
Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now? - vise890
I get to choose a new laptop for work. I&#x27;d like to switch back to Linux as I think it does 95% of what a Mac does, and it&#x27;s better at some things. What are people using?
======
jimmies
I have a Dell Chromebook 13. Basically it is a Macbook Pro that happens to run
Linux really well. I have used Thinkpads X (200, 201, 220) in the past, then
switched to Chromebook C720, then this.

After you install John Lewis' ROM (basically a Coreboot build), it is an
absolute dream, and everything worked out of the box, wifi, bt, 3d
acceleration, suspend/resume, audio jack detection, you name it. Trackpad is
really smooth, 1080p resolution IPS, the battery lasts 10 hours, never gets
hot, fancy back-lit keyboard, has 8 philips screws in total to take it apart.
Hell, it even has a TPM module so I can do those fancy ssh password-less
logins ([https://github.com/ThomasHabets/simple-tpm-
pk11](https://github.com/ThomasHabets/simple-tpm-pk11)). If you really like
the clit mouse, then this machine wouldn't cut it though. The speaker is kinda
iffy and doesnt sound very nice, but nowhere bad.

It is also only 500USD, so that's another factor.

Pic: [http://imgur.com/FRynGSw](http://imgur.com/FRynGSw)

~~~
yathern
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 ChromeOS and have the drive still
mounted. Highly recommend the c720, or whatever is the more recent equivalent.

~~~
jimmies
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.

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

~~~
jimmies
I use Kubuntu.

------
BenElgar
My general advice would be to check the Arch wiki
([https://www.archlinux.org/](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](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_%282015%29)

~~~
gshulegaard
I have written this elsewhere
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492941](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 better hardware suited for Linux (Intel vs. Broadcom
wireless for example).

Also the Precision has thunderbolt...absolute must if you want a reasonable
docking solution under Linux.

Also consider: [https://system76.com/](https://system76.com/)

Their stuff has been rock solid for me.

~~~
eximius
What issues did you have besides wireless? I just bought one and ordered an
intel card to put in (now waiting on a torx screwdriver because I didn't
noticed I didn't have one! XD)

I'm planning on Arch, but if I get sick of that or find my terminal-fu
lacking, I'll probably go back to Mint.

~~~
sethish
Heh. The list I could make for you my friend. For one, there is a dynamic
contrast 'feature' that can't be disabled from linux. When you look at dark
screens, it will decrease the brightness of the backlight. The goal here was
when looking at light screens it increases the brightness to make it look like
it has great contrast. Suspend and powersaving is an issue (see MJG59's
blogpost about the chipset), almost unworkable if you don't get powersaving
sata working first. Thunderbolt support is non-existent. 1/3 of the time I hot
unplug a displayport monitor my machine freezes. You can't disable the
keyboard backlight, it turns back on whenever you press a key. Oh, and no one
on the sputnik team has tested the displaylink video out adapter they sell
with the device. Oh, and my alt key popped off 31 days after getting the
machine.

------
drakonka
I recently bought a gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Despite a couple of issues first
getting started with Linux (I've been using OS X for years aside from running
Ubuntu on my web servers) I'm now happily on Fedora 23. There was a kernel bug
that I think is being patched atm, requiring booting with intel_pstate=no_hwp
but no problems with Fedora other than that.

When discussing this on the ThinkPad subreddit a Red Hat employee mentioned
that their standard issue work laptops are ThinkPads with Red Hat Enterprise
installed, but most engineers then switch to Fedora. As a result Fedora tends
to run very well on ThinkPads (according to him and in my so far limited
experience), as they have many Red Hat engineers working on that OS every day.

~~~
nxzero
>> "Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, who uses Fedora on all of his
computers."

Source:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(operating_system)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_\(operating_system\))

Be interesting to know what hardware Linus use, though given security is a low
priorty for him, not sure what this would mean.

Personally, I would like to know if the gen4 ThinkPad X1 Carbon (hardware,
bios, firmware, drivers, etc) have any know exploits or notable security
measures.

Anyone know?

EDIT: As a result of the comment below, as of 2012, Linus says, "I love my
MacBook Air!" \- source:

[http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-
torvalds...](http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvalds-i-
love-my-macbook-air/)

~~~
dnissley
Macbook Air 11": [http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/skitched...](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/skitched-20120424-122922.jpg)

~~~
ericlee4
More recently a Sony Vaio Pro according to this interview.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-
qa-2014-6](http://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-qa-2014-6)

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
He had a Chromebook Pixel before the Vaio. Wonder what made him switch.

~~~
lake99
I bet people give him tons of stuff for free.

------
fhood
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 problem is with graphics cards.

For a pure Linux machine the thinkpad is probably the way to go. They are
cheap and powerful and most Linux distros are designed to work on them.
Unfortunately it will feel like a cheap clunky pos next to any Apple computer
and Lenovo may have put spyware directly in the bios where you can't do
anything annoying to it........like get rid of it.

If you just wan't Unix go with a MacBook Pro. You do have to live with the
price, and the fact that it is used primarily by hipsters and white girls for
tasks one could accomplish on a raspberry pi (the new one at least). But the
value of an OS written for the hardware is something that's hard to comprehend
until you experience it.

Oh and get you one of them fancy new raspberry pi's as well. They're super
dope, and they run Linux great.

~~~
Philipp__
Well said. There is really no need in buying Apple computer only to run Linux.
You are wasting money. But I find OS X really enjoyable! Used it for more than
ten years, it has quirks, it can be really annoying at the times, but it is
the only system that gives you everything in terms of commercial software that
is widely used in various industries and UNIX environment.

------
gargravarr
ThinkPads generally run Linux very well. I use an old X220 with Mint 17 and it
fits my needs. ThinkPads are also well suited to business use and will last
many years. X series for ultraportables with small screens, T series for high
performance machines.

This site collects info on people running Linux on their ThinkPads:
[http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki](http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki)

~~~
mataug
Came here to say this. My thinkpad works great with Linux mint. Planning to
switch to Ubuntu 16.04 when it comes out.

~~~
jordigh
I'm having trouble with the graphics acceleration with an intel graphics card
on Debian. This is on an x250. I'm kind of surprised, because it's the first
time that the intel chipsets fail me. Usually they work the best because the
drivers are free.

~~~
reitoei
That's may be too 'new' of a computer in Debian userland, although I'm
probably wrong.

~~~
jordigh
I'm using the driver versioned at 2:2.99.917 from backports, although I see
that unstable has added stuff from a recent git branch. Still, if apparently
I'm using the latest released driver, shouldn't that be enough?

~~~
snassar
Have you tried removing the Intel graphics drivers? Based on "It is probably
time to ditch xf86-video-intel[1]" I removed the intel drivers from a debian
machine and an Arch machine and things have become more stable for me.

1:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4cojj9/it_is_pro...](https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4cojj9/it_is_probably_time_to_ditch_xf86videointel/)

------
bischofs
I just got a Dell precision 15 with ubuntu 14.04, $2K after tax - I returned
it because the wifi rarely works, The gpu switching makes the gpu basically
unusable because of screen tearing ( X.org sucks), and the battery life still
is terrible( without some heavy optimizations). In 2016 it is sad that there
still isn't a good seamless hardware/software linux laptop out of the box, It
could be a great OS for day to day laptop use.

I would recommend just buying a cheap dell or hp with an intel wifi card and
no dedicated gpu and install ubuntu on that - at least you wont feel cheated
after spending $1.5K+ on some nice hardware, and your battery life will be
tolerable. I have heard macs run linux fairly well too.

~~~
Glyptodon
Ha ha, I was just posting because my Boss is having some similar fun with the
same model.

------
CoolGuySteve
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).

Edit: My one and only complaint is that it only has mini-hdmi 1.4 instead of
DisplayPort or HDMI 2, so no 4k@60hz external monitors.

~~~
Raed667
How long does the battery last in moderate use ?

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

------
glogla
My advice:

1) If you're used to a retina macbook pro, you're doomed. There's nothing with
as good display and touchpad.

2) If you can handle low resoltions (1920x1080 or even 1366x768) and generally
lower quality screens, get a Thinkpad. New ones are very expensive but
generally solid, while older ones are cheap and work well with Linux.

3) If you want a good screen, there's only Dell XPS 13. If you live in one of
the few lucky countries, you can get it with preinstalled Dell Ubuntu fork.

~~~
MichaelGG
Nit: Some ThinkPads have 2560 x 1440 displays now (or higher, I think, on the
big ones). And their keyboard and touchpad buttons are vastly superior than
Apple (though some people have wrong opinions on this). They also don't
overheat like Apple, generally speaking.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
Agreed. My Dell XPS 15 is running at 3840x2160. Unfortunately, there's a few
quirks:

    
    
      - Wireless drivers broken in Jessio (unless you build your own kernel)
      - UI elements are EXTREMELY small (you have to set DPI before window manager starts)
    

Apart from that, it's an awesome machine

~~~
izym
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.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
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.

~~~
izym
Sounds good! What distro are you running?

------
mindcrash
Purism Librem 13/15

Has a sleek MacBook like look and feel, but comes with a battle hardened
customized Linux distro (PureOS) and separate physical kill switches for
Wifi/Bluetooth and Webcam/Mic

Next batch will go out in a few weeks I believe.

You can check them out (and order) here:
[https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/](https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/)

------
jordigh
It's a good idea to keep an eye out for the list here. There's a Thinkpad
there which runs completely on free software, a good indication that the
hardware support will be good:

[https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-
your-f...](https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom)

~~~
dandelion_lover
More from FSF:

"Hardware Devices that Support GNU/Linux"

[https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/](https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/)

------
sampo
ThinkPad T460s.

Sure, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (4rd gen) _looks_ thinner, but at the thickest
point, at 16.9 mm the T460s is only 3% thicker than the X1 at 16.35 mm. Also
the 1.4 kg vs 1.2 kg weight difference is not big.

T460s is easier to open, if you want to add memory or change the SSD drive, or
change other components. T460s still had a traditional RJ45 port for ethernet
cable. With X1 you need an usb-adapter, or always use wifi.

For both you can choose a 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 screen resolution.

------
ralphc
I'm dual-booting Win 8.1 & Ubuntu 15.10 on a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro and Ubuntu
works great, including touch screen, video, sound & Spotify, the whole works.
As a bonus, if you're a distro explorer is has a "Novo" button in addition to
a power button. "Novo" takes you straight to the Setup/boot menu, and distros
boot well from SD cards. I've played with Kali, Tails and Ubuntu Gnome this
way.

~~~
nokya
Ubuntu 15.10 on a Yoga 2 pro, too. Everything works great (to my surprise,
honestly).

------
teddyc
Another consideration is to go virtual. I setup a virtual machine for my Linux
development and run it in fullscreen. I don't have to worry about driver
support and it is portable so I can clone/migrate it to another machine.
Snapshots of the VM come in handy, too; for example, taking a snapshot before
upgrading from Fedora 22 to Fedora 23 in case something breaks. I also backup
snapshots to cloud storage providers so I can recover from a total disaster. I
don't notice much of a performance hit, but I think it does drain the battery
faster, which is certainly a drawback.

------
nextos
All Intel (but not Skylake) tends to be pretty good.

My old MacBook Air 11 2012 (which Linus himself used to use) is almost
perfect. It's only missing ACPI events for battery discharges (something I've
only seen in x220, but I hated its fan noise).

I'd like to point out that some very cheap Chromebooks that are getting
Libreboot support (not ready yet for prime time though):

[https://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/index.html#supported_laptops_...](https://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/index.html#supported_laptops_arm)

~~~
kccqzy
Interesting that Linus himself used to use a MacBook Air! I'm curious what he
uses now.

~~~
nextos
I think he uses a Chromebook Pixel.

------
cfeduke
I tried going with System76 after having a good experience with one of their
earlier models. Unfortunately the keyboard experience was _terrible_ - so as a
portable it failed hard. Everything else was stellar.

By terrible I mean actually missing keystrokes noticeably often, even around
60wpm.

~~~
drallison
My System 76 experience (Gazelle, 15-1/2 in screen) has been good. Keyboard is
better than average, for what that's worth.

~~~
cfeduke
That's what I bought in 2014, a Gazelle. If they've improved they keyboard
since then I'd give it another go.

------
neverminder
Google Chromebook Pixel 2015 LS. If Linus Torwalds himself choose Pixel at
some point - it cannot get more linux laptop than that. I understand Pixel is
getting some (minor?) upgrades this year as well.

------
smacktoward
I've been carrying a 2013 ThinkPad X1 Carbon for a few years now, running
whatever version of Ubuntu is current at the time.

Overall it's been a great machine; most everything Just Works™, and in the
rare cases where something doesn't the large community of Linux-using ThinkPad
owners has made it easy to find out how to fix it.

There is one absolutely glaring exception to this, though: power management.
For reasons I've never been able to figure out, and despite what feels like
endless tinkering with power management settings, I've never been able to get
more than 2 hours and change out of a full battery charge, which is (IMO)
unacceptable.

Now that it's getting on three years old I've been thinking about replacing
it, and the natural thing to do would be to buy the newest X1. But I'm worried
that I'm just going to end up with another machine that's constantly needing
to be tethered to the wall again.

------
simon_acca
I use a ThinkPad x1 2nd generation and from the my experience this is a great
linux machine. Everything works, including the fingerprint reader and
suspension.

It's a 14 inches laptop, which makes it bit enough for programming and small
enough to be carried around everywhere. In this respect, the fact that it only
weights 1.3kg also helps a lot!

The HiDPI screen makes it quite pleasant to stare at the screen for hours at
hand. Given the high resolution, I have no trouble opening up 3 80char vim
panes side by side, even though at home I connect it to an external monitor.

Xrandr lists eDP1 (internal monitor), DP1, DP2, HDMI1, HDMI2 as outputs, this
makes me think that a DP split is supported, even though I haven't checked
yet.

The keyboard is nice like all the thinkpads but be aware that the layout is
different from the standard. In particular, caps lock has been replaced by
home and end keys. After some getting used to, I must say I rather enjoy this
change and I use the the two keys often! The laptop also has an "adaptive
keyboard": a row of keys that change its function according to the context (on
win). I only got to working the F{1..12}, volume -+, mute, light -+, keyboard
light toggle, and two extra programmable keys.

The battery situation is also good: One charge lasts about 5.5h, and with the
rapid charge feature, you can bring the battery to 80% in just 1h. The rapid
charge turned out to be very useful as I can charge the laptop between lessons
at the uni for about 20' and keep going for 2h afterwards.

Connectionwise, the lack of ethernet (it does have a network card and port but
you have to use a proprietary adapter) and SD is noticeable at times. The
other ports, namely: HDMI, DP, 2xUSB3, mic/headphones work as expected. I have
not tried a docking adapter yet.

So, to summarize the Best Features:

* 2K screen (Amazing!) * good keyboard with sensible improvements over the standard layout * fast recharge * good battery life

Possible improvements:

* RAM is soldered and max 8GB * no SD or microSD port * m2 SSDs are still expensive

------
tmaly
I use a MacBook Pro. I run all my linux programs just using homebrew. I also
have docker on there if I need to truly run something.

The battery life and screen quality are just off the charts. If I am going to
stare are a screen for hours, I want crystal clear text.

------
Rick-Butler
If you want a 15in, MacBook Retina Pro w/ bootcamp.

If you want a 13in, I honestly feel the Dell XPS 13 Developer edition is
amazing, better than the 13in Retina Macbook Pro IMO.

~~~
Rick-Butler
Brainfart said boot camp meant parallels/fusion/virtualbox. Or go to the
trouble of getting Linux on it and do the reverse. It's legal to virtualized
OSX on Apple hard ware.

------
brickmort
I've had excellent experience with Dell Latitude laptops. I was using a Dell
Latitude E6420 running Linux Mint for about two years until it stopped
charging completely and I had to keep it plugged in for it to work. I ended up
replacing it with a refurbished E6420 with almost identical specs for a little
under $300. It's my primary computer and, with the 9-cell battery, can hold a
charge for about 8 hours.

~~~
orbitingpluto
If you don't disable quick-charge in the BIOS/UEFI many Dell Latitude
batteries get eaten up in a matter of months, especially the 9-cells. I
learned the hard way. When I bought the E6420 I disabled. Original 9-cell is
still good after all this time. The 1600x900 is sufficient too, I don't know
how people work off of 1366x768. Cheap $10 DVD replacement tray for a second
drive. Great battery life.

You can still get them refurbished from Dell, sometimes with 40-50% discounts
for $250-300. Very worthwhile for a second portable.

Absolutely no issues in Debian even with the dedicated nVidia. Even the
keyboard backlight works with no issues.

------
ShookOnes
It took me 18 years to finally get the guts to move away from Thinkpads. I
ordered the Chromebook Pixel LS and absolutely love it and sport it better
than an Apple hipster in Bushwick! Only downside to me is that it lacks
F11,F12 and the hdd is soldered in.

Not sure if anyone commented yet but Torvalds used a Macbook but I think since
moved to some Sony VAIO if I'm not mistaken.

------
dskrvk
Lenovo W520 with Ubuntu Gnome. The performance is great, and I haven't had any
major compatibility problems. The touchpad is excellent and works great out of
the box. Build quality is superb.

Some issues though:

* battery only lasts around 90 minutes on full settings, and half of that if you're compiling something heavy. This is a used laptop though, so no idea how many battery cycles it had when I got it.

* switching to an external monitor is annoying. Out of the box it doesn't remember the display layout settings (mirror/extend/etc). If I switch off the on-board GPU and use the discrete one, the VGA port is unavailable. Sending sound over HDMI doesn't always work.

* wifi sometimes gets into a weird state where it can't find any networks. Resetting the driver helps though.

* the only available AC adapter weighs a couple of pounds and is huge. Haven't had any luck finding a more reasonably-sized aftermarket one.

* the speakers are too weak even on 100% volume.

------
bradleypowers
We use Dell's Precision 15 5000 laptops. We get them with a Xeon E3-1505M and
Quadro M1000M, which performs great in what we're doing (simulation, extremely
multithreaded sensor processing, etc.). They're not cheap, but if you want
"the best", I'd say they're a good candidate.

~~~
vox_mollis
I was extremely excited reading your comment, given the prospect of a Xeon
laptop.

According to dell.com, it seems there is no option for ECC ram on this device.

The sadness continues...

~~~
bradleypowers
Agreed, lack of ECC support is _the thing_ that makes this laptop _almost_
perfect. Otherwise, it's fantastic.

------
Glyptodon
My Boss picked up an Ubuntu Dell Precision 15 5000 and though it's a beautiful
machine ("4k" or "retina" screen, metal, etc.), it turned out to be a bit
buggy/odd with the version of Ubuntu that it came installed with. May be
nVidia Optimus related and the fact that it came with 14.04.x rather than a
newer version of Ubuntu, not sure.

And among other things Dell installs a special custom package to prevent the
super key from working at all, which was/is very odd and was a bit of a hassle
to reverse because not only do you have to uninstall their super key disable
package, but you have to install a tool to configure Compiz to re-enable it
once the package is gone.

I'm guessing (but don't know) you get a better experience with the XPS 13"?

Not sure if it's an unusual case or not.

------
giancarlostoro
I'm using an ASUS Republic of Gamers Laptop with Linux Mint. My only issues
are the Nvidia GPU, thankfully it has an integrated GPU from Intel so I can
switch off to that and avoid the odd issues, that and an odd config that has
my hard drive reading nonstop, a simple terminal command fixes it, but I have
to do it anytime I come back. I might try openSUSE which is my favorite distro
to see how all of these "issues" play out. I'd say spec the hardware for
faults related to GPU, look for a GPU that has great support, if you prefer a
specific distro as on their IRC channel etc.

Top two hardware issues that ruin Linux for me: * GPU drivers support is
either broken or non-existent. * Wi-Fi drivers non-existent or not included in
a particular distribution out of the box (seriously?)

------
alex_duf
I have a Thinkpad X1 carbon gen 2 and have absolutely no problem with it. In
fact it's an amazing little laptop that I highly recommend if it's in your
price ranges. I believe the latest generation of that laptop have a few minor
issues with linux that are easily fixable.

------
greydius
I have a System76 Gazelle and a 2015 Macbook Pro. In my opinion, the System76
is superior as a development machine. It's faster than the mbp, cost literally
half as much, and has a better OS (imho). However, I must admit that I wish
the System76 had a better screen.

------
vise890
I should probably point out that my personal machine is a Dell XPS 15
(infinity display), on which I run Arch.

Almost everything works, but I'm having trouble with a couple of things:

Graphics. It has switchable intel/nvidia but I get a better performance out of
the intel chip still. Battery life is about 2.5/3 hours. I haven't tested
bluetooth. The fan sometimes comes up without any apparent reason. Palm
detection and gestures don't work, but the trackpad is ok otherwise

The display is gorgeous, the machine is a beast and I'm very happy with it
otherwise.

------
cprayingmantis
I use a Mac at home but at work I'm using a Lenovo E550. It's a lot more bulky
than my mac and it feels cheap in the hand but that's where my complaints end.
It's a great computer for work installing Ubuntu on it was a breeze and it
even still works with the dock so I can have triple monitors at work. The only
thing I wish I could change is installing a SSD but alas the company I work
for will only pay for so much ;) I've got an i5, 16GB of RAM(that I can
upgrade), and a 500GB hard drive.

~~~
eterm
Putting a non-SSD into a new laptop makes about as much sense as putting a
lawn mower engine into a ferrari.

~~~
frou_dh
Speed aside, it's nice to leave the world of moving parts.

------
Harkins
It's not a Lenovo. I thought it would be a nice alternative to Linux on a
Macbook Air, but mine failed without warning less than three weeks out of its
1-year warranty and has been under repair for more than a month. I'll spare
the hair-lullingly frustrating details, but if anyone else is in this
situation, join the hundreds of other people who've filed a complaint about
bad repairs at the Better Business Bureau to get a call from someone who can
at least pretend to care (if not fix anything).

------
Kalium
I've got a Dell Precision 5510 with supported Ubuntu that's been good to me so
far. I had to argue with a keymapping or two, but it's been solid otherwise.

~~~
shaneofalltrad
I dual boot (on its own ssd) with a Dell Precision m6600 and it is amazing.
Only issue is it is a workstation with tons of power, quality built in that
makes it a concrete slab on your lap. The power supply is a brick.

------
jruz
I would get a macbook. I use Arch 90% of the time but usually I'm dealing with
poor battery life and not rock solid wifi, but I can stand both. If I need
long battery life or really stable wifi I would just boot OSX and run Arch on
VMware with my /home partition mounted and work from there. Also you get the
chance to do some iOS development in case you are into that.

------
jordigh
I don't know if it's the best, but I've been hungering for a Think Penguin
laptop for some time:

[https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/korora-penguin-gnu-
li...](https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/korora-penguin-gnu-linux-
notebook)

The fact that it works with Trisquel is a good indication that the hardware
support is good.

------
INTPenis
I get an unlimited supply of thinkpads from work as it's our defacto laptop
given to employees. I still bought my own personal X230 though because I think
the Thinkpad is a great format for work.

However, it cost about 1354 USD here in Sweden and I'm not too happy with the
resolution. It's enough for two vertically split python files, but it could be
much better.

------
notdonspaulding
Not using it and haven't bought it, but the Lenovo T460 looks like a good
option.

The T460p is due out in the next few weeks and is geared toward performance
with the use of discrete graphics and Intel core i5/i7 processors from the HQ
line.

The T460s is geared for mobility, and can be bought today.

And also available today, the regular T460 model is a compromise between the
two.

------
delineator
Entroware UK have an Ubuntu laptop range. Anyone had experience with their
13.3inch Apollo laptop?
[https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops/apollo](https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops/apollo)

I've thought about buying that as a replacement for an old Macbook pro.

~~~
phatmanace
Does anyone have one of these? - I've been thinking about getting one as a
slightly "occasional" larger laptop for longer trips - I have an 11' air that
I take to work every day thus I don't really want to shell out for a macbook
pro just to get the 15inch screen

Speccing up the triton with the HD screen and a bit more Ram is GPB500, which
seems quite reasonable for a decent machine for programming and the odd bit of
web surfing.

The review linked here looked quite positive, but I'd been keen to here from
someone that actually has one.

------
bpizzi
My Thinkpad T440S from 2014 works almost great under Ubuntu 14.04.
Everything's going properly (keyboard, battery, etc) but the Wifi is not.
Seems like a RTL8192EE isn't a linux' first class citizen :/

Btw I tried different distros before sticking with Ubuntu 14.04: it really the
most finished (at least on my t440s).

~~~
sampo
Realtek RTL8192EE was the default wifi card in T440s. It would have been
clever to choose a configuration with an Intel wifi card, which was also
available. The current model, T460s, comes with a Intel card by default.

The driver for the Realtek card may have improved by now:
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1239578](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1239578)

Another solution is to buy a suitable Intel wifi card from ebay for $10-$20,
open the laptop, and switch it in.

~~~
bpizzi
Yes that was also my conclusions afterwards...

But things have improved thanks to
[https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new](https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new)
(I stumbled upon that while doing a quick search after posting here
yesterday...). Looks like my wlan is finally stable :)

------
rootdiver
I wonder if anyone here is running linux on a Microsoft surface book :) ( It
seems like a good piece of hardware )

------
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.

------
chris_wot
One thing I find difficult about a lot of laptops is popping the case! I
always worry I'm going to break it.

It's been a while since I've needed to do so though, but I've really only seen
ChromeBooks have regular screws. Is this still common?

------
bobfromhuddle
I'm running Arch on a Dell M3800, most of my colleagues are running various
Ubuntu flavours on the same hardware. Works well, up to and including the
touchscreen.

Battery life is poor compared to a Mac, but it's really light given the
compute power.

~~~
Quai
I have had to replace the screen on my M3800 twice now in one year (it
develops two shadowy lines on the screen), and there are some other issues
that I don't like; The "sound card" had an bug that makes it give off a quite
noticeable white noise. It also has a slight coil noise that I'm not a huge
fan of.

------
JonFish85
Personally I really like using a MacBook Pro running Linux via Parallels. For
me, it's the best of both worlds. Obviously it wouldn't work for everyone, but
I think it's worth consideration.

------
DanBC
It might be useful to say what you do for work, and which features you're more
interested in.

Do you need huge amounts of ram? Do you need very powerful processor? Or are
you more interested in long battery life?

------
fulafel
Retina 13" MBP 2015 works quite well, except for simultaneous use of the
retina display with a non-hidpi monitor. You can also dual boot or with a
little twiddling run OS X in a VM.

------
JamesMcMinn
Most are going to suggest a Dell XPS Developer Edition or a ThankPad.

------
naragon
I have an HP Folio9470m that is running Ubuntu 14.04 like a champ. These days
I use it more frequently than my Macbook Pro, especially for Docker related
stuff.

------
davidw
I have a Dell XPS 13, and it's great! High resolution screen, works well out
of the box, light, compact, looks good.

~~~
chimeracoder
I've had two generations of the Dell XPS 13 as well as a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.
The Dell XPS 13 is the better of the two, hands-down.

------
dec0dedab0de
I am very happy with my System76 Lemur, but I definitely paid a premium for
dealing with a linux focused company.

~~~
p4wnc6
I have had remarkably awful customer service from System76 and after my
current 2-year-old laptop dies, I will refrain from ever dealing with System76
again. A friend of mine has also had the same problem with customer service.

In both cases, new computers were received that clearly had defective
components. I bought a large desktop system to serve as my primary work-from-
home computer, and the motherboard was defective out of the box. My friend has
twice received defective power cables from them.

In all cases, they have argued that the burden of arranging and paying for
shipping should be the customer's problem. In one case, I lived in an urban
area not close to any UPS drop off locations, and trying to carry the huge
desktop machine and walk to UPS was not feasible -- and System76 would not
cover the cost of the taxi.

Most companies will provide you with at-home pickup for this sort of issue,
for no fee if it really is a defective component. I expected that I should be
able to print a shipping label from them, repackage the device, and leave it
outside at a designated time and/or hand it to a UPS driver myself who had
been arranged to pick it up at my apartment building. I used to own Dell
laptops in 2007-2009 and they did this for me once, and also even offered to
pay for a local service technician to come to my apartment and fix it on site,
all for no fees.

Additionally, the customer service was unpleasant to interact with. They did
not seem to treat my request or my issue reasonably, and in the end after I
was frustrated and wrote them an angry email and they finally caved and
offered to cover one-way shipping, I just said screw it, I'd rather not deal
with the headache, and I contracted a separate service technician to help me
replace the motherboard.

I strongly, strongly recommend against System76. It makes me sad too, because
I love to see a Linux-focused company, I am a supporter of Ubuntu, and I am
happy to pay a premium for these things. I'd love for there to be more seller
options ... but I just won't ever go back to System76. Too much hassle and
frustration.

------
99182912912
Does OS X have decent virtualization? I want the Mac book displays but I only
need OS X to run a Linux VM.

~~~
glogla
Yes. Look up vagrant for nice and easy virtualization management.

~~~
0x006A
compared to the options on linux its rather limited.

------
em3rgent0rdr
I'm curious, what are some of the 5% of things you consider Mac can do but
Linux can't.

------
tkinom
Any Laptop with HDMI 2.0 output that can drive 4K external display yet?

That's what I like to upgrade to next.

------
lmm
I haven't installed Linux on it yet, but I've been really impressed by the
Microsoft Surface Book - even leaving aside the tablet functionality it's just
a really nice laptop, with the best features vs size/weight I've seen going.

~~~
izolate
The poster explicitly said Linux, and that's the sentence you start with?

~~~
lmm
Yes. In my experience good Linux hardware is mostly just good hardware, and
there's an active surface linux community so there's likely to be good driver
support. But I don't have direct personal experience of it yet.

------
hodwik
These days most linux distros support all laptops well.

Just buy by the specs.

~~~
collyw
I would stay away from brand new models unless you see that they are
specifically supported. They tend to have more issues that will get improved
over time.

------
roblooman
i am using an old Lenovo R61e, bullet proof like very sturdy, 4 gigs, and was
a breeze to though up Ubuntu on! try it

------
wprapido
guys, don't you find a 13in or even worse 11in screen too small to code on?
regardless of resolution and DPI. i've worked on pretty much any screen size
between 10in and 32in and anything below 15in is way too small to code
comfortably. for office, communication, everyday use, 13in is just fine though

------
the_common_man
Lenovo x1 carbon

------
imsofuture
Very happy with my t440p and Ubuntu/NixOS.

------
coderKen
Buy a mac.

------
2close4comfort
puri.sm

------
bfrog
Thinkpad X250

------
awinter-py
ubuntu on surface pro 3 is adequate (but barely). suspend 'works' but consumes
same amount as power as when running. wifi tricky but gameable.

------
sandGorgon
A Thinkpad. However a Dell XPS will works just as well...but it doesn't have
the Linux community that a Thinkpad has.

It's so cool that the Thinkpad Reddit has people asking "does anyone run
Windows here" !

