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

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291–300 of 440 posts

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

#292
post #282
post #269

I see very disparate use cases for these laptops, so the competition is not really that fair. - Fastest CPU + GPU + battery life, x64 not needed, money no object: M1 MBP. - Reliable, serviceable, upgradeable, fashion-despising: T14 / T480 / T490. - Serviceable, upgradable, but sort of new kids on the block, and less fashion-oblivious: Star Labs Starfighter, Framework, System 76 Oryx Pro. - Sleek-looking at the expens…

Even though M1 MBP runs Linux, it has a very basic GPU driver, no hardware acceleration for video decoding/encoding. The "Fastest CPU + GPU + battery life" probably will not be true if using Linux on it. Would be great if Asahi users could provide regular benchmarks between MacOS and Linux on M1, to see how it is progressing. When it comes to Thinkpads and other similar laptops - get one without the dedicated Nvidia…

> When it comes to Thinkpads and other similar laptops - get one without the dedicated Nvidia GPU. That is just a nightmare on Linux.

Second this. I got a Thinkpad P1 off eBay (basically the X1C with a dedicated GPU) from a similar recommendation thread on HN somewhere and actually have gotten it to work but this aspect has been difficult to sort out.

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

#293
post #269

I see very disparate use cases for these laptops, so the competition is not really that fair. - Fastest CPU + GPU + battery life, x64 not needed, money no object: M1 MBP. - Reliable, serviceable, upgradeable, fashion-despising: T14 / T480 / T490. - Serviceable, upgradable, but sort of new kids on the block, and less fashion-oblivious: Star Labs Starfighter, Framework, System 76 Oryx Pro. - Sleek-looking at the expens…

I voted for the Dell XPS, but really wanted to vote for the Dell Latitude.

I recently upgraded to a refurbished 8th gen (KBL, top of the line i7 model with NVMe and Thunderbolt) Latitude 7390, and everything "just works", including BIOS updates via LVFS/fwupd with only a few days lag over the announcement on Dell's site. With this level of support I finally feel like a first class citizen running Linux.

Oh, and it has a proper selection of ports, including wired LAN.

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

#294
post #124
post #68

I don't get why so many people like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. They don't come with SODIMM slots, RAM is soldered directly to the board. If RAM goes bad, you have to do circuit level repair which requires a potential reball. The X1 Extreme comes with SODIMM slots from what I hear, but that is not the X1 Carbon. It certainly won't be lasting anywhere as long as previous Thinkpad models that have replaceable parts.

This is the reason I've moved away from ASUS laptops too, the G14 has soldered RAM. If you want normal arrow keys, SODIMM/M.2 slots, and decent specs other wise the System 76 Oryx and maybe a few others fit the criteria, but the System 76 is going to be the best for Linux.

Out of all the failure domains I've dealt with as a Sysadmin, the most common I've seen across all models has been failing memory which was neck in neck with failing fans on the active cooled items.

I can't justify buying something that doesn't have replaceable memory given how common that failure is.

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

#296
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be referring to how he uses that specific laptop. > uses fairly standard GNOME. Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user

>Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user Which uses GNOME.

>>Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user

>Which uses GNOME.

Fedora's primary distribution may have Gnome, but there are many other desktop environments that are available "out of the box", as I'm sure you know. I've been running Fedora on dozens of systems over the last decade and I've never used Gnome -- because it's annoying and supremely unintuitive.

XFCE FTW.

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

#297
I'm typing this on the latest Lenovo P53, running Manjaro. Literally every single piece of hardware works out of the box with the default installer - down to the NVidia GPU. This is by far, the best Linux laptop I've owned since I started trying this in the 90s on a Compaq Presario. I'm pleasantly shocked that Linux is finally this stable.

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

#298
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do miss some nuance here. Touchpad and Wifi does work great. I do use Asahi since more than 6 months as daily driver on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. It works great, and now we even have a quite ok GPU Driver since like a month or so. I even run IntelliJ for Java/Scala dev. The only things not working I am waiting for is webcam and speakers. My bet in 2023 the whole system will just work for everyone and will be the kil…

Did flashing it with Linux have any impact on battery life? The main reason I switched from a Thinkpad T480 (2017) to a M2 Air two months ago was the horrible battery life of the Thinkpad. The M2 has been lasting me almost two days of work, compared to only 3 hours on the Thinkpad. But I miss quite a lot from linux

15 hours idling or something like 8 hours of use. https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109348054803945724

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

#299
post #269

I see very disparate use cases for these laptops, so the competition is not really that fair. - Fastest CPU + GPU + battery life, x64 not needed, money no object: M1 MBP. - Reliable, serviceable, upgradeable, fashion-despising: T14 / T480 / T490. - Serviceable, upgradable, but sort of new kids on the block, and less fashion-oblivious: Star Labs Starfighter, Framework, System 76 Oryx Pro. - Sleek-looking at the expens…

> I'd like to like HP Dev One, but I don't trust HP to make reliable things any more :(

I second this. And even while they do work, build quality is atrocious and you can never really say they're "good". The worst offender is by far the screen. The quality is so unbelievably, absurdly, ridiculously bad for a laptop that costs the same as an MBP (32 GB RAM / 512 GB SSD).

You also better not be bothered by coil whine and an unbalanced fan fresh out of the box (but at least it doesn't spin that often).

Since the keyboard is pretty nasty, you probably won't use it that often, so you won't notice that it doesn't lay flat on the table and, therefore, it creaks.

It just feels an all-round cheap imitation of a macbook.

But, to the point of this post, Linux runs perfectly on it. Every last piece of hardware is supported, which hasn't been the case on Windows until a few weeks ago (no webcam on my amd model, and wonky dp-passhtrough through a hp (!) dock on my intel model).

These impressions are based on multiple generations of Elitebooks. The dev one seems similar, but actually cheaper, so it may be a better deal.

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