
Best laptop for linux (probably Ubuntu)? - wheresvic1
I&#x27;m looking for a new laptop for programming (Java, JavaScript, CSS, MongoDB, etc.) and would love to have some input!
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mspaulding06
If you want something with good hardware support for Linux Lenovo is always my
first choice. I have a Thinkpad x220 that runs Linux flawlessly. I've also got
an ASUS UX305CA which isn't too bad either. The brightness controls didn't
work out of the box, but I've got it all working now. It's thin and light,
comparable to a Macbook Air. I use it as my personal development laptop. Easy
to take anywhere since it's only 13 inches, but it has a QHD touchscreen so
there is plenty of space to have multiple code windows open at the same time.
Battery life isn't too bad either and it's cheap (about $700 USD new).

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veddox
Yeah, I like Lenovo too - this is currently my third Lenovo laptop, all ran
Ubuntu pretty much without a hitch.

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bketelsen
I've had the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu installed for a few
weeks now and love it. It works as well as you could hope any Linux laptop
could work.

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grawlinson
I've heard that the only hardware difference between the standard + developer
edition is the WiFi card (Broadcom vs. Intel) and that a lot of people just
buy the standard edition and replace the substandard Broadcom card for the
better Intel one.

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dan-bell
I've been using the standard version with Ubuntu (Kernel 4.4) and the Broadcom
driver is also perfectly stable for me.

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grawlinson
I've had 3 hand-me-down computers, all with Broadcom drivers and they all
exhibit bizarre behaviour which rendered the computers unusable. For one of
them, the solution was to switch to the proprietary drivers and the other two
just had to be replaced with equivalent Intel cards.

tl;dr mileage depends, but it's universally accepted that Broadcom cards are
shit.

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edward
The Linux laptop of choice is the Lenovo ThinkPad X Series.

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lew89
The only thing I can share is my experience with Thinkpad E130. I've got it
for about 3years and I'm really happy about how it's working with Arch Linux.
I remember I had a little problem with installing bootloader (EFI), but now
everything's fine except SD card reader (but I've read that there is
alternative driver to fix this).

It's totally enough for everything I do: web, movies (OK, very high quality
happens to be a problem), music, programming, photo/video editing and even
games (Half Life 2, Civilization V and Oblivion are level expected to work
very well on high details). I don't know how It would manage with full blown
KDE/GNOME desktop though (I prefer terminal+tiling WM). If you don't mind
small size (I love it) I recommend it. Really the only thing that doesn't work
well is that for some reason shutdown works like reboot so you have to turn of
using power button, but who cares If you usualy just swith to the sleep mode.

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zeveb
I've been extremely happy with zareason; System76 is also very good if you're
willing to remain Ubuntu-only.

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hackernewscdn
OK, so a month ago I was thinking of going all out and getting myself a sweet
System76 laptop but then I thought about it and since I am doing most of my
coding for web and apps, there is no need for a super kickass system. Decided
I would try it instead on an older laptop. I picked up a thinkpad X220 for
$200 and added an SSD drive, and I got to tell you, the thing has been pretty
solid. I think I am going to upgrade again shortly and was looking again at
the thinkpads... 20+ years of refinement has produced a solid machine.. Even
the older models. That my 2cents.

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antoineMoPa
Acer Chromebook (CB3-111) with crouton. Nodejs and MongoDB work fine (redis,
also). Perfect for coding everywhere in the home/city/world (mine went to
Europe with me!). I also have Python 3 and LaTeX installed so my chromebook is
95% full.

Best battery-time vs price ratio ever.

However, you'll have to learn to live with small disk space.

To find disk usage:

    
    
        df -h
    

Also, this is useful to find large files:

    
    
        du -h . | grep "[0-9][0-9]M"
    

Since chromebooks have SSDs, these commands run faster than you would imagine.

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blackflame7000
Any laptop, and I say that only half facetiously. I have 2 Identical
computers. One with Ubuntu 16.04 and the other Win10. When the windows PC is
on, the average temperature in my room rises a noticeable amount compared to
its Ubuntu twin. Not the most scientific of tests but it does demonstrate that
Windows 10 is doing a lot more background tasks than Ubuntu which will
adversely effect battery life.

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neverminder
I have a Google Pixel LS that was at some point a choice of Linus Torvalds
himself, running vanilla Ubuntu natively. Works like a charm.

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Raed667
Looks way too expansive for specs. How does it justify 1.600$ ?

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wheresvic1
Thanks all for the helpful comments - it seems like the Thinkpad T420/T450
seem to be the preferred choice although I am really happy to see that there
are also quite a few other options.

System76 also sounds great because they specialize in Ubuntu and I've worked
on dell laptops before and love their build quality so it's going to be a
tough choice :)

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djb_hackernews
I have a T420 I bought on woot for $200 that runs ubuntu perfectly out of the
box. Upgraded to 16GB memory.

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drallison
Take a look at System 76 ([https://system76.com/](https://system76.com/))
machines which are sold as Linux (Ubuntu) machines. I bought one to use as a
work travel machine. It has been (and continues to be) a good machine.

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IpV8
I too have a system 76. It is overall pretty solid. It has trouble with 2
external monitors though (more a ubuntu issue then the company). I also
wouldn't want to travel with it too much as the chassis is all plastic and
pretty flexible. I would worry about accidentally bending the screen or
something. I love the company though, and hope that they can keep improving
their stuff.

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b3b0p
I'd like to know experiences using a newer model Thinkpad T460S or T460P with
discrete graphics experiences using any distribution of Linux. Does sleep,
suspend, hibernate work well? Dual display? The retina (? pixel scaling?) work
well? What doesn't work?

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apathy
I have a t450s running Ubuntu and it's awesome. Plan on buying a 16GB DIMM,
obviously. I wish they'd add more slots for RAM. Also, get the option where
you can cram 3 SSDs into it. Then you can swap to "slow RAM" if you blow out
the 20GB. Just a little 20-40GB slice of an SSD but it can save you a lot of
hassle if you start to thrash while running simulations or merging huge tables
or the like.

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banterfoil
The time tested affordable solution will often be the Lenovo Thinkpad series.
But if your looking for the trendier high end stuff, everyone is making a
ruckus about System 76.

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pravula
Another vote for Thinkpad. Specifically P50. You can add up to 64 GB of RAM,
PCIe SSD and a Xeon processor.

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noiv
I love my Zen Book, no moving parts, 8MB Ram, 3 USB and 6-8 hours battery.

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pgaddict
Whole 8MB of RAM? Wow! ;-)

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noiv
He said development, not 256 open tabs in Chrome :)

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dman
Lenovo T460

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Zelmor
What I find painful in modern laptops are the crap chiclet keyboard layouts.
Why can't we just have a classic, compressed keyboard like on the thinkpad
t420 or x220? I get cramps from the keyboard of my dell e5570 I have from the
workplace, I started using external keyboards 2 days after starting on it.

Here's hoping for a retro thinkpad next year. Until then, I'll hold onto my
money or just invest in an ergodox keyboard.

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replax
I use a well specced out Dell E6440 at work (i7-4610, 16GB ram, 512GB SSD,
1080p IPS screen) and it does have a classic non chiclet keyboard. Besides the
weight and size of it due to the integrated DVD drive it found it to be an
amazing machine with a great keyboad.

Personally I still use a ThinkPad X220 and I would not consider the Dell's
keyboard significantly worse (I prefer the key placement of the page up/down
keys etc of the X220 though).

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winteriscoming
For the past 8 years, I have used 2 Lenovo Thinkpad models (the current one is
E series, don't remember the exact model of the previous one). Used both of
them with a Linux OS. I have had no issues with either of these over the past
8 years and their performance too has been excellent - I use these just for
development activities which involves working on IDEs, running multiple
servers (for coding and testing with them) and for the usual browsing and
other things. I am not a video/gaming user.

The only issue that I sometimes have with them is that they heat up really
quick, so using them on your laps is a problem. It's not a problem for me,
because, most of the times, I use them connected to an external monitor,
keyboard and a mouse - it's pretty much on my table with its lid closed down.

