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Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#21

Post by sva_ »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #13

For what it’s worth, I’ve been on MacOS for 7 years, 2 of which have been on an M1. It’s been fabulous. The corner cases of M1 support have mostly disappeared. I left a review here several months ago that was edging towards negative, but I have to admit, the ecosystem has matured substantially. Even pytorch has a native M1 mode now. The best part is, when something does require a recompile, it zips by — compiling is…

> I’ve been on MacOS

The OP asked about a laptop to run Linux, and you suggest running MacOS? Or did you forget mentioning the part about running Linux on it?!

I respect you, but weird post tbh.

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#23

Post by XorNot »

I will note that I've essentially stopped bothering to even have a laptop these days. Whoever I work for will issue me whatever machine I'm going to have to deal with, and my phone takes care of things like media browsing on the go.

It's been a while since I've been able to tolerate dealing with working on a laptop screen.

I've been considering the Framework quite a bit, but reports of the experience are pretty inconsistent (which suggests, there's annoying issues still).

EDIT: Oh and the other problem - all laptop keyboards suck nowadays. Apple has ruined the entire market with it's flat, no definition keys that everyone (including framework) are emulating (or cramming a numpad onto 15" models, meaning you have to type off-center).

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#24

Post by evil-olive »

I'm typing this on a brand-new Lenovo (T14s gen 3 AMD), the first brand-new laptop I've bought myself in about a decade

the wifi didn't work on the 5.15 LTS kernel that NixOS defaults to, so I had to upgrade to 6.0. and there's some wonkiness with suspend, where the system will sometimes re-suspend itself a moment after opening the lid. a minor annoyance that I haven't taken the time to debug yet.

my previous Lenovos, I've always bought used ~3 year old models from eBay and local refurbishers. these slightly outdated models would always work perfectly with LTS kernels, no fiddling needed.

so if Linux compatibility is a higher priority than having the absolute newest hardware, I can definitely recommend looking at used Lenovos.

in particular, I recommend buying a model with no SSD whenever possible, and ordering a brand-new SSD separately. this way you know you're not getting an elderly drive, or one that was used for Chia mining, or whatever.

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#25

Post by sillysaurusx »

sva_ wrote: post #21
sillysaurusx wrote: post #13

For what it’s worth, I’ve been on MacOS for 7 years, 2 of which have been on an M1. It’s been fabulous. The corner cases of M1 support have mostly disappeared. I left a review here several months ago that was edging towards negative, but I have to admit, the ecosystem has matured substantially. Even pytorch has a native M1 mode now. The best part is, when something does require a recompile, it zips by — compiling is…

> I’ve been on MacOS The OP asked about a laptop to run Linux, and you suggest running MacOS? Or did you forget mentioning the part about running Linux on it?! I respect you, but weird post tbh.

I was confused since the post mentions they’re “unlikely to escape MacOS,” and there’s also a poll option for M1. I thought the poll was asking whether it’s worth it to just skip Linux altogether and jump ship to an M1. Sorry. Definitely didn’t mean to go on a tangent about MacOS when nobody was asking.

I didn’t know an M1 could even run Linux. Does anyone use it that way? I’d be curious to know if it works well.

EDIT: Looks like Asahi Linux is designed for it: https://asahilinux.org/about/

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#26

Post by sva_ »

As someone who has been using a Thinkpad X1 with Linux on it since 2014, I'd probably strongly consider getting another one.

Framework is the only other tempting choice, but some people voiced concerns about Linux compability with the latest revision. Might be worth messing around with it though.

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#28

Post by l8arrival »

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen 3 AMD as of a few months ago. It replaced my older Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen from 4 years ago, the main impetus being that I wanted 32gb of memory vs the 16gb that my X1 Carbon had. It's only a little bit bigger than the X1 Carbon, but I really like the 16:10 form factor vs the Carbon's 16:9. (Note that this year's Carbon also went to 16:10).

The Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U processor (Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U also available) is performant and the battery life is _much_ better than the current 12th gen Intel processors. The experience with Linux has generally been great. I had a sleep issue initially but it's been resolved. I ordered it with only a 256GB SSD then swapped that out with a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro before installing Ubuntu. If you want at 1TB or 2TB ssd, it's significantly cheaper to do it like this vs getting a bigger one with your order, and you will have a a faster SSD too.

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#29

Post by NeverFade »

wheats wrote: post #7

Someone correct me if I am missing some nuance here but I think the two MacBook options aren't contenders for best laptop running Linux. The drivers simply don't support basic things like the touchpad or wifi (at least not without extensive reworking and a modified kernel). Perhaps in some years Asahi Linux will be functional as a daily driver on the newer ARM/Apple Silicon but it's definitely a hobby laptop right no…

Linus himself uses Asahi over an M2 Macbook Air: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

Re: Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?

#30

Post by eeue56 »

I've found my last 3 Thinkpads (T480, T490, T14) to all be excellent for Linux work. No real downsides, everything works as it should. If there was one thing that's let me down, it's that their webcams aren't great with occasional audio issues. My current driver though is a Flex 5i Chromebook, running ChromeOS and Linux via Crostini. Last time I had a Chromebook, I wiped it and ran straight Linux. But now Crostini is incredible, very easy to set up and seemless with ChromeOS. It runs my dev projects without problems, along with vscode and obsidian. Make sure that the device has at least 8gb of RAM though.
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