Linux on various devices

My current notebook computer, a five-year-old Gericom with 14'' 1024x768 display, shows its age: The CMOS battery has run out, requiring me to set the date and time every time I boot, and something in the wires connecting the base unit to the display broke so that only certain tilt positions of the lid give an undistorted display with original colours.

I'm now looking for a replacement, with the following considerations:

These considerations culminate into the following requirements:

There are very few notebooks available that fulfill these requirements. Most have a "glare" display (Samsung, Toshiba, Asus), some are missing a Firewire port (Lenovo ThinkPad T-series), others don't have a Core Duo offer with a high-resolution display (Sony), some only have 100 Mbps Ethernet, and most notebook makers seem to think that having high-resolution graphics implies a 3D graphics card.

I am considering these notebooks

I'm going to post my experience installing Linux on one of those machines after I got one. Likely, I'm going to use the Linux From Scratch instructions and not a distribution.

Jens Maurer 2006-06-10