61–70 of 165 posts
Doesn't fold out as a tablet, but my dell XPS 13 is epic. I did swap out the WiFi card, but only because I run Linux, and the broadcom one had crappy driver support.
Dell is releasing a version of the XPS 13 that converts to a tablet. Although I doubt it will classify as cheap
Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…
Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1. Perfect Linux support, great battery, well built solid chassis, thin.
Negatives: Costs a fortune, and some people simply don't like Thinkpads.
I recently bought the Xiaomi Mi Air 12. tl;dr, it's the best ultrabook/notebook I've ever had and run Arch on it. I was looking for a light notebook also for programming for a long, long time (and I wanted this time Linux because of tiling window managers like i3). I finally got this Chinese model and what can I say, inside it's all Intel (Wifi, BT), Arch works flawlessly, touchpad is a glass trackpad and is for a no…
I don't have a chance to play with one yet.
Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…
As someone else mentioned, the T4x0 series are also very good. I have a personal T420 that I have upgraded to 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and Blu Ray that has held up very well over the years. To be honest, aside from the screen resolution, there is nothing pushing me to upgrade to a newer machine, and this thing was released in early 2011.
When I am looking for something thin and light, I use an Acer C720 Chromebook which has been reloaded with a full Linux install. It is perfect for SSHing into a more powerful machine if I'm just going to be in vim / bash all day. I get 8-10 hours of battery life in this mode. I picked this machine up for $130 a year or so ago (refurbished).
I'd recommend Lenovo laptops. I have a Thinkpad T460s, which is awesome. If you really want the tablet/laptop hybrid, maybe a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, or something from the 'regular' Yoga series will work for you. Yoga-series laptops start at around $500, whereas the premium X1 Yoga starts at something like $1.400 I believe. Edit: Linux support on Lenovo laptops is pretty good overall, and if you're a Windows person, they s…
I was playing around with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) a couple weeks ago. I tried & failed to install two programs on WSL, Elixir & Debootstrap. It's worth mentioning that WSL isn't intended to be 100% Linux compatible. From the WSL FAQ ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/faq ): Can I run ALL Linux apps in WSL? No! WSL is a tool aimed at enabling users who need them to run Bash and core Linux…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw the Yoga, but I wanted to spend around $250 or less on this. I have 2 laptops and a desktop which are great for programming, but I wouldn't want to risk bringing an expensive laptop to this trip, I want something portable and cheap in case I get robbed or something, with the convenience of a tablet when I just need to read an ebook or browse some webs, and the ability to do more advanced stuff with a keyboard a…
What about a second-hand Yoga 2 Pro? This should be in that price range now, roughly. I've been using this for a couple of years now and was quite happy. It's a good trade-off between performance, weight and size in my opinion. Except some minor inconveniences[1], my Linux/Windows dualboot setup works quite well. Heads-up: If you consider it's successor, the Yoga 900, make sure you don't get one of the series not sup…
The linux support for these cherrytrail atom tablets is usually terrible. You will probably have issues with touch screen, webcam, sound drivers and power management. I tried a lot of these when trying to find a baytrail/cherrytrail tablet to run linux for a project and most of them were terrible with linux.
Not that big problem. I own Chuvi HI12 & Teclast X98 AIR and it's almost impossible to make WiFi work on these.
But there is a custom ubuntu distro with all fixes
http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/first-2017-1704...