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From everything I've read, ThinkPads (IBM/Red Hat devs seem to use them), Acers (have pretty standard parts, nothing funky), Dells and HPs (both have Linux dev laptops) all seem to run pretty well. The worst seem to be gaming laptops, non-Lenovo Chinese brands, Asus, etc...
Thinkpad T400 G2: the fan keeps running in full speed randomly.
I have the reverse... Unless you have a thinkpad or some other popular hardware, you'll find Linux barely works at all out of the box, and even with hours of fiddling around, you'll still have to live without some features. For example, power saving features, sleep and hibernate, screen brightness controls, fingerprint readers, keyboard hotkeys and backlights, etc. rarely work. Prepare for broken external hdmi ports…
- Barely ever waking from sleep, especially with external monitor connected
- Screen brightness keyboard controls didn't work (needed to use a CLI tool to control gamma as a hacky workaround)
- Had to power cycle repeatedly to get to a desktop when booting
- Not working reliably in clamshell mode
- Randomly forgetting external monitor scaling
- Accessibility features like screen zooming are very poorly done compared to Mac's Ctrl-MouseWheel (which zooms entire screen without crashing)
Things actually got worse as I upgraded to newer kernels. The wake from sleep problem is the #1 productivity killer I had. I had to leave the machine running all the time just to do my job.
A good post on why Linux has so much trouble waking is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25386605
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Windows for starters. Also the title claims that things work well not that linux is the best.
Windows has pretty terrible hardware support IMO. Comparing the state of Linux Vs Windows on ARM/PowerPC/RISC-V, it's not even a contest. I think there's a case to be made for the stability of Windows drivers (I should hope vendors don't half-ass support), but modern networking and storage drivers on Linux blow Microsoft's analogs out of the water.
The person you replied to didn't mention those and there aren't laptops with those CPUs anyway, so this is just goal post shifting nonsense.
> but modern networking and storage drivers on Linux blow Microsoft's analogs out of the water
I don't think that's true at all and you didn't link any evidence.
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That has been my experience too. Even then if you get a next generation thinkpad that is slightly newer than what has been "blessed" by the community, there is a good chance that a lot of essential hardware won't work. Fortunately, in the case of Lenovo they do actively track issues with hardware and issue new bios versions that fix compatibility but even having to install new firmware when you are using Linux can ca…
> but even having to install new firmware when you are using Linux can cause major headaches and worries. I thought lvfs ( https://fwupd.org/ ) had fixed that.
Because once you'll figure out why the wifi is shutting down every x minutes. You'll then have to find what's wrong with the Bluetooth who doesn't activate.
And of course at some point you'll want to connect an external monitor right ?
If you thought plugging an hdmi cable and pushing some keys would allow you to display your stuff on your projector... Well think again.
Don't get me wrong I love Linux.. I have been using it for the last 12 years (switched to Ubuntu recently)
While it's amazingly easy and smooth on my rpi4 (for my personnal use). It can be boringly complicated on some laptop brands
Sure, everything just works. And that's awesome. But it's also being sold here as "the poor person's OS using janky equipment". Sure, Linux can greatly help with artificial obsolescence.
But the biggest point is that you retain ownership and full power over your data.
I've seen this again and again with stuff like Eagle vs KiCAD, and Autodesk software vs FreeCAD. Sure in some cases the FLOSS software isn't as "polished", but when Autodesk decides to arbitrarily change the policy locking you oout of your content, it's a matter of freedom and your data.
The OS is the "carrier", and the applications are the actual thing.
In 2018 I was in college, working on a Linux degree, and studying for certifications such as CompTIA Linux+. I had allocated some funds to purchase a new machine; my desktop was already over 8 years old and I obviously wanted a good machine I could bring to campus. I chose the Lenovo ThinkPad T580, because it was on the Red Hat certified list. It came with Windows 10 but I immediately installed CentOS. This turned ou…
Sad to hear that. I hope you will find your way back again.
The laptop: "It’s an 11-year-old Thinkpad T420, a big ol’ thick brick of computation that I bought used a few years ago for $200."
Had it not died I would still have used my 2013 MacBook Pro. For many use cases computers stopped being slow a decade ago. There are certainly things I can do on my new laptop that was a major hassle on the old one, but web browsing, Python development and day to day sys admin stuff was perfectly fine on the old machine. For me it's all about the screen, an 11 year old ThinkPad most certainly have a terrible screen (…
I have to disable third party JavaScript, and I have to be careful what software I install, but I love this machine.
I will probably upgrade to an M1/M2 for my next machine, but it’s because of software not hardware. The software, after 10 years, is finally starting to be bloated enough that I feel like I might need more soon.
Just a handful of my issues:
- only one speaker works so volume is low
- finger print scanner doesn’t work
- battery life is poor compared to Windows on same machine
- suspend and hibernate doesn’t work
- random freezes
- charging indicator unreliable
- trackpad wrist filtering is very poor
- boot failures after OS updates
I have now switched to a Mac with Apple Silicon.
I really tried with Linux for philosophical reasons, but honestly what professional developer has time for all this?