Which are your preferred laptops?
Which are your preferred laptops?
Hey, I wanna know your preferred laptops, used is better and to run Linux on it. Something with at least 16gb and 512 SSD is good. Budget range. Thank you!
If you're on a small budget, look for older ThinkPad laptops, you can get them for good prices and in good condition and Linux works very well on them.
For mid-range try to find an older Dell XPS 13, they sold those as certified Linux devices nicknamed "Developer Edition" and with an Ubuntu LTS version preinstalled. I have one of those and I run Arch on it. It runs perfectly fine. Also: superb build quality! It's a very great device.
And decently easy to repair / have repaired at a computer shop, wether its the battery, RAM, CPU, keyboard, screen, or any and I mean ANY of the external connectors!
Thx
Also note that Thinkpads up to a couple of years ago (when soldering RAM became a thing) are mostly trivial to open and upgrade RAM / drives, so you don't have to care about those and can pick up a bargain (look to T480 at the moment (not the TN screen tho), or whatever is 3 years or so old, as that's the corporate fleets that are getting dumped onto the market).
A "factory seconds" framework 13 might fit your budget, and you get a laptop that is easily repairable and upgradeable. The 11th gen i7 version that starts at $500 is what I have been using for a couple of years now and still runs great.
They also have refurbished laptops, but those seem to start a little bit more expensive.
Love my 11th gen framework, but there is an issue with the 11th gens where the CMOS battery will die rather quickly. If it does die then the laptop needs to be plugged in to turn on, even if it is fully charged. Framework is aware of the issue and will send a free replacement battery or, if you can solder, a mod that will eliminate the issue for good.
Still love framework and would definitely recommend them - but the 11th gen line (their first product) has a few gotchas
I often skip first gens hence why I got a 12th gen and then upgraded it to a 7040 series. Super happy with the battery life and performance.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but you can use pretty much anything you like, as long as it isn't brand new or extremely old.
Even stuff with Nvidia GPUs and stuff.
Even MS Surface devices work decently.Thing is, for a really smooth experience, where you don't feel like a second class citizen, and everything works ootb, proper support is advantageous.
I have a Dell XPS laptop, and it works fine. Sometimes, the WiFi switches itself off, and I have to restart the connection, but other than that, everything is flawless.
Thinkpads are great too, since they are also used heavily in offices, where they get thrown out or sold cheaply. Maybe ask there.I personally would recommend something that you can repair yourself, or at least change the battery and memory.
I wouldnât recommend macs in general. Anything with a touch bar (intels from ca 2018-19 and on) are tricky to get to run Linux at all, anything with apple silicon is very experimental, and the older models have Broadcom Wi-Fi that doesnât ship with drivers on any distribution I know of.
Not entirely true, Iâm running Ubuntu on MBP 2017 (non-Touchbar). WiFi works out of the box, only touchbar models have problems. They are using another antenna. Only thing that doesnât work out of the box are FaceTime webcam and sound. There are drivers for those. One thing to note tho, Intel MBP especially those thin ones can get very hot and fans might blast.
Thank you
ThinkPads are my go-to. I just got an X1 Carbon Gen 9 (i5, 16GB) for $350 and put Fedora on it after upgrading the SSD to 1TB. Itâs a beautiful laptop.
Of course, thereâs the tried and true T480. Love that thing, especially if you get the right display panel and touchpad upgrades. Swappable batteries, upgradeable RAM. Those laptops can be had for cheap on eBay. Also check r/hardwareswap or the Discord for ThinkPad deals.
XPS 13 units can do well with Linux, too. Iâm just a ThinkPad fan.
Definitely. I got a T470s that had barely been used for business purposes on eBay for 100âŹ. It's a great machine. Lots of I/O, great IPS touchscreen, great backlit keyboard, great trackpad, great build quality, awesome form factor, good battery life (about 6-8 hours). If you need a cheap laptop, get a used ThinkPad. They're the best bang for the buck imo
I've been wanting to find an alternative to Thinkpads since Lenovo bought them, but despite them not being what they used to be, I just haven't been happy with any alternatives. I'm hopeful for Framework improving on their modularity, and the System76 in-house design that's in the works has me intrigued.
Right now I'm looking forward to their eventual redesign of the Z series. I doubt they'll do it, but I'd love a light workstation class version of the Z16, with slightly higher end graphics, and a vapor chamber. I'm also hopeful that they work on Linux support for their ARM offerings, and bring back the X13s that they offered with Snapdragon 8 a couple years back.
I only had bad experiences with an XPS, then I found out that the Linux model was a cut down version so that Dell didnt have to support the fingerprint reader and other gadgets.
Lenovo at the time were working with Fedora to get all their fingerprint drivers upstreamed so the choice seemed obvious.
AMD T14 Gen 2, and it's still great.
I only had bad experiences with an XPS, then I found out that the Linux model was a cut down version so that Dell didnt have to support the fingerprint reader and other gadgets.
Lenovo at the time were working with Fedora to get all their fingerprint drivers upstreamed so the choice seemed obvious.
AMD T14 Gen 2, and it's still great.
What kind of battery life do you get out of it? I have the Gen 7 and from day one it's been awful. About 4 hours brand new.
Few years old Dell laptop, they are incredible, even easy to open and repair, parts available everywhere, BIOS update even after 5 or 6 years.
You can buy a few years old Latitude for maybe $200, 14", i5 8th gen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, wifi, bt, webcam, usb-c, name it.
Being 8th gen it runs win11, but they also run Linux pretty well, I'm running MX Linux (debian based) on them and everything is supported.
I've had good experiences with most modern Dell Laptops. Also Thinkpads. What's "budget range" to you?
Wouldn't go really beyond 600 bucks And old or new thinkpads?
New ish. My current Thinkpad is a P14s Gen 1 with a Ryzen 4750U 16GB of RAM, and it came with a 512GB SSD. I paid just under $300 for it on eBay and well worth the cost. I wouldn't get anything that is still a TXXX variant anymore though (e g. T490), they simplified the product line. So T490 was replaced by the E14 Gen 1, and the P14s Gen 1 is an AMD variant.
Highly recommend. One thing worth noting though is to double check the fingerprint reader if you desire that, the E14 Gen 1 has a reader not compatible with Linux in a functional way. The P14s Gen 1 however does.
In the past, ThinkPads, but my next one will probably be an ARM-based one for the performance and power efficiency (e.g. Snapdragon X Elite).
there is a x13s arm thinkpad that can run pmos and other distros
its also snapdragon based
HP EliteBook 840 G5 or other EliteBook models. Even on Debian everything works fine after a clean install (including special keys), they never die and have a pleasant design. You can get one second hand, modern i7 (8th gen +) CPU + 16 GB of RAM for around 500âŹ.
My HP envy x360 AMD with Fedora here. Build quality is really good and the laptop has a nice design.
Iâve been a ThinkPad fan for a long time, but their new stuff bothers me. I picked up the HP DevOne which is essentially an Elitebook and I really like it. Very user serviceable and solid. The only think I donât like is the glossy screen, and when playing around and configuring another model I think it was difficult to tell if it was matte or glossy through their marketing speak.
Anything that's not an HP...
I don't know what it is with them, but I always have problems with their hardware - generally. Printers, laptops, anything...
But I definitely +1 all the Dell comments
Did you ever try an EliteBook? Even on Debian everything works fine after a clean install (including special keys), they never die and have a pleasant design.
that's interesting - i have 4 hp laptops at home, 3 amd and one Intel, and haven't had any issues with them.
My "budget" until my new laptop was "hey you just got a new pc? What was wrong with your old one? Slow as hell? Can I buy it cheap and tinker?"
Friends/family always give me the best price especially when they think it's just "too old" and think I'm crazy, they don't know the problem is windows.
When it comes to expensive laptops, there are plenty of good options for Linux. But for cheaper stuff, your best bet might be a second hand DELL, a model that specifically says that it supports Linux (newer models use some new Intel webcams etc that don't have support on linux yet).
I bought a ThinkPad new in 2014 for my study for like 1200 euro's. She's still happily purring today. Around 2019 I made the mistake of emptying a cup of tea into the ThinkPad accidentally and then holding it upside down to get the water out. I think I should've just let it leak out of the bottom since the laptop has holes for that, but I panicked. This broke the keyboard, but not the rest of the laptop. I got an official new keyboard for like 100 euro's which came with a tool and the simple instructions, and since then everything has been working flawlessly.
So I recommend ThinkPads, although I can't really say anything about compatibility of new models
i like my laptop cause i already have it, and have gotten to know it quite well over the past 16 years, but i wouldn't recommend it. it would be nice to have more than 4gb of memory these days, cause i can't have too many tabs open on firefox without it bogging down.
@foremanguy92_
Not that cheap, but very good and 100% linux compatible:
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/de/TUXEDO-Pulse-14-Gen4.tuxedoIn a similar vein, I went with a Framework laptop. Expensive, but 100% modular and repairable, with an in-house secondhand marketplace. I have a gen 1, batch 2, and the thing is stunningly manufactured for a startup. Can't say enough good things. Happy hunting!
I have heard mixed opinions about this brand, are they really that good?
I did have a couple of issues with a model with an nvidia video card, but the tuxedo tech I got in contact with took great care to troubleshoot the issue with me and report the issue up to the Dev team that works with nvidia. So compatibility may not be 100% but the service is great. Now I got no more issues with it.
@stuckgum I bought a PC there ~six years ago and a Laptop ~3 years ago. Both are still runnig quite good, no hardware or linux based problems. Only with windows in dualboot... đïž
I had once contact to the service (windows dualboot...) and they could help me quick.
So the only thing I could complain about would be the price.I bought a tuxedo laptop about 2 years ago. I've only had one issue with it, where it would go to 100% fan speed for about 2 seconds after turning it on. Other than that I'm really happy with it âșïž
i bought the tuxedo nano (a mini pc but decently powerful), and its not 100% linux compatible. i imagine its better if you install their own distro (maybe) but running arch linux with the standard kernel on it, i've had issues with HPET/TSC (some cpu timekeeping stuff, ruined performance when it happened), the wifi card it came with is known to have issues and i've had plenty (usable, but super slow bandwidth depending on what AP i connect to, and no its not the AP all other devices work fine on it), and some lockups when my usb microphone is connected (sometimes it only crashed the usb hub which i could reset).
NONE of these issues are present running arch linux on my old desktop and 2 work laptops. Support wasnt helpful either.
However, its still my main device, i just had to work around these issues.
edit oh, and the fan is not controllable from linux at all, i've spent hours trying to find a way. i do not know if it's controllable from windows either, maybe it's just the mainboard that doesn't allow fan control at all outside of the UEFI settings.
I bought a Lenovo about 2 years ago that I've been really happy with. I wanted something with a metal shell because I carry my laptop around sometimes and use it balanced on one hand, and my previous Dell (plastic) started flexing and having weird issues with the TouchPad as a result. The Lenovo has been solid. I'm running Kubuntu on it, but my plan is to go Debian at some point.
I also have a Lenovo E16 G1 and it's great. Everything worked out of the box (Manjaro and XFCE) and that's pretty much all there is to say about it.
Dell Latitude 5000 series are usually bought by corporations for employees. They are made of sturdy metal, and have features like backlit keyboards and physical trackpad buttons. Then, after 2-3 years, or if they have some minor problem, they end up in a giant stack that either never gets diagnosed, or just gets sent to recycling.
I have had fantastic luck getting a couple of these either direct from the company I'm working for, or from ebay or a company that recycles laptops. They usually don't actually have a problem, and if they do, parts are readily available on ebay. You can end up with a high-spec laptop from just a few years ago for practically nothing.
I wanted a thin and light laptop for travel, I was looking between an X1 Carbon 9th gen, or a HP dragonfly gen 2, I ended up scoring a HP with a i5-1145g7, 16gb lpddr4 for $275 on eBay.
I used to prefer ThinkPads but I've moved on. I have had lots of reliability problems with them over the past few years. I had keys fall off a newer ThinkPad keyboard (which wasn't user replaceable) and another new ThinkPad just die under warranty and the repair person damaged it further when trying to fix it.
I am on System76 now and have no issues and they do good things like right to repair and Coreboot.
If I had to choose a single laptop for everything, it would be the Toughbook 40. I have one for work and it has a 1200 nit display. It runs Ubuntu LTS perfectly. It costs several thousand dollars new but has swapable components, multiple batteries, and part availability is measured in decades. You can get an older CF-31 or CF-54 for a few hundred dollars and still find new components for it.
I was always happy with everything I got from Lenovo (mostly ThinkPads but also IdeaPad), both cheap ones, used and new ones, always worked without any problems.
I'm ok with the XPS 13 from Dell but I had some problems, they needed to replace the motherboard and when you hold it it bends a bit and does register a click on the touchpad.
I hated my Tuxedo laptop, very expensive and very bad quality, had to send it in to repair twice and after a year I gave up on it because it was so broken and bought a used ThinkPad.
I like running Linux on my Lenovo Ideapad. It wasn't expensive and has everything I want, including easily running Linux.
The only thing is it's not a popular laptop so it doesn't have accessories, like cases or whatever.
I just bought the Slimbook Executive and although there's I'm not a fan of the charger, it's a beast.
I have an old Lenovo W550s Thinkpad with a 2GB Dedicated Nvidia and an i5 5500U. It's got two batteries and sips power. It's only 4 cores, but for what I run it does great. I get fairly consistent 60fps on low settings for "boomer shooters" like Selaco. The thing is an absolute beast and hardly flexes. The plastic is cracked and I can just hand it to my kids without a care in the world. Dump a drink on it, drop it, I could care less. I had them help me change out the RAM and SSD because it's essentially bound for the dumpster and any value I get out of it is the cherry on top.
That and I can run pretty much and retro gaming console on it to about the Wii/GameCube, which blows my mind. All for probably like $200 of hardware.
"Couldn't care less"
I'm on my second Lenovo in a row, they seem to be really good for Linux. Actually the previous one did get a drink dumped on it too, and it didn't phase it at all. The 5 key is a little sticky sometimes but otherwise works fine.
I might be tempted to get a Framework for my next one though, if I can get the cash together for a 16.
Are running 2 Dell's at home with Linux desktop on them. A 7280 and a 7480 model. Support for drivers etc just works. Dell get's A+ from me in regards to ease of use with support for Linux. HP's, not so much - what a struggle....
HP EliteBook 840 G5 or another EliteBook model. Even on Debian everything works fine after a clean install (including special keys), they never die and have a pleasant design.
I have 2 lenovos (ideapad and yoga) and a pinebook. I'm happy with all of them, though I'm happiest with the pinebook and yoga's impressive battery lives
Thinkpads, macs and dells are what I use.
Theyâre cheap and have lots of spare parts lying around.
Plus one for Dell. I get some 4 year old decommissioned dells from my company and a 5300 is now my daily driver
I cannot say that I have done extensive testing, but the Acer Swift 315-51G and Gigabyte Aero WV8 that I have both worked fine with Linux with zero prior research on my part. No issues with any drivers, even the SD card readers, although I have not checked the fingerprint sensor on the Acer. Maybe I have just been lucky.
Both have hybrid Nvidia graphics, though, and 10-series and prior hybrid graphics especially, as I understand, have issues with high idle power usage unless you manually disable the dGPU when not gaming, which I had to do using envycontrol and nearly doubled my battery life on both. I might avoid hybrid dGPUs and especially older ones unless you need that.
Used laptop-wise, I agree with others that a used business laptop like a Dell would probably be your best bet.
My preferred laptop is the one I have lol
Which is an Acer Aspire V3-372T. I don't think anyone knows or cares about the model. I can't even find examples on eBay. I bought it in 2016 for grad school. It ran Ubuntu perfectly for the better of 5 years. I switched to Debian a couple months ago and it runs that flawlessly.
I am gonna get a shit ton of hate for this... MacBook air. Yes, I am on a Linux sublemmy, saying that I like macs but the hardware is just too good to justify spending money on a x86 laptop.
Though, those new snapdragon X Elite laptops do look pretty spicy... Too bad they weren't yet announced when I bought my Mac.
I prefer to have no laptop at all (but I guess you didn't want to hear that)