so honestly, who would you use now?
I'd never buy HP, Acer, Lenovo. total crap machines.
what other brands of laptop are any good going into 2025/2026?
The XPS was always my go-to but now what options are remaining?
As I work with HP and HPE at work:
Just don't buy anything below ProBook and EliteBook. They are trash.
In fact, don't buy anything you see at an electronic retailer without looking and inspecting the product very intensely.
And buy the business-line. They are usually better than consumer product lines.
Dell XPS and Lenovo X1 Carbon are the best laptops for running Linux.
I currently have an AMD Framework and, while it's nice that it's repairable, Linux support is crap compared to the XPS and X1.
I was actually looking into selling this junk Framework laptop and buying an X1 Carbon.