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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?

#171

Post by opan »

than3 wrote: post #68

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.

The brand loyalty of sorts has continued despite ThinkPads getting worse for a while now. I have a T440p because it's the last model with a socketed CPU, coreboot support, and that doesn't need blobs for the iGPU. Beyond this gen I think you're getting the same crap from nearly everyone. x86 is on its way out as well.

I'm probably going to get an M2 Max MBP when available and max out most of the specs. I think it'll be the first laptop I'll have bought new. Lots of soldered parts, yeah, but that's the norm with ARM anyway. Hopefully the M2 Max will stay usable a good decade or so and there'll be more RISC-V options after that.

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

#172

Post by qbasic_forever »

Saigonauticon wrote: post #134

I had a good experience with the Huawei D15, which is my main machine presently (I live in Asia). I installed Ubuntu. Everything worked. I've had exactly zero issues. Even battery life is decent. I realize it might not be the most popular company in some parts of the world, but truth be told it's been pretty fantastic for the sticker price of almost USD 750.

I've been using a Huawei Matebook D14 for 3 years now and it's still a fantastic little machine. Only $400 at the time and it's just as well built and nice as an old MacBook Pro with aluminum body, great screen and trackpad, etc.

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

#173

Post by bor3d4p3 »

boneitis wrote: post #129
pantalaimon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My T430s is still going strong. The good thing is that with Linux you don’t need the latest hardware to have a snappy system. The bad thing is that not having the latest hardware is required if you don’t want to tinker.

Not meant to be downer (as a very, very happy owner of a pocket T420s if its replacement T480s should fail me): To anyone considering going back this far in hardware gen, my T420s (i7, 16GB memory, LUKS-encrypted SSD needed for work) on Mint + MATE DE could flat-out _not_ handle work video calls unless it was the _only_ thing that was running with everything else closed down. Even then, it was watching slideshows. It…

That could have been a distro bug though. Ubuntu has an issue right now where some hardware configs will have a hard time with browser based video if a USB headset is plugged in; YouTube sits and spins for me on a dual Xeon Dell Workstation that’s 2 years old, with 32GB RAM and dual 2080s using any browser.

As soon as I unplug the wireless headset from its USB charging cable, smooths right out.

I’m not saying you hit the same bug I’m saying software is hard.

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

#176

Post by djtango »

mypalmike wrote: post #152

I think the Thinkpad E series might be considered cheap junk here, but my Ryzen 7 E14 with 40GB RAM runs Windows 11 and Ubuntu great. I am using the extra SSD slot for Linux so I didn't have to partition anything. All the hardware works (though I haven't tried the fingerprint scanner yet). The only issue I've had is it doesn't love waking up the DisplayPort through the hub I bought, but that's likely a hub problem, a…

I was super tempted by the E14 this year as they had one with 40GB ram and discrete graphics but the 200/300 NITs display turned me off. Ended up getting a P14s instead

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

#178

Post by opan »

loser777 wrote: post #62

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…

You could use irc + mpv for twitch and an irc bridge for discord if you insist on using that.

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

#180

Post by davidovitch »

At work I am limited to using HP but I have to say that I have been very pleasantly surprised by the HP EliteBook 845 G7 (Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U). When I bought it new in 2020 it had initially sleeping problems but later kernels improved the situation. Other driver problems where with the finger print reader (easily fixed with LVFS firmware upgrade) and the Intel WWAN card (that still doesn't work due to a bug). The display with privacy filter works but generally, when privacy mode is off, the screen viewing angles are terrible (I will not buy a build-in privacy filter on future models).

Personally I would recommend laptops from shops that give you a Linux option right from the start. From the big manufacturers I could see that this is the case for the Dell XPS and Precision 7670, while Lenovo offers it on various Thinkpad models. I could not find that for any of the HP models (except Dev One).

Although I have not used them, I am not a big fan of the Clevo based machines that System76 and Tuxedo have. I think the Librem and Framework machines look nicer (even though I prefer 14+ inch sized machines).

A good resource to check for Linux compatibility of specific components and laptops is https://linux-hardware.org. I whish this resource was used more often by reviewers.

I would also give a laptop bonus points if its firmware is supported by easy upgrades via LVFS https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/.

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