What hardware do Full-time Linux users use?

[ramarevisited]

I have been trying forever to search and find the best hardware for linux as my primary OS, and running virtual machines of Mac OS and Win7x64. I have come to no solid conclusion based on my findings. What do all the Linux gurus use for ultra portability and power. My current configuration is: MBPro 2011, SSD, 16gb RAM, core i7. Work assigned, but I customized it. Linux and Win7 virtual machines I want to swap my VM of linux for the host device and swap in a vm of OSX. Thanks!

[yolesaber]

If you want something powerful and portable, check out Lenovo's X series. I am a 99 percent full-time Linux user and Lenovo consistently impresses me with their product's durability and longevity.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/

[ramarevisited → yolesaber]

I had been looking at Lenovos, but when i saw they charged 1k for 16gb of ram, when you could buy the same ram on newegg for 120, I stepped back quite a bit.

[martey → ramarevisited]

I think overcharging for RAM (or HDD/SSD) upgrades is one way that OEMs make more money off of their machines. I am a bit amused that this is the reason you give for reconsidering Lenovo when Apple (the maker of your current machine) is notorious for doing this: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/just-whats-so-special-abo...

One good thing about ThinkPads is that most of them do not have their RAM soldered to their motherboards, so it is easy to buy your own RAM on NewEgg and then augment or replace the machine's original memory.

[ramarevisited → martey]

I just did a comparison. A 16 GB upgrade with lenovo is $1,060 for DDR3 pc3 12800. With apple 16gb is 200 on the retina. Granted its soldered on. While I see your point, a priced out lenovo from the manufacturer to equal the specs i have right now is clost to 2.8k

[shrughes → ramarevisited]

Who cares? Buy the RAM separately. That's what you do when buying Lenovos. With Lenovos, you get minimal RAM, minimal hard drive, maximum screen resolution, and Ultimate-N wifi, and then upgrade RAM and HDD separately.

[andrewcooke → ramarevisited]

well then i would suggest not buying that model. i keep editing this trying to find a non-snarky way of conveying the following: basically, you do still need to think a little bit. if you want to avoid thinking completely then you probably aren't going to enjoy linux.

in general, thinkpads have good support for linux. i've had various x series laptops over the years and they've been very solid (more so than my partner's macs, where i need to keep replacing fans and power cables).

for desktops, just build what you want. as long as you avoid strange or very new hardware it generally just works.

[keyle]

The most generic hardware will win over the least generic. That's because most hardware is supported except maybe edge cases.

But as far as I know, unless you go with some obscure distro, most things work.

There are often quirks about laptops going to sleep or hibernating, and sometimes integrated sound cards, but it's really hard to predict in advance, I found. You could look up each hardware pieces by brand and see how well they're supported on linux. Often you should find results in google by using the model number, the brand and 'linux'.

To sum up, based on my experience with debian's, slackware and openbsd, it will depend on the distro and the exoticism of your hardware.

HTH

[ramarevisited → keyle]

I have been using Centos 6 for primary when doing web related items, but would prefer something more user friendly with wider support. It seems to boil down to these choices right now: Centos, Ubuntu, or Mint. What have you been using?

[veeti → ramarevisited]

Out of curiosity, why CentOS? The software in the repositories is antiquated. If you want RPM, just go for Fedora.

[ramarevisited → veeti]

All of our production servers run centos, and it makes it easier to just run the same system and use nx/nomachine for compat reasons. I have not had the chance to play with fedora yet though.

[devgutt → keyle]

I've had some problems with my video card in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I'd recommend checking out http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

[devgutt]

Have you seen System 76's notebook? I don't use one, but it looks really nice. https://www.system76.com/

[ramarevisited → devgutt]

I already bought one to test and was incredibly disappointed. Given the SSD, I would have thought it to be super quick, but it is sub-par to my dell d630..really.

Also if I price it out, it equals a T530 or W lenovo with specs. I would buy ssd and ram externally from newegg

[theshadow]

Right now I'm using a Dell Inspiron(17R) and am very happy with the Ubuntu support. Everything "just worked", the only thing that I had to tinker was changing a text file to make sure the headphones work, other than that absolutely no problems.

I had an HP dv7 series machine before this and that was a great Ubuntu machine as well, although it required a little more tinkering. This series of laptops have major overheating issues though with temperatures going north of 100 degrees Celsius if you put it on a flat surface without a cooling pad.

[GuiA → theshadow]

It's crazy that in 2012, you still need to tinker a config file to make headphones (a feature used by virtually 100% of users) work under Linux.

[lumberjack → GuiA]

Not really. Just a different mentality where an autodetect script or a GUI interface would be considered bloatware when you could simply edit a .conf file instead.

[randallma]

I've had bad luck with video drivers for AMD and Nvidia cards on most distros, so I'd stick with Intel whenever possible.

[leecGoimik7 → randallma]

Me too (with Nvidia, never had an ATI card). I had Thinkpad T510 with Nvidia and used it with two monitors plugged into docking station. Nvidia's proprietary driver is absolutely horrible when it comes to switching between laptop screen and monitors when docking/undocking. Open source driver for nvidia is marginally better in this regard, but is incomplete and unstable and not really an option. Now I have T520 with Intel graphics, and it works very well.

[gary4gar]

Get ready for Project Sputnik: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/dell-l...

[meulmester]

www.usesthis.com has a nice format that answers this sort of question. Ex: http://lou.montulli.usesthis.com/

[walrus0]

Thinkpad W530. 32GB RAM! Intel SSD + 750GB HDD.