm saying here is that it's
not just having full kernel support, as it's possible performance is
just... [censored] even despite the kernel having everything in place.)

[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541080

--
Nuno Silva