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Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

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Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#141

Post by jpetso »

nja4 wrote: post #97
drakonka wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an upcoming patch is meant to greatly improve this, at least judging by this, aside from solving the boot parameter requirement issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/4c6q6w/fixing_int... > I have finally compiled a patched kernel myself and couldn't be happier with results. Not only battery life increased (~1 additional hour), but what's more important, performance on battery improved significantl…

So, after this, my skylake xps 13 will be a better candidate for Ubuntu?

Looking at the patch, it doesn't appear to tackle the sleep state coordination issues that mjg59 was talking about. Which doesn't mean that the impact of this patch on power savings isn't still nice to have. I figure it'll take them a while longer to get sleep states working as intended.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#142

Post by CoolGuySteve »

Raed667 wrote: post #140
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #25

My Asus UX305 (I have the previous Broadwell based model) was able to install Ubuntu with no extra configuration. The battery life, storage, and matte IPS screen are excellent and the device is extremely thin and light. The overall build quality is comparable to the MacBook Air but it costs half as much. The trackpad works very well. I bought it a few months ago for $600 from the Microsoft Store (irony acknowledged).…

How long does the battery last in moderate use ?

About 10 hours browsing or using the terminal, 5 hours playing Pillars of Eternity.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#143

Post by Tengas »

jimmies wrote: post #114
awqrre wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if only they had a normal capacity HDD ...

The SSD is replaceable and standard-sized for modern computers, so I wouldn't say it is extremely bad. You can get a 512GB one now for $200. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLTPSKM

How easy it to replace? Can't find any guide online.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#144

Post by aksx »

jimmies wrote: post #91
yathern wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acer c720 owner here - people tend to mock chromebooks all the time as glorified web browsers. To some extend, that's true. Most things I do that aren't development related are done on a web browser. It's absolutely perfect for that. Starts up extremely quickly, very light, long battery, lovely. For very occasional dev purposes, I simply used crouton, which works insanely well. I can even use sshfs and go back to Chr…

Oh I wiped Chrome and installed Linux directly on the SSD (upgraded it to 128gb). It works well too, Chromebooks are designed to work well with Linux :) Now mainline Linux kernel support is so good to the point that you don't need to hack on it to get it to work.

which distro do you use? i see KDE in the picture.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#145

Post by lllllll »

I bought an Asus UX303UA with 8gb of RAM(I expanded to 12gb), and Sata HDD(I upgraded to SSD). After easily updating to kernel 4.5 I'm really happy, Linux Mint Mate edition(tho mainly using i3wm) works wonderfully battery is 8-9h-ish easily coding.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#146

Post by izym »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #134
izym wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well does the touchpad work under Linux? Also, how is the battery life and GPU switching? I'm currently deciding between the XPS15 and waiting for the rMBP refresh, and the XPS15 is seriously tempting.

Zero issues with the touchpad. It just works. Battery life is awesome. I could probably go 6-7 hours, haven't tried though as I'm mostly connected. As for graphics drivers, it's shitty at the moment. There's no native acceleration is I haven't bothered to recompile kernels as it doesn't concern me (it's a work machine). Someone else will be getting the same machine soon, so I'll wait for him to be my guinea pig.

Sounds good! What distro are you running?

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#147

Post by awqrre »

jimmies wrote: post #114
awqrre wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if only they had a normal capacity HDD ...

The SSD is replaceable and standard-sized for modern computers, so I wouldn't say it is extremely bad. You can get a 512GB one now for $200. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLTPSKM

but if they catch on, most people won't replace it and they will be converting to the "cloud" ... and hardware with decent storage will become even more scarce (they even try to make the SD cards disappear for phones). Any laptop with less then 1TB of storage shouldn't be sold nowadays...

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#148

Post by crispytx »

fhood wrote: post #98

I know a lot of people are suggesting MacBook pros and airs, which is great if you want both OS X and Linux, but.. apple = $$$. Part of what you pay for is OS X so if you want a Linux machine this is silly. If you don't specifically need Linux just Unix then I can't possibly recommend OS X highly enough. Also Linux distros and Mac hardware plays pretty well together but you WILL run into issues. My personal recurring…

LOL, very true. I use my $35 raspberry pi more than my wife uses her $2000 macbook.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#149

Post by kbody »

gshulegaard wrote: post #89
BenElgar wrote: post #23

My general advice would be to check the Arch wiki ( https://www.archlinux.org/ ), whether you intend to run Arch or not. It's a pretty good indicator to determine how much support you're going to get with the laptop and whether things generally work as they're supposed to. For example, here's the page for my laptop: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_%282015%29

I have written this elsewhere ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492941 ), but I caution everyone away from the 13 DE and go with the Precision instead (15"). I could dig up the litany of Dell Forum posts I wrote and responded to for my XPS 13DE (9343), but it would be time consuming. They eventually sorted it out, but the issue isn't the Sputnik team, its the hardware in the 13" XPS. The Precision M3800 has be…

The just released XPS 13DE (9350) has an Intel wireless, so there are no issues on that front.

Re: Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?

#150

Post by kbody »

szatkus wrote: post #66
BenElgar wrote: post #23

My general advice would be to check the Arch wiki ( https://www.archlinux.org/ ), whether you intend to run Arch or not. It's a pretty good indicator to determine how much support you're going to get with the laptop and whether things generally work as they're supposed to. For example, here's the page for my laptop: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_%282015%29

I have Dell XPS 9350 and it's not that good. Hardware is cool, though (and only XPS 13 that has 16GB option). I have Ubuntu 15.10 and needed to install custom kernel to get everything working.

I assume you're not talking about the Developer Edition that comes with official Ubuntu, right?
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