Starting to investigate a Linux Mint notebook

[Skybird]

I have ended my testing phase of Linux Mint and want to get rid of this dual boot with W7, which is a bit unhandy, needing to reboot several times per day, for games, and then for anything else. Im ready to remove Linux from my gaming W7 PC, and get a separate notebook for Linux. It should have Linux Mint pre-installed, not Ubuntu, I want it preinstalled, so that the company delivering must guarantee the compatability of all used hardware.

I will do evertyhing under Linux, except gaming. I surf a lot, so I want a not to bad display: 17". the companies to chose for Linux on notebooks, seem to be Asus, Acer and Lenovo.

I found this shop in Germany.

http://www.ixsoft.de/cgi-bin/web_sto...7-catalog.html

It seems Asus is the only option for 17" displays...?

Well, I know nothing about noteobook technology, models, labels, brands, and where to set the performance of this or that notebook grafics board, I also cannot rank their labels and names. Nothing. I tried to get an overview this afternoon, and bogged down.

Any tips and recommendations for what to look out for, what processor to favour, what graphics card? Any thoughts on some of the models on display there?

Money is not an issue, but I do not want to headlessly waste it. If I spend more, I want a convincing reason for why wanting to do so. Reliability and long lasting durability are the words to look out for. I hate to buy such stuff and loosing it already 3 years later. It has to last a bit longer.

Mobility is not much needed.

And finally: is their any decisive reason why one would want to favour Ubuntu over Mint here? A technical, a compatability reason, I mean? I noted that most shops over here, if they offer Linux-specialised notebooks at all, only offer Ubuntu and close derivates, but almost never Mint, although Mint today is the most widespread Linux distrubution. I want to stick with it, since it is said to be easier, and I do not want to deal with another Linux again while I even have not fully mastered Mint. Also, I like this Mint. Very much.

Purposes: email, surfing, text processing, and picture editing, video streaming sometimes, MP3 and CD burning. System safety goes first, since I do - already limited - banking via this system. Game-ability is a bonus, but no must.

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I also would ask for a good printer-scanner combo that reliably offers full functionality under Linux Mint. My old Canon printer and Canon scanner gave me troubles with Mint, since Canon offers no Linux support at all, and the open sources drivers did not reliably work with them. The printer should allow 3rd party ink cartridges (cheaper ink). HP gets called out often. True? I hear bad news about their ink cartridges, however, locking out third party offers. Not a huge monster box I want, but limited size of the chassis would be a bonus.

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P.S. Quite important to me: no noisy machine. The more silent it is, the better.

[Red_88]

For printer and scanner HP and brother have good linux support. I don't know about the cartridges. My old Brother inkjet/scanner is rather thirsty, never tried third party cartridges though.

since you don't want to play games internal graphics should be more than enough. On the plus side if its an intel chip linux support is excellent since intel is the only manufacturer who provide opensource linux drivers for their graphics.

[Skybird]

HP, Brother, Intel. Logged. Thanks!

Anything more? Whats the CPU to watch out for: silent, not getting hot, fast enough to stream videos and to surf smoothly, good bang for the buck? Any specific Intel graphics chips to look for?

[Red_88]

well the graphics chip is normally integrated with the processor nowadays.
Since my laptop is already 3 years old, i don't have the newer intel processors on my scope. I have myself an i3-2328 which is a rather cheap one (and now obsolete). performance still sufficent for everything multimedia related, I can run even windows 7 in virtual box with it!
so IMHO the i3 series is way to go if you don't want spend too much money on it.

[Skybird]

I know nothing about VM so far, but have it on my radar as an option, chess-related, one or two small Windows-based graphcis tools that I like to use for some special things, and if I had it installed, I maybe would be tempted to try a few less hardware-demanding games in it as well.

What would be a reasonable threshold for hardware specs, so to meet the criterion of allowing this? Or do I just assume the very same like I would if I would consider a native Windows machine? I have no clue on how VMs simulate Windows environment.

And must VMs be installed already during Linux installation, or can be installed afterwards?

[Red_88]

Bear in mind if you run windows in a VM on linux host there is only rudimentary support for 3d graphics, no 3d games in VM and no 3d applications. Also it is recommended to have a beefier pc. If you want to run in the VM windows vista or above you need at least 4gb of RAM, better 8gb. the i3 series processor will do it, but i don't know how much power boost an i5 series will give you and if its more in performance warrant the price.
However some old games run just fine with wine under linux, like DW. Wine is an windows API emulator for linux, you can have a look at their Database of games to look if it is supported or not: https://appdb.winehq.org/
keep in mind that anything with a copy protection like starforce, tages etc. won't run under wine! Games from GOG don't have this problem (but there is no guarantee they run under Wine)
The VM can be installed afterwards.
Also I would recommend to install a 32 bit windows instead of a 64bit windows in the VM client because of the smaller memory footprint of the 32bit versions.