I’m in the market for a new Linux laptop. My current machine is a 2018 i7 with 64GB of RAM, a 4K screen, 1TB of storage, 2x USB-C and 1x USB-A.
I’m looking for something that can match my current specs but brings great battery life, modern Wi-Fi, and a fingerprint reader. I don’t have to have 4K, and may actually prefer lower resolution for the battery savings.
I’d love to hear some recommendations for a machine built within the past 12 months. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Have you looked into the Framework Laptop? It’s highly customisable, upgradable, and repairable. I don’t actually know how well it plays with Linux but as it is appealing to techy people who like to tinker I would imagine the community to be rather active.
Yup, it’s absolutely on my list. I’m specifically interested in the 16”, but it’s not available yet. Additionally, the soonest I could get the 13” is Q4. I’m wanting something before then.
Thank you for the feedback!
I was in the same boat before Framework launched and ended up with a ThinkPad X1 Extreme.
It’s a solid machine - easy to upgrade the SSD and RAM, easy to repair, very good premium support available for an additional fee. I paid for the support and had to replace a touchpad that started acting weird. They were at my house within 24 hours and made the repair at my dining table. So much better than AppleCare.
The Linux support is great. Everything works. The build quality is good as far as pc laptops are concerned. Lots of USB ports, HDMI out, and an SD slot. That’s the next best thing to the customizable ports on the Framework. The battery is a little better than the Framework. Really can’t go wrong with either one.
You can never go wrong with Thinkpad. Both of mine are 10+ years old and still running and they do with realyl well with Linux
Was looking at a Thinkpad; how well does Linux run in a web developer/graphic designer element? Is it pretty easy, specs wise?
I had an extreme, as nice as it was it kind of sucked on Linux due to all the dual gpu weirdness (working hdmi or battery longevity, pick one)
Has this changed recently? Because it used to be due to the wiring of hdmi though the external gpu
I have a gen4 with Nvidia 3050, and with the newer cards/drivers the support for power states is actually decent. On arch I don’t need any of the trickery you used to have to do to power off the card, if the card is not used for some time (less than a minute) it properly shut downs, and powertop reports something around 9w of power usage if you don’t fire up the CPU for compilation or such. When a program needs it, it powers back on. You still have some of the Linux/Nvidia headaches (with Wayland etc.) but it’s much better than it used to be
I’ll take a look. Thank you for the recommendation.
Take this with a grain of salt since I’m not a framework owner (but very interested in getting one), but heads up that I consistently hear its battery life isn’t the best. The modularity makes it less efficient or something, iirc.
Apparently nowadays they were able to extend the battery life quite a bit with the new generation of 61Wh batteries (instead of the previous 55Wh)
Ah, good to know.
The battery indeed by no means (at least on intel 11th, 12th gen cpus) is what I would call exceptional (4-9 hours on a i5 1240p with two USB-A, two USB-C passive modules). Some expansion modules such as the microSD reader can be a detriment to battery life overall as well as some modules (like the older revision of the HDMI module) have issues not powering off for power saving properly.
For the HDMI module, Framework has published a guide for those that wish to mod their older revision HDMI modules to get power saving to work like how it does on the new revision. As such, there is hope that for those skilled enough to do their own repairs that the worse off modules today may be able to be made better tomorrow rather than thrown away for a new revision.
Noted, tyvm for the info!
Edit: sorry for sending this thrice, had network issue
If you like open source bios and trackpoint along with hot swappable mechanical keys, then take a look at System76 Virgo.
I like the idea of a System76 machine, but have never used one IRL. Nor do I know of anyone who has one. As a result, I’m hesitant on making the leap without some level of expertise/experience to back up the decision.
I’ve owned a few System76 laptops and they never seemed quite right. I’ve bought three, one I returned for no fault of theirs, I just thought it was far too big. The second I have had for 5 years, but it’s nearly dead now. Graphical glitching, might be as simple as a loose cable, but I have found the time to try to fix it. This laptop also has an issue where the keyboard drops keystrokes frequently enough to drive you mad, but not so frequently that they were able to warranty repair. Finally, I recently (2022) purchased a new one that I had I’ve had to send a back due to hardware issues immediately out of the box. They do have very good customer support, but it’s a shame that I’ve had bad experiences with the hardware itself. It’s been a while, but I’m still gunshy about pulling the trigger on System76 again.
This is the kinda thing that concerns me. I don’t want to get to a point where I’m unable to use the machine after spending the time to migrate to it.
I wouldn’t use one. They made PopOS, and it’s just crappy Ubuntu with a bunch of garbage changes.
I wouldn’t expect this in the next year at least.
I’d seriously keep waiting for the 16" Framework. It’s definitely going to be worth it.
It does have official support for some Linux distros, and their forum is full of Linux users
Framework laptops are, as far as I know, certified for Ubuntu. Meaning that any distro should run just fine, if maybe with some slight modifications, but Ubuntu (and its derivates) will work perfectly.