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

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371–380 of 440 posts

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

#371
In general, Intel-based business laptops (Dell Latitude, HP ProBook/EliteBook, Lenovo Thinkpad) work incredibly well with Linux. I have an EliteBook 830 G8 that has zero issues running Linux. Everything works, no "buts". I do primarily use Windows though, but that's a personal choice :).

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

#372
post #269

I see very disparate use cases for these laptops, so the competition is not really that fair. - Fastest CPU + GPU + battery life, x64 not needed, money no object: M1 MBP. - Reliable, serviceable, upgradeable, fashion-despising: T14 / T480 / T490. - Serviceable, upgradable, but sort of new kids on the block, and less fashion-oblivious: Star Labs Starfighter, Framework, System 76 Oryx Pro. - Sleek-looking at the expens…

Why leave HP out of the equation? I have an EliteBook, it has two RAM slots, serviceable SSD, battery, etc. Linux works with literally 0 issues.

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

#373
All ours run Ubuntu. My 2010 Dell Inspiron became our living room TV computer using an air mouse, my 2016 Dell Inspiron runs my web sites, email, MySQL and Postgress servers and my K3S cluster and we got 2 $200 Lenovo low end laptops recently, one for the bedroom and one is a foyer ambiance computer running relaxing YT videos all day.

They all work great, I'd say any Dell and any Lenovo should work great.

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

#374
post #202
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've also heard legends about how great Dell's Worldwide repair program is where people have had parts delivered to them next day on the island of Borneo in Indonesia, but that's yet to be tested. This was a long time ago, but I bought a Dell with Ubuntu while visiting my parents in Oregon, and took it back with me to where I was living in Innsbruck, Austria. The hard drive (I told you this was a while back) died o…

Were they local to the area?

I'm imagining someone in the US saying, "I've always wanted to go to Austria!", hopping on a plane, and arriving the next day.

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

#375
Need to know more about Intel Management Engine and ability to disable it before I could vote.

Most importantly, the two bits showing whether or not one can have:

* Intel ME Region Write Access as enable-able

* Intel ME Region Read Access is enabled

Both are useful for MEBx/IME to be cleaned out or disabled.

https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/Internal-flashing-w...

https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/Internal-flashing-w...

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

#376

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…

[deleted]

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

#377
I'm going to give an anti-recommendation to the Dell XPS 13 unless you buy their top tier support plan or are a business customer. I've had three of them in the past 5 years and all 3 had serious issues. Their customer service gives you the runaround and is a nightmare to deal with, even if it involves DOA hardware. All 3 arrived with one issue or another: 1 with a broken keyboard (9370), 1 with a power button that got stuck on the hinge and powered down randomly (9360), and the other had a battery swell up a few months into receiving it (but this was a work laptop). All three required a battery replacement. On the other hand, Linux support is quite excellent. But the hardware and customer service is pretty bad.

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

#378
post #269

I see very disparate use cases for these laptops, so the competition is not really that fair. - Fastest CPU + GPU + battery life, x64 not needed, money no object: M1 MBP. - Reliable, serviceable, upgradeable, fashion-despising: T14 / T480 / T490. - Serviceable, upgradable, but sort of new kids on the block, and less fashion-oblivious: Star Labs Starfighter, Framework, System 76 Oryx Pro. - Sleek-looking at the expens…

Wow that StarFighter looks awesome! Too bad about the lack of trackpoint though. I wonder if they'll come out with an ARM model. Open source OS's are in a good position to take advantage of alternate CPU architectures.

Has anyone actually received one yet, though? I can't seem to find any actual reviews.

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

#379
My daily driver for the past couple of years has been Thinkpad T480s running Debian/XFCE. However I recently acquired a Framework Chromebook for my partner, and now I'm sorely tempted to get one for myself too.

Perhaps my favourite thing about the Framework is the 3:2 aspect ratio screen. That is, aside from the flagship characteristics of running Linux well and being user-serviceable. ChromeOS is really great at keeping itself stable and updated with minimal fuss.

The Linux dev mode runs Bullseye by default and is surprisingly well-integrated with the host OS given that fact that it runs in a VM. For example, after I apt installed GIMP in the dev VM, the launcher icon showed up in the ChromeOS launcher menu automatically, and it mostly "just works." You have to use the "Linux" folder from ChromeOS to transfer files between the host and guest, which is a little wonky, and things like screen capture from GIMP don't work by default. But for my partner, they are willing to put up with things like that to have a bulletproof host OS that seamlessly auto-updates.

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

#380
post #90

I've gotten myself a Dell Latitude 7330 Rugged Extreme laptop recently. It's what my ideal laptop is supposed to be: easily serviceable, plenty of ports, indestructible and linux-friendly. Even the onboard WLAN supports monitoring mode. Running NixOS+xmonad on it, encountered no problems whatsoever after it was configured. One major difference from an ordinary laptop experience is the old-style resistive trackpad, bu…

The slightly less rugged, but also less heavy, "Latitude 5430 Rugged" (-Extreme) looks seriously interesting.
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