Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#41

Post by dsr_ » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:24 AM UTC

kweinber wrote: post #38

System76 is a company that is dedicated to making Linux hardware. You will have the least driver trouble with their stuff.

They ship with Ubuntu; you can easily put another Linux on. You can get more power than a Dell XPS13 for less money, albeit at a substantial weight penalty. Support is very good but hardware turn-around is not fast.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#42

Post by Aldipower » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:28 AM UTC

I bought a ASUS X201E-DH01 11.6-Inch Laptop 3 months back and I am truly happy with it. Ubuntu is preinstalled on it, all hardware is working out of the box. The performance of the Celeron dual core CPU is more then adequate for my job as a JS-developer using Sublime. I've changed the built in HDD against a SSD to speed up the whole system. For this price and if you don't need 3d acceleration, it's a really good deal.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#43

Post by pimeys » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:34 AM UTC

I'm using the Asus UX32VD with extra 8 GB of RAM and a Samsung SSD. Everything except the Nvidia Optimus works perfectly. I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 and with downgraded xserver-xorg-core (1.13.3-0ubuntu2b1) the Bumblebee works just fine and I can play my daily dose of Minecraft.

Everything else works like I said: perfectly. I love the gorgeous display (1080p IPS), as good as Macbook's keyboard and a pretty nice touchpad. The only problems I've had was the upgrade of xserver-xorg-core, which broke the Bumblebee support once. I hope that there will be a bit more stable solution for running the second GPU.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#44

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:35 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#45

Post by zanny » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:37 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #41

kweinber wrote: post #38

System76 is a company that is dedicated to making Linux hardware. You will have the least driver trouble with their stuff.

They ship with Ubuntu; you can easily put another Linux on. You can get more power than a Dell XPS13 for less money, albeit at a substantial weight penalty. Support is very good but hardware turn-around is not fast.

The bodies are tweakable so you can install some upgrades yourself. I'd wait for their Haswell lineup personally, since it is right around the corner and promises a lot of power consumption improvements.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#46

Post by xradionut » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:37 AM UTC

Dell XPS 17 bought on sale.

Originally got it for MS SQL Server development work, soon switched to Ubuntu and running the MS OSes under VMWare after a zero day exploit jacked the Windows 7 install. (Fix your f*king fonts Redmond!)

It's not light, but it's really a semi-portable desktop for on-site data crunching and development. Doing more with Python and on Linux now.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#47

Post by c0smic » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 11:37 AM UTC

My HP dv7 works great with Linux Mint 13 out of the box, 8GB of RAM and running just a 1TB hard drive, with another slot I want to add an SSD to.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#48

Post by meric » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 12:53 PM UTC

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #28

Derbasti wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be aware that the multi-GPU models are not as great though, since BIOS emulation mode does not allow for graphics card switching and the bigger GPU uses a lot of battery.

True, having a second, dedicated GPU isn't as useful as it once was, given how good integrated GPUs have gotten. OP, take note: only the 15" MacBook Pros have dual GPUs.

Good as integrated GPUs maybe (as they can now accomplish more tasks), they are still an order of magnitude away from mid-range dedicated GPUs.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#49

Post by thrill » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 12:54 PM UTC

ollyculverhouse wrote: post #23

gioele wrote: post #12

How about a Samsung series 9? Has anybody on HN tested one of those? Searching around the net shows that there were small hw issues but they have been fixed in latest kernels.

I am typing this on a Samsung Series 9 (900X3C) with Ubuntu and it is pretty good. All drivers were preinstalled and it is a fantastic looking device. I had to fiddle to get a few of the fn keys working however other than that, it is fine. There is an issue with the battery status which is a bug with acpi ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi/+bug/971061 ). However I would highly recommend this combo and t…

I have a 15" Series 9 which I use Unity on and it works great. I self upgraded to 16G and 256G. Complaints are minor - the keys are a little "rattly", and after about a year the CPU fan has a loud click when it starts up, which goes away after 30 seconds or so - something I only notice because it's an otherwise completely silent system (I'm guessing there's some dust in the fan). If they'd ever release the higher-res 2560x1440 version they showed off last year I'd buy it.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good laptops for Linux right now?

#50

Post by nshankar » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 12:56 PM UTC

I use HP Pavilion for 2 years and X220, which works on Ubuntu 12.04. On HP, the hardware support for some key aspects keeps dwindling and that is a concern. I suspect the same with X220 (while updates, the Bluetooth driver site was not responding. I don't know if Bluetooth would continue to work.