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Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

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Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#41

Post by sevensor »

gargravarr wrote: post #3

ThinkPads generally run Linux very well. I use an old X220 with Mint 17 and it fits my needs. ThinkPads are also well suited to business use and will last many years. X series for ultraportables with small screens, T series for high performance machines. This site collects info on people running Linux on their ThinkPads: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

An X120 with Fedora (later Arch) saw me through five years of grad school. Based on that experience alone, I'd recommend the ThinkPad. However, SuperFish lost Lenovo a lot of goodwill with me. I'm not sure that today I'd buy a laptop where I suspected that the firmware might be out to get me.

Edit: SuperFish wasn't in the firmware. Why do I associate Lenovo with evil firmware?

Edit2: Right, it was this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#42

Post by hellofunk »

MichaelGG wrote: post #30
glogla wrote: post #24

My advice: 1) If you're used to a retina macbook pro, you're doomed. There's nothing with as good display and touchpad. 2) If you can handle low resoltions (1920x1080 or even 1366x768) and generally lower quality screens, get a Thinkpad. New ones are very expensive but generally solid, while older ones are cheap and work well with Linux. 3) If you want a good screen, there's only Dell XPS 13. If you live in one of th…

Nit: Some ThinkPads have 2560 x 1440 displays now (or higher, I think, on the big ones). And their keyboard and touchpad buttons are vastly superior than Apple (though some people have wrong opinions on this). They also don't overheat like Apple, generally speaking.

I've never seen anything like the new Force Touch trackpads (Apple) on any machine, and they are really spoiling me.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#43

Post by Ao7bei3s »

drakonka wrote: post #6

I recently bought a gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Despite a couple of issues first getting started with Linux (I've been using OS X for years aside from running Ubuntu on my web servers) I'm now happily on Fedora 23. There was a kernel bug that I think is being patched atm, requiring booting with intel_pstate=no_hwp but no problems with Fedora other than that. When discussing this on the ThinkPad subreddit a Red Hat emplo…

The X1 Carbon has a Skylake CPU, so the problem that Linux doesn't have support for the higher C-states resulting in reduced battery life and reduced total CPU lifetime should apply to you, right??

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492070

(I have tested the predecessor (gen3) and liked it. I'm waiting for the 16GB gen4 X1 Carbon to become available here in Germany, drop enough in price to be affordable, and for Linux to support all the C-states.)

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#44

Post by Quai »

bobfromhuddle wrote: post #11

I'm running Arch on a Dell M3800, most of my colleagues are running various Ubuntu flavours on the same hardware. Works well, up to and including the touchscreen. Battery life is poor compared to a Mac, but it's really light given the compute power.

I have had to replace the screen on my M3800 twice now in one year (it develops two shadowy lines on the screen), and there are some other issues that I don't like; The "sound card" had an bug that makes it give off a quite noticeable white noise. It also has a slight coil noise that I'm not a huge fan of.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#45

Post by reitoei »

gargravarr wrote: post #3

ThinkPads generally run Linux very well. I use an old X220 with Mint 17 and it fits my needs. ThinkPads are also well suited to business use and will last many years. X series for ultraportables with small screens, T series for high performance machines. This site collects info on people running Linux on their ThinkPads: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

Yeah, pretty much any modern X series Thinkpad runs any flavor of Ubuntu well in my experience. I run Ubuntu 14 LTS on a 6 year old X201. Goes like a champ. You really can't go wrong with Thinkpads, unless you're concerned about that preinstalled malware thing on their newer machines, which... you probably should be.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#46

Post by nxzero »

drakonka wrote: post #6

I recently bought a gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Despite a couple of issues first getting started with Linux (I've been using OS X for years aside from running Ubuntu on my web servers) I'm now happily on Fedora 23. There was a kernel bug that I think is being patched atm, requiring booting with intel_pstate=no_hwp but no problems with Fedora other than that. When discussing this on the ThinkPad subreddit a Red Hat emplo…

>> "Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, who uses Fedora on all of his computers."

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(operating_system)

Be interesting to know what hardware Linus use, though given security is a low priorty for him, not sure what this would mean.

Personally, I would like to know if the gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon (hardware, bios, firmware, drivers, etc) have any know exploits or notable security measures.

Anyone know?

EDIT: As a result of the comment below, as of 2012, Linus says, "I love my MacBook Air!" - source:

http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvalds...

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#48

Post by reitoei »

jordigh wrote: post #15
mataug wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this. My thinkpad works great with Linux mint. Planning to switch to Ubuntu 16.04 when it comes out.

I'm having trouble with the graphics acceleration with an intel graphics card on Debian. This is on an x250. I'm kind of surprised, because it's the first time that the intel chipsets fail me. Usually they work the best because the drivers are free.

That's may be too 'new' of a computer in Debian userland, although I'm probably wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#50

Post by dnissley »

nxzero wrote: post #46
drakonka wrote: post #6

I recently bought a gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Despite a couple of issues first getting started with Linux (I've been using OS X for years aside from running Ubuntu on my web servers) I'm now happily on Fedora 23. There was a kernel bug that I think is being patched atm, requiring booting with intel_pstate=no_hwp but no problems with Fedora other than that. When discussing this on the ThinkPad subreddit a Red Hat emplo…

>> "Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, who uses Fedora on all of his computers." Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(operating_system) Be interesting to know what hardware Linus use, though given security is a low priorty for him, not sure what this would mean. Personally, I would like to know if the gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon (hardware, bios, firmware, drivers, etc) have any know exploits or notab…

Macbook Air 11": http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/skitched...
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