Suggested Laptops?

Rebootkid · 2012-05-25T02:23:48.897257+00:00

I have the fingerprint reader on mine and it works pretty well, I don't have any complaints with it and the bios integration works decently enough.

I had it working just fine on Ubuntu 11.10 (haven't tried with 12.04 yet) with fingerprint GUI which also has a PPA. I believe Fedora also supports the fingerprint reader out of the box with no additional software.

Rebootkid · 2012-05-24T22:32:15.741546+00:00

I've got a Lenovo Thinkpad T420 and if you order it custom built, it could fit most of your desired specs except Blu-ray, HDMI out (it comes with Displayport and VGA), USB 3.0 (though I believe the Thinkpad T420S features USB3 at the expense of losing the optical drive), and having a HDD greater than 500GB. The webcam is also 1280x720, just slightly under what you want. However, it does come with Microsoft Windows installed and there's no option, at least when I purchased it a few months ago, to buy it without an OS installed.

But it works like a champ with just about any Linux distro I've thrown at it and Ubuntu 12.04 is no exception. In addition, you can disable Nvidia Optimus in the bios and explicitly choose the integrated/discrete card only, if you don't feel like mucking around with bumblebee.

W4OFO · 12 days

Not really so far, I've only been licensed for less than two months and just got my HT mid-April. But I'm doing ham radio for my senior project so I'll have a ton more time to play with my equipment after exams finish next week

W4OFO · 14 days

CM98-Sacramento, California!

Ventoliin · 15 days

Whats the GTK/window theme? It looks great

daweefolk · 25 days

Try browsing http://m.reddit.com instead, it works much better with a text-based web browser

virtuous_d · 27 days

Writing this from a T420 (with Nvidia Optimus and 1600x900 display) and I'll confirm that it's a great computer

BryanLAS · 1 month

Have you tried bumblebee? I have a Lenovo T420 with Optimus and both the Intel integrated and nVidia graphics are quite usable with bumblebee. I haven't tried it with 12.04 yet but I would assume it works

gcwxdg · 1 month

I'll take one but I'm happy to pay postage if you'd like. Thanks!

pomle · 2 months

Awesome so far, keep up the good work!

jccaplan · 2 months

Two suggestions I can think of:

Try setting up a LAMP/LEMP server with Wordpress (or another CMS) or perhaps a forum. There are also more interesting projects like Diaspora and OwnCloud you could try to get running. (Bonus points, try it on an old machine with less than 1GB of ram)
Linux from scratch (never had the time to do it myself but it seems pretty cool and it would certainly be educational)

wunderkinder · 4 months

I love my Thinkpad T420 (not T420s) with Nvidia optimus, and I'm writing this on it with the latest Ubuntu.

Though if you get an optimus laptop, make sure you get one where the card can be changed in the BIOS to force the use of the integrated or discrete or leave it in Optimus mode (most Thinkpads can).

Between Bumblebee and the BIOS, optimus is actually pretty decent especially compared to some laptops which don't have BIOS options and don't play nicely. I do get slightly worse battery life but after 2 laptops with nothing but Intel integrated cards, I needed something that could handle some modern games. Just make sure you get an Intel wireless card or you could run into some issues

echosystem · 4 months

But once you're on their network, you can MITM and use something like sslstrip. A google search for "MITM sslstrip" returns tons of tutorials that any script kiddie with some linux experience could complete, and I honestly doubt that the kind of person who uses WEP checks to actually see if they have an HTTPS connection when doing sensitive things online

OttersMeow · 4 months

I'm assuming you'ure using GNOME 3 with either Unity or GNOME shell, these directions will differ if you're using KDE, for example. I believe what you want to change is the Removable Media settings, so go to the System Settings applet and choose "Removable Media." Then, change the program under DVD and you should be set.

protestContest · 5 months

Can't you do that with chkdsk from the Windows command prompt? Granted it's been a while since I've played with cmd, but that's what I remember using 4-ish years ago.

Admiral_Noosenbaum · 5 months

A not about terminal commands being unfamiliar:

If you're interested in learning the terminal, always look up every command you type in, from tutorials, guides, etc.

This gives you the benefit of learning what these commands do while also protecting yourself from running a malicious command without knowing what it does.

Useful resources for finding out what terminal commands do include:

The man pages: access the manual page for a given command with man COMMAND where COMMAND is a given terminal command
The apropos command, where running appropos foobar will search the all man pages for "foobar". This is useful when you're trying to find a particular command to accomplish something
The whatis command for a very brief overview of a command. For example, whatis rm tells the that rm is meant for deleting files and directories.

Once you know how to access the enormous amount of documentation that is available, the terminal is much easier to grasp

EnemyScoot · 5 months

Ah yes, I recall that C:\con\con\ would BSOD and C:\con\ wouldn't

NoUmlauteAllowed · 5 months

I had this same issue before. It rarely ever happened, but when it did I would right click but the menu wouldn't come up, only a useless box like that. I could never figure out quite what caused it.

I only got it when i was running GNOME 2.x and Compiz, though. Screwing around with the window managers and killing chrome could sometimes fix it, but not always.

dt2g · 5 months

Oh god, I'm ever playing Minecraft multiplayer, players will often see various *nix commands in the chat

prohna · 5 months

That was it, thanks!

prohna · 5 months

Is that one of the *box window managers, or is that a Gnome Shell window theme? Could you share a link, perhaps?

WetSunshine · 5 months

What distro are you using, and what version of GNOME 3? With GNOME 3.2 on Ubuntu 11.10 (and I've had the same results with Arch linux) I get this with all the classic options.

EDIT: The reason your wallpaper settings don't have those option is because you've set your wallpaper to a solid background as opposed to an image. Since a solid, nongradient background cannot be stretched/zoomed/tiled, those options don't appear

sib301 · 5 months

It's specific to certain graphic cards. I find that desktop Intel integrated chips generally have this feature

Jukeus · 5 months

The AT&T incident in question, for anyone who's interested:

dt2g

TROPHY CASE

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