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Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

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Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#51
post #7

I have used Asus, Dell and HP Laptops with Ubuntu on them. The battery management is so pathetic that within a few months the battery is fried. Now, I have Ubuntu on my Desktop and Windows 10 on my laptop although I hate it.

That's typically a firmware/climate thing more than an OS thing IME.

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#52
post #6

I am quite happy with my 12th gen 13" Framework running NixOS. Everything I need seems to work out of the box (sleep/resume (not using hibernate though), Touchpad, camera, mic, etc) and seems quite stable. The 13th Gen (w/i7 only?) has a bigger batter so battery life should be better (a chief concern for some - though I am almost always plugged in). The new version also has an option for a matte screen. There's also…

Yeah, 12th gen Framework works basically perfectly. They have a guide for installing various distributions (the one for Fedora is here: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+37+Installation+on+th...). Following that, I've been running Fedora 36 and now 37 problem-free, with the only real asterisk being needing to disable brightness-sensing to enable the brightness keys.

I know the 11th gen wasn't quite as smooth, and 13th gen isn't really in people's hands yet (but they are increasingly aware, and supportive, of their Linux-using audience, so I'd be surprised if there were issues). EDIT: Their Linux page does in fact list the 13th gen as being officially supported with Fedora and Ubuntu: https://frame.work/linux

FWIW, even if you don't run Arch, I find that the Arch wiki pages tend to be full of tons of great technical detail, and their page on the Framework backs up the "mostly everything just works" vibe: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Framework_Laptop_13

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#53

I've owned a few Acer laptops over the years. Linux runs well on them. They don't run Linux perfectly but nor would they be perfect under windows. Anything as complex as a laptop will run into software v. hardware issues from time to time. If you want seamlessness, pay up for an Apple. If you aren't rich, buy a generic laptop, install linux from a thumbdrive, and be ready to occasionally fix things. Don't buy some we…

To add to the point of not getting a too unique laptop, it's also important not to get too fringe a Linux distro. I've had Kubuntu on my Acer laptop for ages and experienced practically no issues at all.

Ubuntu's official web page has a list of verified laptops running a given version of Ubuntu as well, possibly worth giving a look.

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#54

I've owned a few Acer laptops over the years. Linux runs well on them. They don't run Linux perfectly but nor would they be perfect under windows. Anything as complex as a laptop will run into software v. hardware issues from time to time. If you want seamlessness, pay up for an Apple. If you aren't rich, buy a generic laptop, install linux from a thumbdrive, and be ready to occasionally fix things. Don't buy some we…

This is good advice in general, but the Asus screenpad does work in Linux and it's extremely cool. Shows up just like a normal display!

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#55

The dell xps 13 is a really nice laptop, and it's fully compatible with linux because dell even has a 'developer edition' of the laptop that ships with ubuntu.

I'm going to push back on this one for Linux: The "developer edition" thing was nice when they first started it out and Linux laptops were super-rare. But even then, it was clear that this was a Windows machine that was awkwardly cajoled into mostly-kinda supporting Linux. Some stuff didn't work, there are proprietary drivers that only work with Ubuntu, and in general it just required a lot of tweaking to get it to work at all, in a way that makes it fragile to change -- you really need to run the preloaded Ubuntu and nothing else.

Now that there are machines out there that work out of the box with any upstream Linux kernel, the XPS Windows-first, Linux-eventually model just doesn't seem appealing.

And very concretely, one problem with it is that there's a wait between the Windows version appearing and the Linux-mostly-supporting one appearing. With the recent XPS 13 refresh to the 9315 model, there is currently no developer edition available (Dell lists it as "discontinued" if you go to its webpage), and the Arch wiki shows major compatibility problems, like the webcam not working: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Dell

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#57
post #30
post #22

Refurb M1 Air + Asahi. Wait a cycle then maybe do the same with the M2.

This is it - nothing beats my asahi m1 air on anything: price, battery life, desktop cpu grunt, no throttling either thermally or on battery. I can't believe the best arm machine is made by Apple, 3 years on. Eventually we'll have arm machines made by other PC manufacturers, I'm most excited by Lenovo, but till then. $600 gets you a powerhouse of a machine.

>Eventually we'll have arm machines made by other PC manufacturers

As someone who has been waiting for this to happen for nearly fifteen years now, you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#58
post #17

This may be a bit esoteric -- eee pc 701/901 if you get can get by with Atom N270.

I loved my eee but I can't imagine going back to that platform these days; it's workable for programming but it struggles with almost every task. You're going to want to run xfce or something rather than gnome or kde, among other things. I'd prefer a system76 laptop these days.

>>I loved my eee but I can't imagine going back to that platform these days

I really miss my old eeepc901 some days but I agree. Going back to those slow atom processors is really a nonstarter. But the size and form factor (with exception of the nonstandard screen aspect ratio) was just about the perfect 'take anywhere' laptop. I used Ubuntu on it and if I had to do it again in this day and age I'd try to see if I could make Ubuntu-Mate to work on it. Being able to set the font sizes and the icon sizes made that nonstandard screen aspect ratio work far better than it ever did in Windows XP.

Re: Ask HN: I Want to have a small Linux laptop. What are my options?

#60

This may be a bit esoteric -- eee pc 701/901 if you get can get by with Atom N270.

My ex-girlfriend used to have a thing called Asus E200HA. It was amazingly cheap, cute as hell and even reasonably fast in Windows. I’d immediately buy a newer machine like that if it could run Linux.
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