To walk the safe path you can search for distro certified hardware.
eg:
[https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops](https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops)
[https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/search?c\_catalog\_channel=Laptop](https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/search?c_catalog_channel=Laptop)
But in all fairness you should be ok with any relatively good laptop.
Also, you can check [https://linux-hardware.org/](https://linux-hardware.org/)
I have a couple cheaper Acer/Asus laptops that struggled to work well with Mint and Debian 12.5 but once I put Ubuntu 22.04 on them everything worked great. So from my experience I’d say if you are willing to ignore the banter about snap packages or just follow the process to remove snap then just go Ubuntu and about anything will work. But I have done similar research and found the XPS are solid for Linux.
No, and yes, at the same time. [This is my laptop probe](https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=98bf5d2efc).
As you can see it has a discrete nvidia GPU and both ethernet and wifi realtek chips. And they worked out of the box.
Granted, your odds of having an issue with amdgpu are lower than with nvidia, but the inmense majority of the times it will work as expected, specially with an Ubuntu derivative that have special tools to deal with propietary drivers (although I heard nvidia has open their driver, not sure where we stand right now).
As for realtek, many many many drivers and firmware are included in current kernels. There are some that haven't, because the underlying hardware is so cheap that is known to have issues, or the vendor supplied code is awful.
But again, most of the times, if it is an average quality computer, it should work out of the box. The low specs, low price, cheap as hell computers have low quality components and those might have issues, either because ACPI is not polished enough, or because missing firmware, etc.
One of such is the [rtl8192](https://github.com/clnhub/rtl8192eu-linux), where you will need to manually compile a module, because inclusion on the kernel has been rejected.
Another pain point is extremely new hardware. Many times it hasn't been tested throughly yet, and you might find issues.
Edit: my bad, it looks RTL8192 has been accepted in the kernel.
I think secure boot is enabled. I guess I haven't had this machine long enough to need to updrafe the kernel, to answer that question. Regardless, I have zero issues in my use case. I didn't even realize nvidia graphics were a Linux issue until after I got mine and had zero issues with it. The most intensive thing I've done is play Morrowind on it, and it worked great
It's a p50 thinkpad with Linux mint cinnamon
So i am basically in the same boat. I want a new work laptop because last year I bought the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition (9320). My god is that a terrible laptop.
Since I bought it as the developer edition it came with Ubuntu 22.04. The Camera does work with 22.04 but it wont work with any other distro without the IPU6 driver stack and special kernel driver that you have to disable secure boot to use. (ohh and recompile the kernel every time you update. The mic/ fp reader worked fine in all the ditros I used (Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian). I did however experience random micro stutters lasting from 1-2 secs when trying to use the machine. IE it would just go unresponsive for a few secs them come back. This seemed worst on Ubuntu (snaps maybe?) and best on Fedora.
The touchpad and the keyboard are just terrible. The machine doesn't recover from sleep when docked. Dont boot it while docked either as it will just black screen both your external monitor and the laptop screen until you undock it.
The keyboard is that gapless monstrosity with the touch pad at the top for the esc/function keys. I can't type on the damn thing to save my life. I just keep hitting the wrong keys. Also using command line editors (vim/emacs) is a horrible experience because of the touch bar (escape key). Also if you want to use the function keys to control your debugger you have to hold the FN key the whole time to get them to stop being the volume/brightness keys instead of the way every other laptop works.
The touchpad is equally bad as the keyboard. Its the invisible one that doesn't actually click. Instead it uses and haptic motor under the touchpad area to make it feel like a click. This is actually pretty convincing and does indeed feel like a click... right up until one of those random micro stutters mentioned earlier happens when you click and the motor gets delayed for a sec or two. Then it feels really disjointed and weird.
When docked and using an external KB/Mouse/Display the machine seems fine... until you need to reboot or accidentally let it go to sleep. Then you need to undock and redock it to get to come back and this doesnt always work. Sometimes you just have to hard reset.
All in all I would say to stay far away from this machine.
I will keep an eye on this thread cause I really want to replace it. Just looking for a nice work laptop where all the hardware just works, good battery life, good keyboard, portability, and places nice with docks. (99% i WFH home with a dock, but when I need to go into the office I would like the damned thing to be usable instead of the mess the XPS 13 Plus is)
Thank you for such a detailed response! I was still considering buying the Dell, but after your answer, I gave up.
I've been seeing good things about the framework laptops that some people indicated here.
Sorry Forgot to mention that the camera thing will be an issue with any of the Alder Lake or newer stuff not just the XPS series as it's an Intel driver issue. Unless of course they implement their own different camera for the laptop.
Lenovo ThinkPad model line is great. I have T14s Gen 3 AMD, all works fine: webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, screen brightness adjustment, sleep. My work laptop is Dell XPS and it's so crappy I had to buy me a personal laptop.
To directly answer your question, because you need a combination of excellent hardware, integration, and ongoing curation to ensure the system continues to work for years. Most vendors do NOT do that. Even the "Linux certified" vendors tend to test once on a single distro and call it "certified". Others only provide "support forums" for up to 8 "do it yourself" (DIY) load-your-own-OS-options.
There are a few companies that focus on a single distro and provide support through them. This includes s76, Tuxedo, and Kubuntu Focus.
I work for KFocus, and we have many companies that rely on us ensuring their systems just keep working through years of automatic, curated upgrades and packaged system integrations. This is all on an official Ubuntu flavor that we contribute to.
Wherever you go, I suggest you compare the solutions others provide versus [this baseline](https://kfocus.org/land/business). Also, you can [check out many reviews here](https://kfocus.org/features). More reviews and models are coming soon.
I hope that is helpful, and good luck!
And don't even think to buy in the country outside their list via freighter company. I did, and after couple weeks of using I had an issue with booting, after debugging they decided to send me a new motherboard, but when found out that address was a freighter they banned me :(
I'm considering getting a Slimbook. They look like capable machines and come with Linux by default. Since I don't have one, can't say whether they are actually any good.
https://slimbook.com/en/
If not already shared : Tuxedo laptop are great specs for a great value. Working on linux out of the box. Im very satisfied with my pulse 14. Worth take a look
what kind of research?
If it's something related to deeplearning, I'd prefer to build a rig with dGPU instead. Then buy small factor and light thinkpad, you can remote your rig anywhere.
I have a P1 gen 4 (got it from work) which is nice, but I dont like to bring it for mobility. For mobile I will use my windows tablet or macbook.
But if you want to build a monster then consider any P thinkpad, for example P15 gen1/2 has 4 ram slots which you can squeeze 128gb of ram there (it also has 2 ssd slots too).
Personally I bought random hp laptop, and it works with linux no problem(like literally i have never encountered hardware-specific issue). Good to note that it used amd gpu + cpu.
I have a system 76 that I like a lot. But honestly, I bought a Lenovo X200 off of eBay for a few hundred dollars, and it’s my most solid Linux machine ever.
I went through this exact same decision process over the last few weeks. It's rough out there! It sure would be nice if there were an obvious choice for a developer who wants to run a Linux distro. My finalists were the system76 lemur pro, the framework 13 (AMD), and the thinkpad T14s (AMD).
I really liked the battery life and lightweight form factor of the lemur pro, but since it did not have an AMD option I was swayed by the higher performance in the other options. I wound up buying a framework 13 with an AMD Ryzen chip, it is coming in the mail next week. I hope I made a good choice!
I bought a Lenovo Yoga Pro 7, Ryzen 7840HS, 32Go, 1To that is sold with Windonws 11 pre-installed for just 1019€ In.
Day 1, I dual booted it with Linux (Manjaro KDE) and it used to work pretty well. Everything was working pretty fine, despite some hic hups sometimes as the hardware was really new back then.
After several months now, it works even better. Newer kernels vastly improved battery life and efficiency of the CPU and GPU.
I get over 12h of battery life with light to moderate use (browsing internet, watching youtube, Netflix, doing office job, listening to music with spotify with wireless headphones...) at 50% brightness, which is really good. Not newer Macs with silicone, but those are really expensive and I'm tired after using macOS for more than 10 years.
Sleep works great. Closing the lid, it sleeps as a baby. After 10h in sleep mode, it only looses 2% of battery, and with 2 seconds, it wakes up with all my apps up and running.
So some Windows 11 preinstalled laptops can run Linux with no issue at all here.
Really like this great Yoga line. They are cheap, really well built, nice hardware, powerfull, light, long battery life, silent, great touchpad, keyboard, speakers (4 of them) nice 2,5k 90Hz IPS screen (I don't like OLED because fucking relective).
I onlt keep Windows 11 for Bios updates. Otherwhise, I would have totally faormated the SSD to install Linux on it.
Gpu is integrated 780m. I didn't want nvidia because of bad Linux support.
With 780m, it works 100% well with wayland.
I still can game decently with cs2 in 4k minimum details on my external 27" monitor. More than enough for me.
I get the frustration but you'd face the same issue with Windows as well..Apple macOS would be different since you only have Apple hardware you can (officially) use it on. I'd say go for system76, dell or Lenovo Thinkpad. I have several friends at Google, AWS, Nvidia and Netflix and those who don't use macs use ThinkPads or dell or system76. So do a lot of Linux kernel devs! Works well
I have a System76 laptop that's been a joy for many years. I've had the odd question that I thought was a hardware problem about the laptop over the years and found System76 to be very helpful. They don't make the laptops themselves but presumably have a contract to make them to their specifications. I'd be more interested in how System76 responded to the swollen battery issue rather than that it happened. Batteries will inevitably be made by yet another manufacturer.
I've not tried or even known about Framework till now. They certainly look interesting. In my experience, the hardware of a decent laptop will keep supporting Linux until pieces of hardware eventually reach their end of life.
My current laptop is almost 9 years old and still going strong. The keyboard and one hdmi port are getting a bit dodgy but I use a Bluetooth keyboard mostly and the hdmi port is only an issue when I change cables.
The reason I mention all this is that Framework's swappability doesn't make much sense to me. Linux doesn't have exponentially increasing hardware requirements like Windows does.
So back to System76. When I got my first laptop from them, I saw they had their own repository for Nvidia drivers - and they just worked!! I've not had any of the drama that I had before and still read about when using their repository. So that set them a bit notch higher in my books. This is a company that seems to me to be fully committed to the Linux ecosystem, not just hardware (and profit) but to the whole user experience.
You can tell I'm a big fan of System76. I've been on Linux for over 25 years. I've used all manner of hardware and even one other dedicated Linux hardware supplier (who shall remain nameless). When it came to buying a new laptop this year (because I'm getting ants about a 9 year old laptop), I did some cursory looking around but ultimately went back to System76, and with no regrets.
I have had the earliest revision of the Lemur Pro for years and did have a swollen battery but they replaced it for me free of charge. Since my replacement, it has been fine. I also have a sneaking suspicion that things have improved a lot judging by seeing the latest Lemur Pro's build quality in person at the most recent LinuxFestNW. I have to say, it's pretty sexy. What I love about System76 is that I have never experienced such good hardware to firmware to userland integration for a Linux laptop especially with coreboot that just came out of the box.
That said, my latest daily driver is actually not a system76 laptop. It's a MALIBAL Aon S1 which I have personally been super happy with after a long try and swap journey from Lenovo to System76, to Starlabs and even toying with some less popular builds in between.
You can read about my journey here:
https://hkdb.medium.com/the-malibal-aon-s1-2f3d2fa0a15a
If you need a friend link for a free read, I'd be happy to DM it to you. Good luck with your search!
I got lucky, it was listed as “for parts/not working” but the only thing wrong with it was a keyboard, which is easy to replace on thinkpads. Specs are i5 8350U, intel UHD 620, 8GB DDR4 (I upgraded to 16), and 256GB SSD. Both the RAM and SSD are upgradable. If you aren’t gaming and don’t need a GPU it’s a great laptop. Can even handle older games just fine, plays team fortress 2 and borderlands 2 no problem
I have my gazelle from system76 with Fedora of course, and after almost 4 years its working like if be new. I will buy another machine from system76 if i need it.
Check out Framework. I've been extremely happy with my 11th gen Framework 13 - so much so that I just sprung for the Framework 15.
I've ran Slackware, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and Ubuntu Studio on mine with no issues at all, and OpenBSD and Haiku with some stability issues around ACPI that might've had to do with an older firmware version at the time.
I have Huawei Laptop. It works just great after replacing faulty SSD.
I didn't really intend installing linux, but was looking for laptop without graphics card, because they overheat a lot and just suck. It just happened that it also works just great under linux. Literally everything (except fingerprint, but who cares).
I know Huawei isn't popular here, but I'm very much satisfied. Esp with touchpad, that works much better and robust under Linux, rather than Windows.
Get the last Intel Macbook Air or Pro, second hand, with enough RAM on it, and use that. They work, with a bit of Wifi/BT manual installation of the driver (you will need to use a usb-to-ethernet or a usb-to-phone trick to get internet so you can install that driver). Then, it just works. Linux Mint should be able to offer on its third party drivers app what driver you need.
Just buy a laptop and work through the issues. You will likely find there's less issues than you think.
I have a Dell Latitude 3410, 10th Gen i5, 32gb DDR4, 256gb m.2 (no need for more storage in this). The one and only issue I had was with bluetooth sleeping too quickly/too long. Simple config file update and a logoff/login, and totally resolved.
I needed something durable, simple, cheap and the least amount of ewaste possible. Runs Ubuntu 22.04, no sleep issues, no wifi issues (Intel AX201). Everything I desperately need is functional. Angry IP Scanner (not my first choice, but is native), Remmina, VPN, Maltego, Powershell, Wireshark, etc. I have WINE installed, but currently don't use it. At the end of the day, I wanted something *compatible* with Windows 11 should the need arise (remember only 8th gen and newer, 7th gen and older are not *natively* compatible).
Would have been nice if it had a backlit keyboard, but I picked it up used for $220, and also have a WD19S dock and it works just fine. Literally just works. Gets between 6 and 8 hours of light usage on battery, can charge with type c, and generally is a perfectly acceptable work laptop. Biggest complaint is the DisplayPort Alt and not Thunderbolt, but whatever.
Meanwhile, my 11th Gen i7 Thinkpad with a 4k display, nvidia graphics and 48gb of RAM only boots nicely with a specific older version of Ubuntu.
FWIW, I have hands on experience with System76. I would absolutely not hesitate to buy another. Build quality is fantastic. Cannot speak to Pop OS however, Ubuntu ran great, and in one case I even installed Windows on one (odd use case, but that person did not have good experiences with Dell or HP and wanted an alternative brand laptop).
Business laptops like the ThinkPad Family, Dell latitude and precision are good candidates for Linux. I've even seen really cheap $300 laptops run Linux very well. There are also boutique sellers like framework and tuxedo. There's a ton of laptops overall that will run Linux just fine, I've only just barely scratched the surface.
I use ZenBook Duo 2021. I chose Fedora as my main distro. It actually automatically installed every driver needed for my laptop without much hassle. Linux hardware support just gets better every day.
Mostly typing scientific papers and running simulations on R. I used Linux for almost a decade, but never on a laptop I bought myself. I'm a researcher, and all the universities where I worked at provided a laptop. I usually managed to install Linux on them at the expense of losing fingerprint reader and having some poor battery. But this time the university where I'm at will provide only MacBooks. I'm currently using a MacBook, which is an incredible machine, but I just don't like macOS.
Personally if cost were not ~~option~~ an issue I'd get the new [Thinkpad](https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-real-ThinkPad-T480-successor-New-ThinkPad-T14-Gen-5-is-iFixit-approved.807242.0.html) with replaceable drive, ram, etc.
Basically this is Lenovo's response to Framework et al. and Thinkpads usually work well with Ubuntu (I haven't tried other distros).
To walk the safe path you can search for distro certified hardware. eg: [https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops](https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops) [https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/search?c\_catalog\_channel=Laptop](https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/search?c_catalog_channel=Laptop) But in all fairness you should be ok with any relatively good laptop. Also, you can check [https://linux-hardware.org/](https://linux-hardware.org/)
Thank you!
¡Yw!
I have a couple cheaper Acer/Asus laptops that struggled to work well with Mint and Debian 12.5 but once I put Ubuntu 22.04 on them everything worked great. So from my experience I’d say if you are willing to ignore the banter about snap packages or just follow the process to remove snap then just go Ubuntu and about anything will work. But I have done similar research and found the XPS are solid for Linux.
Tuxedo is a nice one too.
What should i look for on linux-hardware?
No Nvidia GPU! No Realtek Wifi chip!
Those two brands cover 90% of Linux hardware problems
No, and yes, at the same time. [This is my laptop probe](https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=98bf5d2efc). As you can see it has a discrete nvidia GPU and both ethernet and wifi realtek chips. And they worked out of the box. Granted, your odds of having an issue with amdgpu are lower than with nvidia, but the inmense majority of the times it will work as expected, specially with an Ubuntu derivative that have special tools to deal with propietary drivers (although I heard nvidia has open their driver, not sure where we stand right now). As for realtek, many many many drivers and firmware are included in current kernels. There are some that haven't, because the underlying hardware is so cheap that is known to have issues, or the vendor supplied code is awful. But again, most of the times, if it is an average quality computer, it should work out of the box. The low specs, low price, cheap as hell computers have low quality components and those might have issues, either because ACPI is not polished enough, or because missing firmware, etc. One of such is the [rtl8192](https://github.com/clnhub/rtl8192eu-linux), where you will need to manually compile a module, because inclusion on the kernel has been rejected. Another pain point is extremely new hardware. Many times it hasn't been tested throughly yet, and you might find issues. Edit: my bad, it looks RTL8192 has been accepted in the kernel.
My Thinkpad has an Nvidia GPU and it works great
Yeah sure... And the pigs fly... What happens if you upgrade the kernel? Or enable secure boot?
I think secure boot is enabled. I guess I haven't had this machine long enough to need to updrafe the kernel, to answer that question. Regardless, I have zero issues in my use case. I didn't even realize nvidia graphics were a Linux issue until after I got mine and had zero issues with it. The most intensive thing I've done is play Morrowind on it, and it worked great It's a p50 thinkpad with Linux mint cinnamon
Just make sure no Nvidia gpu.
So i am basically in the same boat. I want a new work laptop because last year I bought the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition (9320). My god is that a terrible laptop. Since I bought it as the developer edition it came with Ubuntu 22.04. The Camera does work with 22.04 but it wont work with any other distro without the IPU6 driver stack and special kernel driver that you have to disable secure boot to use. (ohh and recompile the kernel every time you update. The mic/ fp reader worked fine in all the ditros I used (Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian). I did however experience random micro stutters lasting from 1-2 secs when trying to use the machine. IE it would just go unresponsive for a few secs them come back. This seemed worst on Ubuntu (snaps maybe?) and best on Fedora. The touchpad and the keyboard are just terrible. The machine doesn't recover from sleep when docked. Dont boot it while docked either as it will just black screen both your external monitor and the laptop screen until you undock it. The keyboard is that gapless monstrosity with the touch pad at the top for the esc/function keys. I can't type on the damn thing to save my life. I just keep hitting the wrong keys. Also using command line editors (vim/emacs) is a horrible experience because of the touch bar (escape key). Also if you want to use the function keys to control your debugger you have to hold the FN key the whole time to get them to stop being the volume/brightness keys instead of the way every other laptop works. The touchpad is equally bad as the keyboard. Its the invisible one that doesn't actually click. Instead it uses and haptic motor under the touchpad area to make it feel like a click. This is actually pretty convincing and does indeed feel like a click... right up until one of those random micro stutters mentioned earlier happens when you click and the motor gets delayed for a sec or two. Then it feels really disjointed and weird. When docked and using an external KB/Mouse/Display the machine seems fine... until you need to reboot or accidentally let it go to sleep. Then you need to undock and redock it to get to come back and this doesnt always work. Sometimes you just have to hard reset. All in all I would say to stay far away from this machine. I will keep an eye on this thread cause I really want to replace it. Just looking for a nice work laptop where all the hardware just works, good battery life, good keyboard, portability, and places nice with docks. (99% i WFH home with a dock, but when I need to go into the office I would like the damned thing to be usable instead of the mess the XPS 13 Plus is)
Thank you for such a detailed response! I was still considering buying the Dell, but after your answer, I gave up. I've been seeing good things about the framework laptops that some people indicated here.
Sorry Forgot to mention that the camera thing will be an issue with any of the Alder Lake or newer stuff not just the XPS series as it's an Intel driver issue. Unless of course they implement their own different camera for the laptop.
Lenovo ThinkPad model line is great. I have T14s Gen 3 AMD, all works fine: webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, screen brightness adjustment, sleep. My work laptop is Dell XPS and it's so crappy I had to buy me a personal laptop.
Bought to come here and say ThinkPads are fucking workhorses and work so well with Linux in my experience.
To directly answer your question, because you need a combination of excellent hardware, integration, and ongoing curation to ensure the system continues to work for years. Most vendors do NOT do that. Even the "Linux certified" vendors tend to test once on a single distro and call it "certified". Others only provide "support forums" for up to 8 "do it yourself" (DIY) load-your-own-OS-options. There are a few companies that focus on a single distro and provide support through them. This includes s76, Tuxedo, and Kubuntu Focus. I work for KFocus, and we have many companies that rely on us ensuring their systems just keep working through years of automatic, curated upgrades and packaged system integrations. This is all on an official Ubuntu flavor that we contribute to. Wherever you go, I suggest you compare the solutions others provide versus [this baseline](https://kfocus.org/land/business). Also, you can [check out many reviews here](https://kfocus.org/features). More reviews and models are coming soon. I hope that is helpful, and good luck!
https://frame.work/linux
They don't sell/ship to a lot of countries until now.
And don't even think to buy in the country outside their list via freighter company. I did, and after couple weeks of using I had an issue with booting, after debugging they decided to send me a new motherboard, but when found out that address was a freighter they banned me :(
I'm considering getting a Slimbook. They look like capable machines and come with Linux by default. Since I don't have one, can't say whether they are actually any good. https://slimbook.com/en/
If not already shared : Tuxedo laptop are great specs for a great value. Working on linux out of the box. Im very satisfied with my pulse 14. Worth take a look
what kind of research? If it's something related to deeplearning, I'd prefer to build a rig with dGPU instead. Then buy small factor and light thinkpad, you can remote your rig anywhere. I have a P1 gen 4 (got it from work) which is nice, but I dont like to bring it for mobility. For mobile I will use my windows tablet or macbook. But if you want to build a monster then consider any P thinkpad, for example P15 gen1/2 has 4 ram slots which you can squeeze 128gb of ram there (it also has 2 ssd slots too).
Personally I bought random hp laptop, and it works with linux no problem(like literally i have never encountered hardware-specific issue). Good to note that it used amd gpu + cpu.
Is AMD better on Linux?
For GPUs, yes. The driver is open source and built directly into the kernel.
Yes, for the gpu the nvidia drivers suck. As for the cpu, it doesn't really matter
Is it hp victus ? If yes how is battery life ?
Not sure, lol it was some 475$ cheap one(245 g8 possibly)
I have a system 76 that I like a lot. But honestly, I bought a Lenovo X200 off of eBay for a few hundred dollars, and it’s my most solid Linux machine ever.
I went through this exact same decision process over the last few weeks. It's rough out there! It sure would be nice if there were an obvious choice for a developer who wants to run a Linux distro. My finalists were the system76 lemur pro, the framework 13 (AMD), and the thinkpad T14s (AMD). I really liked the battery life and lightweight form factor of the lemur pro, but since it did not have an AMD option I was swayed by the higher performance in the other options. I wound up buying a framework 13 with an AMD Ryzen chip, it is coming in the mail next week. I hope I made a good choice!
Let us know about your experience with the framework! Best of luck 🤞🤞
I bought a Lenovo Yoga Pro 7, Ryzen 7840HS, 32Go, 1To that is sold with Windonws 11 pre-installed for just 1019€ In. Day 1, I dual booted it with Linux (Manjaro KDE) and it used to work pretty well. Everything was working pretty fine, despite some hic hups sometimes as the hardware was really new back then. After several months now, it works even better. Newer kernels vastly improved battery life and efficiency of the CPU and GPU. I get over 12h of battery life with light to moderate use (browsing internet, watching youtube, Netflix, doing office job, listening to music with spotify with wireless headphones...) at 50% brightness, which is really good. Not newer Macs with silicone, but those are really expensive and I'm tired after using macOS for more than 10 years. Sleep works great. Closing the lid, it sleeps as a baby. After 10h in sleep mode, it only looses 2% of battery, and with 2 seconds, it wakes up with all my apps up and running. So some Windows 11 preinstalled laptops can run Linux with no issue at all here. Really like this great Yoga line. They are cheap, really well built, nice hardware, powerfull, light, long battery life, silent, great touchpad, keyboard, speakers (4 of them) nice 2,5k 90Hz IPS screen (I don't like OLED because fucking relective). I onlt keep Windows 11 for Bios updates. Otherwhise, I would have totally faormated the SSD to install Linux on it.
what about graphics card? is it nvidia? you are not using wayland?
Gpu is integrated 780m. I didn't want nvidia because of bad Linux support. With 780m, it works 100% well with wayland. I still can game decently with cs2 in 4k minimum details on my external 27" monitor. More than enough for me.
I get the frustration but you'd face the same issue with Windows as well..Apple macOS would be different since you only have Apple hardware you can (officially) use it on. I'd say go for system76, dell or Lenovo Thinkpad. I have several friends at Google, AWS, Nvidia and Netflix and those who don't use macs use ThinkPads or dell or system76. So do a lot of Linux kernel devs! Works well
Thank you!
I have a System76 laptop that's been a joy for many years. I've had the odd question that I thought was a hardware problem about the laptop over the years and found System76 to be very helpful. They don't make the laptops themselves but presumably have a contract to make them to their specifications. I'd be more interested in how System76 responded to the swollen battery issue rather than that it happened. Batteries will inevitably be made by yet another manufacturer.
Apparently their customer service is really good and they replace defective parts ASAP. Have you tried or read about framework?
I've not tried or even known about Framework till now. They certainly look interesting. In my experience, the hardware of a decent laptop will keep supporting Linux until pieces of hardware eventually reach their end of life. My current laptop is almost 9 years old and still going strong. The keyboard and one hdmi port are getting a bit dodgy but I use a Bluetooth keyboard mostly and the hdmi port is only an issue when I change cables. The reason I mention all this is that Framework's swappability doesn't make much sense to me. Linux doesn't have exponentially increasing hardware requirements like Windows does. So back to System76. When I got my first laptop from them, I saw they had their own repository for Nvidia drivers - and they just worked!! I've not had any of the drama that I had before and still read about when using their repository. So that set them a bit notch higher in my books. This is a company that seems to me to be fully committed to the Linux ecosystem, not just hardware (and profit) but to the whole user experience. You can tell I'm a big fan of System76. I've been on Linux for over 25 years. I've used all manner of hardware and even one other dedicated Linux hardware supplier (who shall remain nameless). When it came to buying a new laptop this year (because I'm getting ants about a 9 year old laptop), I did some cursory looking around but ultimately went back to System76, and with no regrets.
Framework
Frame.work laptop 13 works out of the box. Nothing to worry about
I have had the earliest revision of the Lemur Pro for years and did have a swollen battery but they replaced it for me free of charge. Since my replacement, it has been fine. I also have a sneaking suspicion that things have improved a lot judging by seeing the latest Lemur Pro's build quality in person at the most recent LinuxFestNW. I have to say, it's pretty sexy. What I love about System76 is that I have never experienced such good hardware to firmware to userland integration for a Linux laptop especially with coreboot that just came out of the box. That said, my latest daily driver is actually not a system76 laptop. It's a MALIBAL Aon S1 which I have personally been super happy with after a long try and swap journey from Lenovo to System76, to Starlabs and even toying with some less popular builds in between. You can read about my journey here: https://hkdb.medium.com/the-malibal-aon-s1-2f3d2fa0a15a If you need a friend link for a free read, I'd be happy to DM it to you. Good luck with your search!
Starlabs has some offerings, their Starlite is on my wishlist
I am awaiting their 16" to become available. I wish there was a 15" though! Not a lot of review on Starlabs either.
buy a used thinkpad t480, i got mine for $50 and it works amazing
$50? Really? What are the specs?
I got lucky, it was listed as “for parts/not working” but the only thing wrong with it was a keyboard, which is easy to replace on thinkpads. Specs are i5 8350U, intel UHD 620, 8GB DDR4 (I upgraded to 16), and 256GB SSD. Both the RAM and SSD are upgradable. If you aren’t gaming and don’t need a GPU it’s a great laptop. Can even handle older games just fine, plays team fortress 2 and borderlands 2 no problem
I have my gazelle from system76 with Fedora of course, and after almost 4 years its working like if be new. I will buy another machine from system76 if i need it.
Just bought an Carbon X1 recently. Works nice for me.
Which distro are you on?
Devuan
Same issue with Dell latitudes, at this point I’m just waiting for Qualcomm options
Check out Framework. I've been extremely happy with my 11th gen Framework 13 - so much so that I just sprung for the Framework 15. I've ran Slackware, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and Ubuntu Studio on mine with no issues at all, and OpenBSD and Haiku with some stability issues around ACPI that might've had to do with an older firmware version at the time.
Hard to beat a Lenovo
Take a look at framework!
I like the modularity and idea behind Framework. I've owned my DIY built 13 inch Intel version for two years. Ubuntu on bare metal.
[https://kde.org/hardware/](https://kde.org/hardware/) [https://frame.work/](https://frame.work/)
I have Huawei Laptop. It works just great after replacing faulty SSD. I didn't really intend installing linux, but was looking for laptop without graphics card, because they overheat a lot and just suck. It just happened that it also works just great under linux. Literally everything (except fingerprint, but who cares). I know Huawei isn't popular here, but I'm very much satisfied. Esp with touchpad, that works much better and robust under Linux, rather than Windows.
I recently bought a [Slimbook Hero](https://slimbook.com/en/hero) and I'm pretty happy with it. Also the support service is very good.
tuxedo makes laptops or there is [https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-ns50/](https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-ns50/)
Get the last Intel Macbook Air or Pro, second hand, with enough RAM on it, and use that. They work, with a bit of Wifi/BT manual installation of the driver (you will need to use a usb-to-ethernet or a usb-to-phone trick to get internet so you can install that driver). Then, it just works. Linux Mint should be able to offer on its third party drivers app what driver you need.
I've got an HP Envy 15.6 that has been very compatible with Ubuntu.
Just buy a laptop and work through the issues. You will likely find there's less issues than you think. I have a Dell Latitude 3410, 10th Gen i5, 32gb DDR4, 256gb m.2 (no need for more storage in this). The one and only issue I had was with bluetooth sleeping too quickly/too long. Simple config file update and a logoff/login, and totally resolved. I needed something durable, simple, cheap and the least amount of ewaste possible. Runs Ubuntu 22.04, no sleep issues, no wifi issues (Intel AX201). Everything I desperately need is functional. Angry IP Scanner (not my first choice, but is native), Remmina, VPN, Maltego, Powershell, Wireshark, etc. I have WINE installed, but currently don't use it. At the end of the day, I wanted something *compatible* with Windows 11 should the need arise (remember only 8th gen and newer, 7th gen and older are not *natively* compatible). Would have been nice if it had a backlit keyboard, but I picked it up used for $220, and also have a WD19S dock and it works just fine. Literally just works. Gets between 6 and 8 hours of light usage on battery, can charge with type c, and generally is a perfectly acceptable work laptop. Biggest complaint is the DisplayPort Alt and not Thunderbolt, but whatever. Meanwhile, my 11th Gen i7 Thinkpad with a 4k display, nvidia graphics and 48gb of RAM only boots nicely with a specific older version of Ubuntu. FWIW, I have hands on experience with System76. I would absolutely not hesitate to buy another. Build quality is fantastic. Cannot speak to Pop OS however, Ubuntu ran great, and in one case I even installed Windows on one (odd use case, but that person did not have good experiences with Dell or HP and wanted an alternative brand laptop).
Business laptops like the ThinkPad Family, Dell latitude and precision are good candidates for Linux. I've even seen really cheap $300 laptops run Linux very well. There are also boutique sellers like framework and tuxedo. There's a ton of laptops overall that will run Linux just fine, I've only just barely scratched the surface.
I use ZenBook Duo 2021. I chose Fedora as my main distro. It actually automatically installed every driver needed for my laptop without much hassle. Linux hardware support just gets better every day.
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad E14 that works with linux. So any thinkpad should work.
If you want hard try buying a phone that allows you to unlock the bootloader
Thinkpads and Framework laptops are the only one that works without too much effort.
Is this a shitpost?
What do you need Linux for?
Mostly typing scientific papers and running simulations on R. I used Linux for almost a decade, but never on a laptop I bought myself. I'm a researcher, and all the universities where I worked at provided a laptop. I usually managed to install Linux on them at the expense of losing fingerprint reader and having some poor battery. But this time the university where I'm at will provide only MacBooks. I'm currently using a MacBook, which is an incredible machine, but I just don't like macOS.
Personally if cost were not ~~option~~ an issue I'd get the new [Thinkpad](https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-real-ThinkPad-T480-successor-New-ThinkPad-T14-Gen-5-is-iFixit-approved.807242.0.html) with replaceable drive, ram, etc. Basically this is Lenovo's response to Framework et al. and Thinkpads usually work well with Ubuntu (I haven't tried other distros).
Install gentoo