Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snapdragon Elite X Gen 2 laptops are coming out as we speak. Assuming you're not doing GPU heavy work (or gaming), that's what you should be looking at. They are equal to M4 performance. Personally I'd look at the new Asus machines from CES.
That sounds like just what I want, that ought to have great battery life as well. Very promising, if someone were to build a nice light laptop around it...
I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
101–110 of 832 posts
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#102Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…
If you want something a bit more like a Macbook Pro, consider the HP Zbook G1A.
It's basically built like a Macbook in terms of case and screen quality, but it's based on an AMD Strix Halo chipset - mine is an AI Max Pro+ 395.
The chip design is somewhat similar to Apple Silicon in that it's one big chip with unified memory - you can get them with up to 128GB of unified ram - that thing is a beast for running local LLMs.
Since HP also sells them with Ubuntu preinstalled, Linux support is quite good, though it requires some bleeding edge packages for everything to be supported.
In my case, I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly, fingerprint reader, webcam, etc all work.
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#103I thought this was Hacker News! How come dumping Windows for Linux in the year 2026 makes the headlines?
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Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#104Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I…
Such is the cost of freedom, unfortunately. There is no free lunch. Historically, people abandoned comfort and made sacrifices for a greater social good.
I think I get what you’re hinting at. But is there a more expensive option that’s free (as in freedom) and provides an experience that the GP referred to?
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's so great about Huawei laptops? Unlike other laptops, there is always the lingering fear of a Chinese backdoor.
I'd rather be concerned about friendly fire from our own. As an US American, i'd rather be concerned about big tech and government backdoors than anything else. Especially in the current atmosphere of doom inside the US.
>As an US American
I have my doubts
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#106I tried to leave Windows 11 for Linux - it just didn't work for me. I installed EndeavourOS onto my main gaming desktop. It worked great for a while and ran all the games I played with my friends. However, one night when I went on to play a game I ran a system update and it seemed to completely break my nvidea drivers - I tried reinstalling them and also using the open source driver. This meant I just couldn't play a…
I can't understand this reasoning. System updates obviously don't become less risky because of the OS they're updating. But going back to Win10 means having less control over when those updates happen (and much less control over, and understanding of, what is updated), and waiting much longer for them to complete.
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#107The article mentions that the author had a negative experience with Void Linux, that it was missing programs in its repository. If you considered it, give it a try anyway. Void is fast and ridiculously stable, even more so given it's a rolling release distro (so often has very new program versions). And in contrast to the author, I was impressed with the broad range of the package system - he might have had a bit of…
Seconding this. I was impressed by Void linux stability and speed: xbps (with xtools) might be the fastest and most powerful package manager I've *ever* used.
Sure, Void doesn't have the endless options of Arch+AUR for packages, but it had everything I needed. Even the well-maintained, latest versions of less common software, like Nim compiler.
The author might also missed that Void has a non-free repository, that you have to install for stuff like proprietary drivers, DRM and Steam.
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#108Even though the author trivialized the problems he had getting his laptop up and running, there were enough obstacles to keep 90% of non-techies from actually getting it working. How many normies have a USB ethernet laying around and understand enough to uninstall drivers that are interfering with the UI?
Getting Windows up and running isn't necessarily easier. There was a recent review of a handheld Windows device that needed unauthorized hidden driver updates to get performance to match Steam OS. The only way to avoid this type of stuff is to get a Laptop with Ubuntu or Windows preinstalled.
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam Machine). For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out automatically.
80% is really impressive, but another way to state it is that 20% of the games you try won't work. I don't think I'd put up with that if I was a gamer. I guess maybe it's not evenly distributed. Do a higher percentage of the most popular games work?
I think it's largely to do with the whether the games are PvP multiplayer or not. I.e. many such games have anti-cheat systems that embed in the Windows kernel (or something like that - my Windows internals knowledge is... slim).
I assert that most people who're happy running Linux on their desktop (for games or productivity or development) do not overlap much with the people who're happy to take kernel patches from UbiFuckingSoft. And this includes those people who're willing to take closed-source NVIDIA drivers.
Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too
#110What about computer games such as age of empires ? Can we play regular computer games ?
Having a steam deck, I can say that gaming on linux is totally doable, but you may want to look on protondb to see what is not compatible with your library.