
Good laptops for Linux - nextos
http://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/20knkf/good_laptops_for_linux/
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fingerprinter
I'm super annoyed with the changes that Lenovo did to the Thinkpad line. I've
been a longtime user and first they changed the keyboard style, then the
layout, and then they got rid of the physical mouse buttons (requiring one to
use the trackpad as a mouse button). Frankly, there is literally nothing
compelling about Thinkpads anymore.

I'm the market and I test drove the XPS 13, which was very good. That being
said, I've had HORRIBLE customer service experience with Dell in the past.

I'm in the market for a new laptop here very soon and I can't honestly think
of a reason not to get a MacBook Pro w/ Retina and just throw Ubuntu on it. I
know there are issues with the boot order, but seems like most of those are
solved now.

Anyone have experience with recent MBP w/ Ubuntu?

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ohazi
So the new Thinkpad keyboard and trackpad are at least as crappy as the ones
on the MBP/MBA (low-travel chicklet keys, annoying layout, and a single click-
anywhere track surface that's painful to use with hi-dpi displays). I have a
T520 (1080p) at home with the nice keyboard/trackpad and a newer T540p (3k) at
work. Honestly, I'd still buy the T540p again if I had to. Get yourself a
mouse, pay the extra $30 for the nice Intel wifi card, skip the second GPU,
and sleep well knowing that you're not going to have hardware or driver
issues. The same simply cannot be said about the MBP.

~~~
fingerprinter
I have been looking at the T5XX line, but I just don't want something that
large! I travel quite a bit and very much prefer a 13" max system. I have X220
right now and the X1 would have been perfect if they didn't completely screw
it up.

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nextos
OP here. X1 or X220 would be ideal machines if Lenovo engineers used their
brains.

The X220 was really good. The only thing it needed was a better screen, a
decent trackpad, and a slightly less noisy fan.

It got all those improvements, but they messed up with the case, introduced a
ULV processor, limited the amount of RAM and upgradeability, botched the
keyboard, and many more things.

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tdicola
I just bought an Acer C720 chromebook as a second machine and am absolutely
blown away by how nice it is for $200. You can run Ubuntu (with your choice of
window manager) side by side ChromeOS with crouton, or completely replace
ChromeOS with chrubuntu. There are some quirks if you try to replace ChromeOS,
so IMHO stick with crouton and either xfce or unity.

The screen is low end, and the track pad nothing to write home about, but the
battery life and portability are unbelievable--a true 8 hours of usage in a
machine about 2.5 lbs. heavy. ChromeOS itself isn't bad for just using as a
browser and then crouton to fill in the gaps of missing stuff like a good text
editor, development tools, etc. Even with just the basic 2GB memory and 16gb
SSD version I have no issues with memory or disk space (about 8gb free once a
basic ubuntu + unity install is added).

I really can't say enough good things about this setup. I wouldn't use it
exclusively as my only machine since 11" is kind of small, but as a second
machine for portability or browsing the web it is fantastic.

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chx
It's weird neither on reddit nor here does anyone mention the HP laptops, I
wrote it up on reddit so I will just give the tl;dr version here: the Zbook
14/Elitebook 840 G1 (same machine, different GPU) comes with Suse Linux, user
replaceable everything, fairly decent keyboard and a full HD anti glare
display. How come noone mentioned them?

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perryh2
I just got a Lenovo Thinkpad T540p with a 15" 2880x1620 display. Despite all
the changes in this generation's Thinkpad line, I really like my purchase. The
keyboard is very good and I'm okay with the trackpad, since I tap rather than
click. I'm running XFCE, which works well for the most part with my HiDPI
display. I've got Bumblebee installed to switch between my discrete Nvidia and
Intel GPUs. For $1200 I got this amazing screen, Intel i5-4200M CPU, 4gb
memory (added another 4gb), 500gb disk (swapped for SSD), dual band Intel wifi
with support for AC, and 9 cell battery.

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hypr_geek
I would highly recommend Asus F202 laptop that has been my official work
laptop (with my employer's) for over a year now. It's a single boot Arch Linux
(removed Win 8). I work on Android (Eclipse) and embedded C / C++ (mostly vim
and terminal, a little kdevelop). Two things that I love about Arch Linux that
made me use it, first and the most important, rolling release and second,
excellent docs and forums. Also, I've never had a driver issue.

The specs are good enough, i3 3rd gen, 4gb soldered RAM, 500gb, 11.6inch
1366x768 glossy touchscreen, 1.4kg. (It's like a budget macbook air).

No use for the touchscreen (it's more of a hinderance, when someone touches
the screen while pointing out something). Two major essential that I needed
for a laptop, small and lightweight, and non-reflective (put a matte screen
guard which works great).

Highly recommended.

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Theodores
My refurbished Dell XPS 15Z worked fine with Ubuntu however I do have to
memorize a few commands for restarting the mouse driver, the network manager
and the wifi. Which is fine to a point. At least I don't have to reboot when
the mouse stops responding or when I cannot get online. However, if I used the
Windows 7 I doubt I would have to do such things.

In my recent experience I think the complaints about driver issues are fairly
historical.

There is also a hardware compatibility list thing on an Ubuntu somewhere that
someone could theoretically check in advance. However, by the time you get to
search and get to that list you are likely to be typing something like 'nvidia
bumblebee dell xps 15z' into the Bing! search engine.

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czbond
I am in the same boat - hoping some decent answers come up. I've been looking
at a Thinkpad T440s and a MBP 13". The MBP seems a good choice (parallels?)
but I don't like that there is no way to update my RAM.

~~~
mrj
I just got a 13'' MBP and put Linux on it. The hardware is great and well
supported, but you'll still have a bit of a hard time getting the boot in
order.

I tried to fully wipe out the OSX partition, which I ended up reinstalling
just to get the `bless` command back so I could boot off the drive. Ugh. So it
is setup to dual boot now with Refit.

I am quite happy with it otherwise.

I'm not sure how Linux will look with a Retina display, though. That's why I
stuck with the non-Retina 13''. The hi-dpi support in Linux desktops is pretty
awful.

~~~
ef4
How does the battery life compare between OSX and Linux?

When I last ran Linux on Mac hardware (several years ago), it was a pretty
disappointingly large gap.

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hrkristian
Doesn't surprise me at all, it's one of the main selling points for Apple.

It's fine on my laptop (Arch Linux), same as in Windows, but with an i7, GTX
660M and no optimus, and a 15.6" screen there's not much power to save.

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spider007
For all the Linux people who rule out a laptop because of wifi drivers -
please get a Linux supported USB wifi dongle for $10.

~~~
broodbucket
Having a dongle is annoying. I need something small that can go everywhere
with me, that will fit in my small-ish bag that I can quickly pull out and do
stuff with. A dongle gets in the way.

If I knew my current ThinkPad required proprietary wifi drivers I wouldn't
have bought it.

~~~
norswap
Not to mention it consumes a precious USB slot.

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teekert
If you want to be sure it runs Linux well (includes all the niceness like
keyboard lights etc) go with something like
[https://www.system76.com/](https://www.system76.com/) who construct
everything to work well with Linux.

~~~
novas0x2a
I'm going to replicate the comment I made on the reddit thread here:

Strongly recommend against [System76]

1) They only test against one version of ubuntu, and they seem to patch the
acpi bios specifically for that one, so good luck changing distros or
versions.

2) Their bios has fun bugs, like how my serp7 (Serval Professional) turns
itself off after 20 minutes on battery because it thinks it's about to die,
even though the battery itself thinks otherwise. (It's not happening at the OS
level, I already have that part configured correctly, it's the bios
coordinating with the EC itself).

3) They don't bother to actually hook up the acpi bios correctly, so many of
the generic acpi platform functions (e.g. get_brightness/_BQC and
set_brightness/_BCM) don't work correctly. Instead, they rely on (going back
to #1) the platform map that Seems To Work As Detected except that it's
detected as something similar, but not correct. I had a bunch of things break
on kernel upgrade due to the mapping having a bugfix to make it work correctly
for the hardware it was intended for, which made it work incorrectly for the
serp7 that was squatting on it.

4) When I called support about #3, their answer was "reinstall the ubuntu
version it shipped with and try again." I asked for enough documentation to
actually solve the problem- I intended to implement a system76-specific acpi
driver (think "thinkpad_acpi.ko"); I was informed that that information was
proprietary and would not be released under any circumstances.

5) These laptops are fragile. My company bought three different system76s (on
my recommendation, ugh) and of those, only mine still works.

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tbrock
The X1 Carbon (or any x/t series thinkpad really) is by far the best choice
you can make for a linux laptop. The hardware support is 100% and they are the
only ones, hardware quality wise, that are close to or at Apple's level.

The dells and the acers are junk.

~~~
nextos
OP here. I agree, but sadly they've botched the keyboard and trackpad in their
latest iteration.

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squidsoup
I'd be interested to hear from anyone running linux (preferably Ubuntu) on a
Dell XPS 13. While most reviews I've found have been positive, there have been
some complaints of fan noise and heat.

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theck01
I've been running Ubuntu 13.10 on an 2012 XPS 13 for a while now. The only
time I have noticed that the laptop runs hot is when I have it in my lap,
because it's pretty easy to cover up the fan inlets on a non-uniform surface.
On a flat surface I haven't had any issues though.

Overall I really like it for web development. Everything I've tried works out
of the box (volume control, brightness, webcam, etc) with Ubuntu. Before that
I was running Arch, with limited success in getting brightness and resume from
suspend to work.

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valleyman
I feel like almost any laptop will work with Linux. Most just happen to come
pre-installed with Windows.

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espinchi
Configuring the drivers for some hardware can be a huge pain, or require being
quite an expert user. Wireless cards are usually the worst, in my experience.

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collyw
Wireless cards used to be an issue 7 or 8 year back. Are they still? I haven't
seen any problems for a while....

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kelnos
Yup. Anything with a recent Broadcom chipset can be a pain.

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billspreston
Can't beat the Thinkpads. They're awesome and have excellent Linux driver
support.

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charleslmunger
If you're OK with running in a chroot, chromebooks and chromeboxes have great
support.

