Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 440 posts

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

#1

Post by killjoywashere »

So, Apple recently stopped supporting the last version of OS X that would run on a 2012 15" retina MacBook Pro. In case you missed it, this design was the last one influenced by Steve Jobs and was absolutely epic, untouchable for almost a decade, really not surpassed until the M1 MacBooks came out.

Odds of me getting away with not using OS X are slim to none. But, I do enjoy my old ThinkPads running Ubuntu and find myself wondering if there are any non-Lenovo options that are real contenders these days. Any recommended go-bys for set-up or feature selections would be especially appreciated. My quick review suggests the top choices are listed below, but of course write-ins are welcome.

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

#4

Post by jll29 »

Writing this from my X1 Carbon (with my M1 MacBook Air also next to me). I'd be particularly interested in what experience folks have had running Linux on ThinkPad X1 Nanos.

Note on your methodology: a purely numeric vote is an automatic win for Lenovo simply based on market share, so you should ask people about problems, if any.

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

#5

Post by DJBunnies »

Working at Acquia we had a bunch of devops who preferred Linux/thinkpads/things with docks.

They never worked correctly, and these folks spent a non trivial amount of time diagnosing them, even taking up meeting time to explain the latest arcane fix that was needed so $whatever would come up properly after sleep.

They would also complain that dev tooling wouldn’t work for them when they were maybe a handful out of hundreds with MacBooks.

When the day came they were forced to migrate to Macs, they grumbled as expected, but their productivity went way up.

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

#6

Post by komali2 »

Carbon is great, but I highly recommend looking into the lenovo t14 lineup. Especially interesting is the ryzen chipped ones. You can get a base model and then easily upgrade components, I did this and upgraded the panel and SSD if I remember correctly, saved quite a bit of money that way.

It's fatter than a carbon but more performant, has more ports, and is much more extendable / repairable in my opinion.

edit: I really hope framework comes out on top here though because I really hate that lenovo has started soldering RAM and the state of consumerism and e-waste in our industry is genuinely completely out of control at this point.

I really need to go ahead and pull the trigger on buying a framework laptop... it's just so very hard to give up that lenovo keyboard!!

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

#7

Post by wheats »

Someone correct me if I am missing some nuance here but I think the two MacBook options aren't contenders for best laptop running Linux. The drivers simply don't support basic things like the touchpad or wifi (at least not without extensive reworking and a modified kernel). Perhaps in some years Asahi Linux will be functional as a daily driver on the newer ARM/Apple Silicon but it's definitely a hobby laptop right now, and not close to being "best laptop for Linux".
Post reply on HN