Best Ultrabook for Linux? • Hacker News Board

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#41

Post by eof » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:03 PM UTC

RexRollman wrote: post #39

eof wrote: post #19

Not an ultra; but I was looking for something similar, I think to what you were looking for. Small, but still useable, light, fast, good build quality and hopefully cheap. I did a alot of research and watched slickdeals.com regularly for deals and ended up with an Asus 1215b with an E-350 processor. It comes with 2gb of ram, but I put another 4gb stick (22$) to bring it to 6; and replaced the hard drive with an ssd (…

What is the touchpad flaw?

From the users stand point; it just gets jumpy; and your input doesn't match the output.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ak20j48w1A

If you have ever used a non-laser tracking mouse on a wood surface you have a good idea of what its like.

What appears to be happening is that there is a short from the output of the touchpad to the motherboard. Removing the little piece of foil that appears to be 'grounding' the trackpad from the screw 100% fixed it (for me).

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#42

Post by chimeracoder » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

I honestly don't understand the driver issues - I've installed Linux on a number of different machines, and I've never had any driver issues myself (certainly not when using a preconfigured DE).

That said, I don't think the MacBook Air is the only (or even the best) solution for an Ultrabook. I've heard good things about Lenovo's series, and while it's not an Ultrabook, my HP Envy has always run Arch Linux splendidly - I couldn't be happier with it.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#43

Post by keltex » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:12 PM UTC

batista wrote: post #16

This, guy, Linus Torwalds, uses a MacBook Air for Linux. He even says on his Google+ page that he couldn't find anything better, and that even Lenovo stuff is crap. Just sayin'.

"Torvalds"

Do you have a link?

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#44

Post by jdost » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:13 PM UTC

I use a Macbook Air (Mid 2011) and run Arch Linux on it. Works fine, only thing that doesn't work is the Thunderbolt port. I picked the Air because the model was on its second year and had a history of people having Linux run on it. The touchpad works fine with xf86-input-mtrack, which lets you customize some of the finer details on the trackpad. ... Just my two cents.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#45

Post by FreeKill » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:13 PM UTC

I bought an Asus Zenbook. It works pretty well, I installed Ubuntu on it using these instructions https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook

There were some manual configurations, as you can see, but for the most part everything works fine...

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#46

Post by chashaz » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:15 PM UTC

phunehehe wrote: post #14

You can get one of those from System76. The 14" Lemur Ultra looks like what you may want, though I'm not really sure if that's an ultrabook. Their price is among the best (if not _the_ best). https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/lemur

I haven't heard of System76 before but their pricing is pretty competitive not to mention they claim to officially support a linux distro. Thanks for sharing :)

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#47

Post by btam » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:16 PM UTC

freyrs3 wrote: post #21

traxtech wrote: post #2

The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 is really great, and it's also Ubuntu certified since a long time (10.10) so it should be okay with others distros.

X220 is a great line, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Linux notebook with better hardware support. It can also get extremely competitive battery life with a little bit of kernel tweaking.

Can you give examples or links that explain what sort of "tweaking" you're referring to?

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#48

Post by moe » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:23 PM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #31

jurre wrote: post #13

Not sure if this is helpful but I was looking for the same thing about six months ago and ended up buying a macbook air, decided to give OSX a chance and stuck with it. As far as I'm aware most of the things are compatible but trackpad support isn't quite there yet.

How do you deal with absence of PgUp/PgDn and Home/End? I've honestly tried for 2 weeks to get comfortable with MacBook, but feel that the keyboard is simply bad.

The keyboard is fine but the lack of home/end/pgup/pgdn is indeed a royal pain in the ass.

After 3 years of running OSX on my Macbooks one would think I should be used to it by now. But it still annoys me enough so that I use an external keyboard for any programming work.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#49

Post by moe » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

zimbatm wrote: post #38

ansgri wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with absence of PgUp/PgDn and Home/End? I've honestly tried for 2 weeks to get comfortable with MacBook, but feel that the keyboard is simply bad.

Me too until I found that Fn+Up/Down,Left/Right do what you want. Also Fn+Backspace to delete.

That's a poor substitute. These tiny arrows are hard enough to hit on their own. Chording doesn't make it better, especially since often you need Shift-PGUP, Shift-Home etc.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#50

Post by phunehehe » Sun, Mar 18, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

keltex wrote: post #43

batista wrote: post #16

This, guy, Linus Torwalds, uses a MacBook Air for Linux. He even says on his Google+ page that he couldn't find anything better, and that even Lenovo stuff is crap. Just sayin'.

"Torvalds" Do you have a link?

Here you go https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCY...