Linux laptop recommendation thread🐧💻
Linux laptop recommendation thread🐧💻
I'm on the market to buy a new laptop, and Lemmy has successfully coaxed and goaded me to give Linux a serious try.
I've never used *nix as my personal OS.
Which hardware/laptop do you recommend? And which OS to pair it with for a Linux newbie?
I'm a software engineer, and quit my job to pursue an MSc in AI. So my uses will be:
- programming
- study
- browsing lemmy
- gaming
Linux runs on literally anything. The hardware doesn't matter too much these days, but which distro you pick does. I would say to just load a flash drive with a live image of a distro you think looks cool and see how you like it on a trial basis. Try a couple of them before you reqlly make a decision and then load the full image
I have a very similar use case so here is my opinion.
HARDWARE
-No dGPU unless this is your PRIMARY gaming computer. (Reason: better battery life, lighter laptop, with recent AMD iGPU you have decent performance for non-VR/not massive openworld AAA games.)
-recent AMD CPU. (Reason: better performance to watt ratio than Intel which makes a big difference for most of your use cases. Better multi-core performance which makes compiling code much faster. Massively better iGPU for light-medium duty gaming.)
-atleast 16GB ram if not expandable but as much as you can reasonably budget.
-16:10 or taller aspect ratio screen (16:9 sucks on laptop size devices, the extra height makes a big difference for school, coding, browsing, pretty much everything but watching 16:9 movies)
-Resolution: personal preference. IMO 1080p or 1920*1200 for 16:10 is ideal for 14" and below laptops. Lower resolution means better battery and on a small screen the PPI is high enough. If you are OK with a trade off of battery life and want a super crisp display then 2K is the highest I would go. 4K is retarded on laptop sized screens unless you are plugged in 90% of the time and you'll have to fuck with scaling then.
-metal body for stiffness and durability
-decent key travel (usually longer travel means better IME)
If you want to do machine learning/AI work professionally I use and recommend investing in a dedicated desktop with a large memory nvidia (cuda cores) GPU and installing the cuda drivers. Trying to cram commercially viable ai hardware into a laptop is a losing battle and you'll end up with a worse experience for both use cases, wont be able to fit large models in the memory anyways, and end up buying a desktop for AI while being stuck with a laptop that is worse for laptop use)
SOFTWARE
#1 Nobara OS KDE - best OOB experience for gaming IMO. Easy transition from windows. Has kernel fixes and many laptop specific fixes (asusctrl for example) by default which means you have a good chance of extra features like LEDs, fingerprint, etc working without tinkering). Fedora based.
#2 Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE6) - best non-gaming distro to learn and grow into IMO. Access to deb packages. Stable. (nobara has been stable for me as well, but it is LMDE's bread and butter). Ease of transition from windows. Can game just as well if you are capable of following simple instructions to configure the stuff done by default on nobara and pop (may need to manually change kernels, drivers, etc to get the best performance on new hardware)
#3 Pop_OS - used it for years, but I prefer Nobara after comparing. Ubuntu based so you have access deb packages without ubuntu's bullshit. Setup out of the box for gaming. I got fed up with failed updates, broken packages, and sluggishness so I swapped to nobara which has been a treat.
EDIT: you can snag some good deals on amazon warehouse deals (used-like new) laptops. These are usually just open box returns and if there is anything wrong you have 30 days to return it.
I recently upgraded to an Asus vivobook S 14x OLED (M5402R) for $780 CAD ($580USD) with a ryzen 7 6800H, 16GB DDR5, a 1TB gen 4 nvme, and it has zero signs of use, slight coil whine under load that I can only hear if I put my ear next to the keyboard and don't have any sound or music on (I suspect this was the reason for the return on mine since its a common complaint for this model. That's what I was hoping for since I'm not that picky and its worth the steep discount IMO.) Everything works oob on Nobara. I believe lenovo also regularly heavily discounts their previous gen thinkpads which are a great option, although the AMD configs are rare. Good luck!
Check out the Framework 16. Ubuntu and Fedora are officially supported. I run Debian on my Framework 13 no problem.
Framework laptop 13
https://linuxpreloaded.com/ for a longer list
These are my favorites (EU based)
Tuxedo Computers can get you a very good dev laptop for ~1500€ (64GB RAM, AMD/Intel CPU, NVIDIA/AMD graphics card). If you will be working in AI, I imagine you'll need CUDA (?) aka NVIDIA.
If you don't go for anything on linuxpreloaded (which I wouldn't recommend), it's good to check whether what you're buying has linux hardware support by checking the Linux Hardware DB. Even if you don't look, it'll probably work, but better safe than sorry if you're going to dump 1/3 or 1/2 of your months salary into something (depending on where you are).For a distro, I dunno what level you are, but Distro Chooser can help you out with making a choice. My recommendations:
linux beginner
Linux mint. nice desktop environment, looks like a mashup between windows and mac, still missing advanced options, but quite customisable. comes with suitable standard software and cloud integrations (you can connect to a bunch of clouds), relatively up to date
Ubuntu is well-known, some proprietary companies even consider it "the linux" and only make linux versions for it. It's quite stable. However, it isn't my first recommendation anymore as they are going down a proprietary route. I'm not sure if they have ads yet, but wouldn't surprise me if they started.
desktop environment
This is the desktop suite, a bundle of packages that work well together on any distro, with its own look and feel. There are basically 3 camps:
- windows look n feel
- KDE: is the most known, is very customisable, has an abundant amount of themes, icon sets, login screens, fonts, and a well-sized userbase. They prefix many app names with "K". Ubuntu even has a distro version called "Kubuntu" with KDE on it
- Cinnamon: main user is Linux Mint
- LXDE and XFCE: look closer to windows 95 and windows XP, consume minimal resources. configuration is through the interface, advanced configuration through files
- mac look n feel
- Gnome: they are well known and source of flame wars (gnome vs KDE). windows don't have title bars, things are very rounded, not very configurable, heavily mac inspired
- tiling window managers
- these aren't desktop environments, but sit more in the middle, they manage windows. best to watch a video about tiling window managers. they are very geeky and perfect if you love using nothing but your keyboard
- windows look n feel
System76 and Framework
Permanently Deleted
ThinkPad cus framework still doesn't have a trackpoint :p
Get some live distro first and check it out without installation. You will be able to test some basic desktop environments very easily. Most of the distros will have live image. Even better run it in a virtual machine and play around. Test KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon and XFCE. Look at some themes and plugins. I think customizing your desktop is a nice, visual way to see how flexible it all is and get the feel of how configuration files work. If you will like what you can achieve with a bit of work you will just keep going. If you will find it 'stupid and useless' it's probably not for you.
I have a Framework laptop and just installed Ubuntu on it the other day, it works great. Ubuntu and Fedora are officially supported by Framework and there's a bunch of other distros that are confirmed tested. I have the 13" but the 16" just came out with a dedicated GPU, that's probably the one to get if you're going to game on it
Check if your university has a laptop program with sweet discounts, or look for other student discount offerings first. Could be worth it.
Thinkpads (p14s are a good example) are really great with everything except probably gaming. Having a good GPU usually just comes at the cost of battery life.
Fedora or Nobara for OS
If you reaaaaaally want gaming, you could look at external GPU via thunderbolt or USB 4
If you want something even lighter, Samsung makes some decent laptops with insane battery life and really thin metal casing. Only issue is they're usually expensive and don't drop in price like Thinkpads sometimes do.
Framework have support for everything, including the built-in fingerprint sensor. So I think my next laptop will be this.
I'm just here to say that lemmy should have an integration with Midjourney that automatically creates an image based on the content of the text.
Most stuff has already been said, but I'll just add my 2 cents:
I/O is very important. I got a laptop with a pathetic amount of ports and I deeply regret it. Don't be like me
Any modern Thinkpad will run any Linux distro easy, from bios updates up to gaming with Proton. Dell laptops also have a good linux support. Try to avoid laptops with Nvidia cards though, AMD driver installation is way easier if not completely invisible/painless.
I have a framework. The smaller one. I think they have two now. One of the older CPUs. Got it now than a year ago and it's been solid. Disclaimer: I don't run Linux on it, so IDK what that's like at the moment.
I've used most makes and models of laptops and desktops at some point for some duration... The hazards of being in IT.... I can't recommend anything from Microsoft. Simply too hard to do anything with when anything goes wrong and you're entirely at the mercy of MS for everything. I personally don't like Lenovo, I've had a few Lenovo's that have their PCIe slots locked to only accept specific device I.D.s in the firmware. I had to flash a hacked firmware to upgrade the wifi in one. It was an unpleasant experience. It did eventually work, but it was not fun. I also don't care for their keyboard layouts. That's been improved recently from what I've heard, I'm still equally not a fan of their systems.
I've had the most experience with HP and Dell, and for the most part they're very similar. Anything from their business lines will perform quite well though graphics may only be whatever comes integrated with the CPU.
I always push towards business systems because from what I've seen, they're more robust and usually don't break nearly as fast.
I'd think about getting an eGPU for gaming since no matter how powerful the system or it's GPU is, it will be massively outdated long before the system fails or becomes inoperable from age. With an eGPU external enclosure, you can upgrade any time you like to a desktop card for much cheaper than replacing the system. Most eGPU enclosures can also act as docking stations, providing power and even network and other things along with the graphics connection.
That's a lot of hardware talk though. I'm not going to tell you what to pick, I'm just making the best recommendations I can given the information available to me.
Good luck
I have a Dell XPS, very compatible and essentially had no issues. Sleek laptops too, good for being on the road.
I don't know if I can recommend framework. I've been having lots of reliability issues with their hardware.
I had massive issues a few months in. Lots of weird issues such as SSD randomly disconnects, screen flicker & system crashes, and issues with powering on after leaving the laptop overnight.
Been emailing back and forth with them since October trying out different fixes. All this time I haven't really been able to use my laptop reliably. It should be getting sorted eventually. Their warrenty is pretty good and they finally agreed to replace the whole thing.
The laptop was nice. The modular ports was kinda cool because you can choose your io. The nice part was being able to open the laptop and upgrade parts without voiding warrenty. I think this is hardware issues rather than linux compatibility issues.
Maybe a Thinkpad would be more reliable for uni work
If you just want stuff to work with minimal hassle, Linux Mint is an excellent choice. PopOS is also often recommended, especially for laptops. If you really want to get into the nitty gritty, something Arch based might fit the bill.
A couple mentions in here of Linux Mint, I also recommend it having tried out a few distros before landing here. Especially if you go with an external GPU laptop, which might be a good choice for gaming needs, then Linux Mint has been really good about solving all of the annoying driver problems that could come up.
I have a Dell G15 Ryzen (AMD with nvidia GPU), it's been pretty good but there's always a trade-off between bulkiness and gaming needs. It's just a little awkward to lug around to coffee shops, but it's certainly got enough processing power for me.
System76 was a contender too, I think I just went with whichever was on sale!
Permanently Deleted
Some recommendations I would suggest are: -Linux-specific laptops (HP Dev One, System76, etc.) as they are built specifically with running Linux in mind. -Framework Laptops, as Framework has worked hard to make sure Linux works well with their devices. -ThinkPads, as their hardware usually tends to work really well with Linux.
I personally use the Framework Laptop 13 running Debian, and I love it!
I see a lot of Framework recommendations, and I had the 12th gen Framework for around a year running Fedora. I faced a bunch of excessive power use issues, and had to add some kernel flags just to get maybe 4 hours of battery life. The device is notoriously repairable, but the one thing that conked out on me was actually the mainboard, which was like the price of a new device. Support spent two weeks trying to find out if it was anything else before sending me a replacement mainboard.
My friend recently got a Zenbook 14 OLED with the same processor. The entire device was $200 cheaper lightly used than the Frameworks mainboard alone, and the only issue is the speakers don't work. That being said, he gets almost double my battery life, and a 90hz OLED screen on top of it all. Plus more ports; even with Framework's modular add-in cards I don't feel it is as flexible a system as having >4 useful ports.
My time with the Framework was great, but I wouldn't recommend it. Getting something secondhand is an environmentally conscious option, and you can get great stuff secondhand.
Permanently Deleted
For the software side I would recommend Linux Mint as a great simple starter distro with good support and a nice community. The overall design paradigm is about maintaining familiarity while also making sane defaults and simplifying processes. Because it is Ubuntu based it is also easy to get documentation and support because what works for Ubuntu also works for Mint.
For hardware it really depends on your budget and locality as well as use case. Laptops vary much more country to country than you may think, so it may be worth thinking about what is local to you. For example, I live in Australia so System76 is a bad choice here, same with SlimBook (I think that is the name, European KDE laptop that advertises with that French(?) YouTuber, they don't ship here.
Also, when looking at laptops the RAM configuration is important. If you have two RAM slots but only one RAM stick you will have really slow memory access. This will bottleneck for both the CPU and GPU if you are using both at the same time, say during gaming or doing AI work. Swapping out the single stick for a matching pair or just adding one more stick that matches what it already has will let both ports work together, making everything faster. Also when I say matching I mean in terms of size and speed. If you put 3200MHz and 2400MHz in the system at the same time the 3200MHz won't just down tune to match, they will both go slower as far as I am aware. Best to match not only the speed but if possible the brand and ideally model, there are lots of little differences between RAM sticks and honestly it has never been worth the trouble in my experience to have mismatched sticks, I just replace with a matching pair.
If you're looking for something that can handle AAA games, I've had a great experience with my Dell G5. Linux Mint had everything working out of the box, including the dedicated Nvidia GPU (though I agree with others, AMD is easier in Linux).
My laptop also has the advantage of allowing you to do weight training every time you move it, so there's that to consider.
Avoid Lenovo. At least, I have not had great experiences with the ThinkPad T14s AMD, both gen 1 and gen 2.
Gen 2 came with an Aetheros (sp?) bt/wifi card that would never wake up after suspend, had to get an Intel replacement, thankfully the bad one wasn't soldered in and I could replace it.
Trackpad has glitches that had to be mitigated in the kernel - mitigated well enough that it doesn't bother me but it's still silly
And both gen 1 and 2 still cannot reliably wake from suspend, and experience unreasonably high battery drain while suspended
Then again that could be a problem with all modern laptops..
I can't seem to find an AMD GPU based laptop with 144hz display that isn't absurdly expensive, does anyone know of one?
@Toldry System76 hardware is great and they run their own distro Pop!_OS. Highly recommend their machines. I have one otw as we speak.
Not a laptop, but I replaced my old laptop with a micro PC from minisforum EM680 and I'm very happy running Linux Mint in it. If you tend to use your laptop on the same spot, it's a great way have a more performing and ergonomic PC for the same or lower price.
I can power it from my monitor, so I can have only one cable at the desk. Bluetooth and wifi working out of the box.
At any rate, I suggest you stick to AMD graphics as they have native open source support.
Lenovo ThinkPads are what I've mainly used the last decades and they're quite Linux friendly now, can even buy them with Linux preinstall I believe.
Framework feels more in the spirit of Linux than most but I haven't owned one.
Choose whatever laptop you like, and do a quick search on the model for incompatibilities. If there's something critical or long-term, like a very specific hardware module not working well without its proprietary driver, consider changing, but most of the time, Linux will just work.
For distro, PopOS is good. It doesn't come with a bunch of bloatware, but it is also not barebones. Mint is also a great choice.
my brother runs a thinkpad T380. best thing about it is that there is a swappable and a built-in battery. he bought it "refurbished" so his didn't include the internal one for some reason. but you can open and even upgrade some components.
all for around 300€.
we think these have benn bought by companies for full price (1000+€) and are now being replaced, so the market for used thinkpads is very saturated at the moment.
currently runs windows, but i see no problems with running linux on a laptop, you aren't gonna game on integrated graphics anyway.
i've used Linux Mint Cinnamon a fair bit, i really like it. i've heard KDE offers more desktop customization, but i have no idea what that would actually look like. Kubuntu apparently has it.
Can't tell you what laptop to buy, but distro wise I'd recommend either Pop OS, Zorin or Linux Mint. Zorin is most windows-like, with Mint coming in second. Pop OS is very different but incredibly user friendly.
Hard to make a real recommendation without knowing your budget and general likes/dislikes. Like screen size, weight, clamshell vs convertible, integrated graphics vs dedicated GPU. I know you said gaming but integrated is great for indie and retro gaming and can handle some.modern stuff but a dgpu is needed if you're playing AAA titles and care about graphics and framerate, etc.
For everyone who says Linux runs on anything, that's mostly true but specific hardware components are still problematic. Most fingerprint scanners won't work if the laptop comes with Windows and you're installing yourself, the same for any unique hardware feature.
I have the Thinkpad x1 yoga gen 7 and everything works including the OR camera for facial recognition and the fingerprint scanner.
Lots of good Rocco's, but if you need to balance price and still get a high end machine, Lenovo Carbon. Runs fantastic out of the box, including S3/etc.
If you're pursuing a MSc, your effort should be spent on the study itself, not on tinkering (e.g. I saw some recommended a Framework laptop). So my wholehearted recommendation is a Thinkpad + Fedora for maximum usability, stability, and durability. Thinkpad speakers are usually bad though. And Thinkpad is not particularly good for gaming, either.
Ugh, don’t use Linux for anything ever. It’s so hard to use and you might actually have to learn something new. Just stick to windows so you know every single piece of software ever created will definitely work 100%.
/s
Wouldn't join some research center as engineer make more sense than going through university again?