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

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

#61

Post by architect64 »

Yhippa wrote: post #2

Sorry to hijack, but I have a somewhat similar question: any recommendations for a SFF or Mini PC that can adequately run the latest Fedora for home productivity purposes? Web browsing mainly and light gaming.

As far as Mini PCs go, I'd consider Intel NUCs (currently NUC 12 Pro line), primarily because they have great firmware lifecycle support. A lot of cheaper brands in the NUC-like Mini PC space don't consistently release firmware updates (if at all), e.g. to fix security vulns, which is a deal breaker for me. Intel NUCs are validated for Ubuntu and RHEL. The main downside is that you'd be relying on an iGPU for gaming, so do some research on whether the Core i5-1240P's Xe iGPU would be able to handle the games you're interested in.

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

#62

Post by loser777 »

I was recently in a similar boat, as the combination of discord + twitch was really making my 11 year old i5-2520M-based T420 really show its age (WHY IS A DESKTOP CHAT CLIENT AN ELECTRON APP??!??!) even with 16 GiB RAM in Arch Linux. I settled on a 16GB X13 Gen 2 from the outlet store (which seemed like a deal at ~520 USD). Coincidentally that's where I bought the T420 in 2011. The outlet store seems like a good way to snag a bargain for Linux users if you have a bit of patience as I would be looking at a last-gen model anyway (which seems to be primarily what the store stocks) for better compatibility.

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

#63

Post by hollerith »

metadat wrote: post #18
Yhippa wrote: post #2

Sorry to hijack, but I have a somewhat similar question: any recommendations for a SFF or Mini PC that can adequately run the latest Fedora for home productivity purposes? Web browsing mainly and light gaming.

Almost any machine should do okay for this general purpose.

Almost any machine should do okay unless the user is easily annoyed by fan noises.

The DeskMini is slightly larger and heavier than most mini PCs, but it is the only one I know whose cooling fan can be a high-quality quiet Noctua fan.

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

#64

Post by neogodless »

habibur wrote: post #57

The one with the best hardware. As Linux runs any laptop I happen to be buying without any glitch.

Ha I wonder about that. How many laptops have you bought, over what timespan?

What versions/variations of Linux have you run?

What are your use cases?

I put Linux Mint (Cinnamon) on a Lenovo Legion 5. It's really pretty good, but has glitches. With Cinnamon (X11 + GNOME) there's weird issues with fractional scaling. (1080p laptop; I have bad eyesight and prefer 125%.) Added KDE Plasma 5 which fixed the scaling issue, but I lost the ability to control brightness from the laptop buttons.

So I'm 0 for 1 on "any laptop" and "no glitches" :)

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

#66

Post by nsim »

I've got a Dell 7490, which works great for development, and you can upgrade the SSD and RAM, but, suspend is unreliable.

TBH, the only issue I've had with any of my laptops in Linux (Dell and IBM/Lenovo) is suspend. Which actually makes me think power management in general might be busted.

I'd be interested to know if there is a methodical way to diagnose these issues? Every howto just seems to be a mishmash of kernel flags to try, which seems chaotic, and gets frustrating when the issue is intermittent.

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

#67

Post by ctsdownloads »

sva_ wrote: post #26

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.

Hi, my name is Matt Hartley. I'm the new Linux Lead for Framework. Our laptops have great support for both Ubuntu and Fedora. I'm typing this from Fedora right now. We also have community support for other distros as well.

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

#68

Post by than3 »

I don't get why so many people like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

They don't come with SODIMM slots, RAM is soldered directly to the board. If RAM goes bad, you have to do circuit level repair which requires a potential reball.

The X1 Extreme comes with SODIMM slots from what I hear, but that is not the X1 Carbon. It certainly won't be lasting anywhere as long as previous Thinkpad models that have replaceable parts.

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

#69

Post by theossuary »

nsim wrote: post #66

I've got a Dell 7490, which works great for development, and you can upgrade the SSD and RAM, but, suspend is unreliable. TBH, the only issue I've had with any of my laptops in Linux (Dell and IBM/Lenovo) is suspend. Which actually makes me think power management in general might be busted. I'd be interested to know if there is a methodical way to diagnose these issues? Every howto just seems to be a mishmash of kern…

This [1] is the OG guide to debugging suspend/hibernate issues. Arch Linux Forum [2] is also a good source for this. That said I've spent months debugging hibernate issues without success, it really is a crapshoot of driver support.

[1]: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/power/basic-pm-debugg...

[2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_an...

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

#70

Post by simonblack »

My (not quite so new) laptop is a Lenovo P53 with a 4K screen. It took me several weeks to realise that it's also a touch screen. I can't remember ordering that touch capability as an option when I was customizing the basic machine.

Standard Mint Mate installation.

Previous laptop was a Lenovo T410 - it's now coming up for its 13th birthday. Still works well.

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