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

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381–390 of 440 posts

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

#381
post #169

I’m sporting the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 with AMD Ryzen 7 4800U. Amazing value for money ( In general, if you go for a distro like Debian or Ubuntu I don’t think you can go wrong with a Lenovo that’s been out for a few years.

I have it's cheaper cousin, the IdeaPad S540 with Ryzen 4800U - running Fedora 37 and it works great.

IdeaPad 3 (AMD Ryzen 5 5500U) on Alpine Linux 3.17 here.

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

#382
I would like to just put a warning out to others to avoid nvidia+laptop+linux. I got an X1E several years ago with the idea it would be my daily driver and thought problems would eventually get ironed out, but that was wrong.

Issues include lack of nightlight on wayland, random boot/cpu lockups where OS won't load probably 30% of the time, obsidian(electron?) has weird issues typing where keystrokes undo and then re-do, lack of thunderbolt dock support for wired ether-net. That's all I can recall for the moment, there are others.

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

#384
Currently using a T14 gen2 amd with 5850U and 32g of ram. Performance is excellent. The battery life is also excellent, unless you get the 4k screen in which case it's not good (I have both). I'm waiting for newer amd options really: I'm extremely satisfied with the vega performance, and stability has been excellent under linux. Compared to the issues I had with the intel xe drivers under linux I'm not willing to go back really.

I would consider the M1 Pro if it had complete linux support. However I do prefer the lenovo keyboard, and I also generally like the "boring" chassis of the lenovo as well. The x1/thinkpad chassis is extremely durable and forgiving. If you travel with your laptop you don't need to worry about handling it like it's made of glass. I cannot count the amount of dinged or bent macbooks I've seen due to the alu chassis.

System 76 is not really competitive in EU last time I checked due to customs.

I know framework only recently has opened resellers in germany/france so it wasn't an option when I was looking at the time. However I don't see much appeal at the "upgradability", aside from the battery and ssd (which is easily serviceable on all lenovos). I always bought the laptop maxed out to avoid upgrading/incompatibility issues and used the laptop until it finished it's service life (5+ years).

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

#385
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.

Hi Matt, thanks for contributing to the thread. Do you have any progress on Coreboot support yet? I've been holding off buying until this is available - the presence of bootguard makes me nervous and as far as I can tell, it's not possible to buy with bootguard explicitly disabled - but progress seems to have crawled to a stop.

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

#386
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you configure a StarFighter model on their website, it says it will ship in "4-5 months" and have a production run of 1000 units. So not out yet.

They also offer a more moderately priced StarBook model which ships in "4-5 weeks". Fossbytes gave this laptop a generally positive, though not outstanding review: https://fossbytes.com/starbook-mk-v-from-star-labs-review/

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

#387
I'm in the market for a new linux laptop again too. I primarily use a 2019 Macbook Pro which I like, but would like to be back on linux on laptop.

I bought a Framework (11th gen intel) when it was first announced but ended up returning it:

  - small battery, despite heavily tweaking and running a very barebones setup I was running out of battery very quickly
  - though I loved 3:2, 13.5" was too small for my preference
  - macbook trackpads are still better
After returning that I ended up buying a Dell Precision 5560 (also 11th gen intel), but ended up selling that as well:

  - I made a mistake and got the 1920x1200 screen and it's awful
  - trackpad, again
Otherwise the Dell is pretty good. Decent battery life, great linux compatibility, good performance and build quality.

I'm leaning towards trying out the X1 Carbon Gen 10 but I'm unsure if I'll like the 14" screen. I've also looked at the X1 Extreme but unsure about battery life (I don't need the Nvidia graphics, though I guess I could just disable that and use Intel). The Star Labs Starfighter looks great on paper but there are no videos or reviews of the production units yet and I'd like to wait and see a hands-on first.

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

#389
Generally the best laptops for Linux are popular models from popular companies and are at least a year or so old. Very few vendors go out of their way to ensure that all their devices and peripherals work AND ensure the appropriate userspace packages to use them are in the appropriate places when the laptop makes its debut. All of that has to be done by the folks actually trying to install Linux on the laptop, and that takes some time.

You will generally never go wrong with a popular Thinkpad (X/T/P series) that was released a year or more ago.

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

#390
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I voted for the Dell XPS, but really wanted to vote for the Dell Latitude. I recently upgraded to a refurbished 8th gen (KBL, top of the line i7 model with NVMe and Thunderbolt) Latitude 7390, and everything "just works", including BIOS updates via LVFS/fwupd with only a few days lag over the announcement on Dell's site. With this level of support I finally feel like a first class citizen running Linux. Oh, and it ha…

I, meanwhile, have a Dell Precision 5570 and on the latest LTS Ubuntu it suffers from intermittent trackpad lag; crashing when moving from one docking station to another when suspended; the fans sometimes running when suspended; poor audio quality from the built-in microphone; it intermittently becomes unresponsive to mouse and keyboard; and it exclusively has USB C ports. I very much do not feel like a first class c…

> crashing when moving from one docking station to another when suspended;

That is a thing? To be honest not sonething I'd expect to work reliably under any OS, the low-level complexities involved are mind-boggling.

The rest do seem like legit complaints, that's a shame.

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