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Old 5th July 2009
gosha gosha is offline
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Default laptop buy - some advice needed

Hello,
this summer I shall finally be able to buy myself a new laptop (or, better said, a laptop, since I have none).
I was thinking about buying a ThinkPad, because reading around in various forums it seems that unix is best supported there and it seems to be very reliable hardware.
Just today I have seen what seems a very good bargain on line (remember I live in Beijing), it is a X200s with a Celeron M at 1.2mhz, a bus at 800mhz and 2G of ddr3 ram at 1066mhz (if I'm not going wrong, 1066mhz ram is useless since the bus is only 800, so it might be more wise to upgrade to 4G of 800mhz ram)
I was thinking at the beginning to look for a dual core, so, first question: would a machine like that be too slow? If it was only to surf the web or watch a movie I think it would be no problem, but I have another little problem. I live in China and at least 80% (99%?) of sites here work only, I repeat ONLY with MS IE, for example, to access my bank account I must open my windows box and use IE, using Firefox or Opera for windows does not work either. So what's the problem? I could simply double boot, but I would like to avoid that if possible. So, would I be able to run Wine through Linux binary emulation? Would Wine allow me to run small programs for windows (for example, the typical cdrom that comes with a dictionary you bought, but that works only on windows)? Would that work with Skype to? Or would it be easier to run windows inside qemu? Would this Celeron M be enough for that?
Of course, I could think about installing a different OS, but I did try FreeBSD before on a different machine, and had all kind of problems, and the same with Linux Fedora which I dualboot on my windows box and when I happen to use it, it pops on me plenty of "bug report" windows just using a terminal. Probably I could solve that building my own distribution, but I really don't have time for that now, and OpenBSD really works perfect out of the box.
Last question: will suspend and hibernate work fine? I quite need to leave all my terminals open and come back to them later.

lots of questions...
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Old 5th July 2009
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jggimi jggimi is offline
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At 4.5, emulators/wine is from 1999, and is effectively unusable.

For the upcoming 4.6, emulators/wine will be version 1.1.21. The description says:
Quote:
It is still Alpha quality, i.e. don't expect it to run your typical large
MS-Windows application package...
I have not tried this version of Wine, but based on that description I would not expect either IE or Skype to run under this port of Wine. You could experiment with wine now by installing -current.
---
While you could run Windows under qemu, the CPU you're looking at using might not give useful performance for desktop use. (kqemu is available, and might provide some performance gain, but may also introduce instability -- crashing not just the virtual machine, but OpenBSD as well.)
---
Dual boot should be considered. I have a laptop with triple-boot (OpenBSD/W2K/Ubuntu). A bootloader like GAG simplifies operation and management.
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Old 5th July 2009
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vermaden vermaden is offline
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Hi gosha,

Quote:
I was thinking about buying a ThinkPad, because reading around in various forums it seems that unix is best supported there and it seems to be very reliable hardware.
IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude, focus on these, also HP 2510p is great choice for money if you need one of the best 12" laptops.

Quote:
I was thinking at the beginning to look for a dual core, so, first question: would a machine like that be too slow?
More then one core is always a big advantage, no matter anytime you find som app hog CPU, you will have second core to kill it, ot even do not notice it.

I think that at least dual core is mandatory, change that Celeron into dual core Intel U7600 (2 x 1.2GHz) for example.

I would not buy today a laptop that has only one core, maybe some single core T4x if I would be using OpenBSD, but as long as you are not focused on OpenBSD, dual core is a must IMHO.

Quote:
I repeat ONLY with MS IE
VirtualBox/QEMU/WINE + IE and you are done.

Quote:
So, would I be able to run Wine through Linux binary emulation?
FreeBSD has NATIVE WINE, Linux Binary Compatibility, NOT EMULATION is not used here. It means that FreeBSD has Linux ABI implemented.

Quote:
Would that work with Skype to?
You can use linux-skype from Ports using Linux Binary Compatibility, or WINE, which will be slower.

Quote:
Or would it be easier to run windows inside qemu? Would this Celeron M be enough for that?
Get dual core. it will be too slow.

Quote:
Last question: will suspend and hibernate work fine? I quite need to leave all my terminals open and come back to them later.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, you will have to google for that.
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Old 5th July 2009
gosha gosha is offline
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Thank you. I forgot to mention I'm looking for a light laptop, that's why I'm looking into the X series.
So, if I understand, vermaden is advising me to switch to FreeBSD. I might give it another try on my windows box, but I kind of want to stick to OpenBSD (maybe I'm just lazy to learn yet another system, although I guess differences must not be that big).
Or I could do like jggimi says, boot different OSes, and by the way, how is Ubuntu compared to Fedora?

Anyway, the important thing is to go for a dual core

Quote:
Linux Binary Compatibility, NOT EMULATION is not used here.
yes, sorry, used the wrong words. But would that work, I mean skype or wine on OpenBSD using the Linux package through linux binary compatibility?

Last edited by gosha; 5th July 2009 at 01:20 PM.
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Old 5th July 2009
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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This is an OpenBSD thread vermaden.

No Wine, No VirtualBox.. probably no Skype.

As far as I know, the updated version of Wine was just to get the ball rolling.. it compiles, but does not run executables.

I'm not sure about those exaggerated percentages of websites in China that require Internet Explorer, do you mean that they all extensively use ActiveX, Flash or Java?

If they do require any of those horrible things, it might just be a silly Javascript generated error.. consider using the Firefox extension "User Agent Switcher" and mimic Internet Explorer.
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Old 5th July 2009
gosha gosha is offline
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Quote:
If they do require any of those horrible things
yes they do, I did not know about that extension, I'll check it out

...
well, my bank site still does not like it. To login, the field to type your password has a virtual keyboard which pops up changing the order of the numbers every time, but you cannot really type with the real keyboard. Allowing pop windows does not help. But this is already quit out of topic.

Last edited by gosha; 5th July 2009 at 01:51 PM.
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Old 5th July 2009
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vermaden vermaden is offline
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@BSDfan666

Havent checked general category, thought that laptop was generally for BSD systems.

@gosha

Now as I read you post again (and category) its clear that you seek for light laptop for OpenBSD.

Quote:
Originally Posted by gosha View Post
Thank you. I forgot to mention I'm looking for a light laptop, that's why I'm looking into the X series.
I would get the 12" HP 2510p with extended battery it cat work for about 10-12 hours, with medium battery about 8 hours, with smallest about 5.

Here you will find nice review of it:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3905

Quote:
So, if I understand, vermaden is advising me to switch to FreeBSD.
I just thought that this laptop will be generally for BSD systems, not only for OpenBSD.

Quote:
Or I could do like jggimi says, boot different OSes, and by the way, how is Ubuntu compared to Fedora?
Fedora is inly RedHat's testing place, so IMHO better stick to Ubuntu, both use fsckued up PulseAudio, so generally no differnce here.
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Linux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.
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Old 5th July 2009
gosha gosha is offline
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Quote:
Now as I read you post again (and category) its clear that you seek for light laptop for OpenBSD.
Well, yes, as I said, I would like to stick to OpenBSD, but seen that some software I need does not (not yet) run on OpenBSD, I might consider FreeBSD. This is why I'm asking all these binary compatibility questions.
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Old 5th July 2009
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OpenBSD and FreeBSD were both originally based on 4.4BSD-Lite. That was in 1994.
They have developed separately, since then. Both are BSDs. Operationally, they are quite different.
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Old 5th July 2009
gosha gosha is offline
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Quote:
Operationally, they are quite different.
May I ask what you consider are the main differences, and in which situation you would choose one or the other?
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Old 5th July 2009
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=comparison+of+b...rating+systems
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Old 5th July 2009
gosha gosha is offline
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Quote:
May I ask what you consider ...
But anyway, this is really going out of topic
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