I decided on a touchscreen Chromebook. flashed firmware, and installed gentoo. Runs like a dream. battery lasts for about 5 hours in KDE/Plasma 5. 3D is good enough to play minecraft at 50fps with high settings. Stick a bigger hard drive in if you care, in this era of cloud computing and flash storage.
Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
11–20 of 30 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#12I've been using a Samsung Series 9 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0082PZ1JU) with Linux for about three years and I've been very happy with the laptop.
All the special function keys work, battery life is good, sleep works, etc. The only imperfection is that after I close the lid and it goes to sleep, when I reopen it, it forgets that I've disabled the trackpad, so I have to press the function button that disables the trackpad each time it comes back from sleep (I use an external mouse).
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#13I am a big fan of the Asus Zenbook Core M (http://www.ultrabookreview.com/5868-asus-zenbook-ux305-revie...).
Low power CPU, plenty of RAM, large enough SSD, 1080p, and a matte screen. As I spend most of my time in remote SSH terminals, the Core M doesn't bother me. It is lightweight and fast enough.
I am looking forward to the updated Zenbook, supposed to be released this quarter.
Also, the price is right on.
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#14I've been using a Samsung Series 9 ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0082PZ1JU ) with Linux for about three years and I've been very happy with the laptop. All the special function keys work, battery life is good, sleep works, etc. The only imperfection is that after I close the lid and it goes to sleep, when I reopen it, it forgets that I've disabled the trackpad, so I have to press the function button that disabl…
Which linux do you use? I really like how samsung series 9 looks like, and I suggested my friend to buy it three years ago. He also like the laptop, but he told me that he has some performance problems in ubuntu.
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#15I decided on a touchscreen Chromebook. flashed firmware, and installed gentoo. Runs like a dream. battery lasts for about 5 hours in KDE/Plasma 5. 3D is good enough to play minecraft at 50fps with high settings. Stick a bigger hard drive in if you care, in this era of cloud computing and flash storage.
Thanks! Is it hard to flash it? Which one do you use?
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#16Thinkpad T450S
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#17My vote goes for the x250.
Great keyboard, nice 1080p display, trackpoint, (hot)swappable batteries and several storage options.
The trackpad sucks and RAM runs on single channel though.
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#18I have a Thinkpad T450S and it is working amazingly with Fedora 22. It is very lightweight and battery life / support is good in Linux Kernel 4.x
Yep, was about to recommend this.
My configuration is about the same[] with SSD, and I'm super happy with this for my Linux/Virtualization development environment.
[] I'm using T440s, by the time I got this last year in OCT-2014, the T450s, which is reverted to the sensible clickpad (with "two right and left clickers"[1]), wasn't released yet.
[1] http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/04/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon...
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#19I got a macbook pro back in July and I just use homebrew to install the linux equivalents I need. I have a few VPS machines running Ubuntu 14.04 and all my code works fine between both environments
Re: Ask HN: Best Linux/dev laptop as of October 2015?
#20I dig my x220, nicest laptop I've ever owned and completely repairable. I've replaced a few minor things and the screen with relative ease. I've seen a few macbook pros die bought before and after my x220 with things that just weren't repairable... forget that. If you want to buy something that lasts longer than the warranty without major hassles, get something repairable.