I had bought an MSI laptop from Costco. Even though I was happy with the performance and with CachyOS I had to return it. Lucky for me that Costco has such a generous return window, 90 days. My main issues were that it lacked adequate cooling for the X7 358H, had no UEFI support from MSI on their website, and the build quality was atrocious.
I was looking at the System76 Lemur Pro, but I can’t seem to find any reviews on the newer models. Build quality and performance is really important to me as my daily driver for the last several years has been a MBP14 with an M1 Pro.
I’m not buying anything from Frame.Work as I’ve had two issues with them already which prompted me to cancel both orders, once for the desktop and once for the 13 Pro. Their customer service is lacking in my humble opinion.
EDIT: I mostly use my rig to code, game, and to tinker with private local models. In the US currently.
Instead of contributing to (fascist) US companies I’d love to see people looking at alternative to the big companies we have right not.
We should look at manufacter are actually trying to be better, more considerate with people (all the people not just the west) and the environment.
In the tech space no one cares or no one dares to raise their voice against the big companies, their anti-consumer policies, their green-washing and definitely their genocidal fascist ideology.
Yes probably thinkpad are good laptops. If you’re on a budget just do whatever you can, if you buy System76 you are not “on a budget”.
2 companies I know of that seems to go on a better path than most I see in comments here are slimbook (https://slimbook.com/) and maybe Tuxedo (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/).
We should be better than this.
all this talk about buying laptops…you guys can afford laptops right now?
Refurbished and Used can become quite affordable
If you aren’t running anything more than Minecraft for games you can get old Dell Latitudes for next to nothing. The downfall is that SSDs are $$$ now.
The Latitude 7400 (Non 2-in-one version) is genuinely an amazing laptop if you underclock the CPU a bit so it doesn’t sound like a jet engine. I run Debian on it and the thing gets 12 hours of battery life, and does everything I need. Build quality is pretty good too. I got it for like 200$ refurbished.
Yeah I was talking about the old E7440s for instance. Really solid old machines, and you can still play old games. Minecraft even works at lower settings.
I recently grabbed a Framework 13 on eBay that “needed to be plugged in to boot and probably needed to have the mb replaced” for $500. Got it, replaced the CMOS battery and laughed all the way to the bank ;)
I’ve been using Thinkpads since the late nineties… I’ve only ever had Thinkpads. I’m using my latest as a Steam Deck (Steam OS, AMD throughout) as I’m still using the X260 as a daily driver though I reaaally wish I had maxed out the RAM while it was possible. The old one runs KDE Neon.
The old ones are better than the new ones but the new ones you can charge with USB-C.
System 76 is a boutique laptop company. I bought two laptops from them and both needed service and repair several times.
My employer also tried them for desktops. Every machine we got from them, has needed service and had major issues.
So to be clear, you aren’t recommending them.
Honestly, that laptop is probably better than you’d think. A lot of laptops have really poor performing thermal compounds. Repasting to even when new will improve performance. My personal laptop got repasted and it dropped 10C under load. Mind you this is a 5825u laptop so not much power draw.
I recently got a refurbished Thinkpad x13 for 500 CAD, and it’s great with cachy OS on it.
HP Zbooks, Dell precision & latitude, thinkpad T/X series.
Something with an amd 395 ai max + maybe
I have a Asus flow z13 and very much enjoy it, but the form factor is not for everyone
I had feeling I knew what you meant before looking it up. I guess I can appreciate trying to do something different in a laptop, but the detachable keyboard and kickstand just seem like too many moving parts to me.
Like when they added a screen that pops out above the keyboard or the laptop where the top half pivots lower than the base when it’s open to angle for airflow. But I’m also the dummy still trying to use a laptop in my lap.
seconded. the Flow Z13 with 128gb of unified memory is a beast for both gaming and local AI.
I was looking at the System76 Lemur Pro, but I can’t seem to find any reviews on the newer models. Build quality and performance is really important to me as my daily driver for the last several years has been a MBP14 with an M1 Pro.
i’ve had a galago pro and the build quality on system76 seems to be better than average, but well below the competition at their price points – they are all clevo/tongfeng rebadges.
however the build quality on the ultra high end models does mirror the build quality and this probably matters to you since you’re considering framework, which also has a high price point.
system76 makes sense if you’re doing for the support as well as the capabilities like the ones you’re looking for (coreboot mattered for me back then) and my experience was overall positive w them; but i learned recently that their support made things so easy for me that it made my linux skills get antiquated.
What are you looking for? What are your requirements? I mean, gaming? Programming (if “yes”, do your projects require lots of running services/containers?)? Which country are you in?
In Europe, I like using PCSpecialist a lot. They offer thorough customization of the hardware, and their prices are good (they start low, and it gets even lower because they allow you cutting Windows out of the bill). In the US I’ve bought a ThinkPenguin and was happy with it. I didn’t really like my custom-configured Toshiba back in the day. It had weak cooling and was thus very noisy, and it wasn’t done well, deteriorated with time a bit too much.
A new laptop with a dvd drive? Sign me up. Not a fan of the ath9k wireless card (I know why they did it, Ive never had particularly great performance from the one I have, even accounting for the fact that mine is 1x1 )
Now I want to know who makes their hardware.
Edit: it’s a clevo nj50. Well good to know that.
You’re speaking about ThinkPenguin right? Haven’t touched it in quite some years, admittedly. Don’t know how things are now. I do like how they used to offer disabling Intel ME during purchase. And that notebook worked out-of-the-box fullly, no exceptions such as keyboard backlight or internet or you name it. But again, dunno about the state of things now.
ThinkPenguin hardware is extremely outdated. Would definitely consider PCSpecialist if it was an option.
Thinkpenguin is just rebranded clevo stuff. Most small company laptops are like that. Everything from system76, to sager, to eluktronics. Basically if you find a laptop you like through a Linux hardware company, maybe find the chassis model and save a bit bc there usually isn’t much different between them. If you play your cards right, you can get software support through another vendor bc they sell the same laptop. (Bios updates etc)
Like the Thinkpenguin t4 is just a clevo nj50.
PCSpecialist is sometimes also rebranded Clevo, for notebooks at least. Saying that from personal experience. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for me. Their support is really good. E.g. once the delivery people f**ed up, PCS offered a discount due to the chassis damage or, because I didn’t want it, accepted the product back and even paid me 50’EUR for the inconvenience. Not every company would do that. But it’s a choice, digging up and buying the underlying hardware (cheaper) is also sensible.
I think that’s more than fair. But then there’s companies like linuxpusher selling laptops at a 100% price markup (refurbished business machines). Also thinkpenguin calls it something else and linuxforlaptops sells it by its real names so looking for parts is easier.
But that is awesome that PCSpecialist did that for you.
Sounds like you should buy another mac.
You want build quality and performance and code, game and use llms. That’s a mac use case. If the games you want run on it.
Use your MacBook and install Asahi on it ?
that was the first thing I looked into, but Asahi is very much still in alpha and barely hanging on. If I could install properly supported linux on a MBP I would be all over that. I would not mind paying the Apple tax if I could get the performance, build quality, and battery life without using macOS.
I’ve been daily driving my Asahibook for over a year (as in “I’ve not booted MacOS except one time for demonstrating something”). Other than DP-over-USBC not working, it’s as been as stable as any other computer I’ve used. Even the DP stuff is working on test branch, and I did try it, and it worked almost flawlessly.
I’m willing to give it a shot, but have you gotten Steam to run on it without issues?
I don’t game on my laptop, can’t help you there!
I second that, I’ve been running an M2 for almost a year as my main (and only) PC. Standby battery life is not great and DP over USB C would be nice, but there’s an HDMI port.
OP, if you already have the hardware, I would at least give it a try. Linux on Apple hardware is a great combo IMO.
I can’t give any firsthand recs at the moment, but I’ve had my eye on the ASUS Zenbook A16.
I’m a weirdo who likes ARM Linux, and this is the first non-Apple ARM SoC that has a decent memory bandwidth for LLMs. Not exactly blazing, but should be usable.
The snapdragon X elite chips don’t have driver support for linux. From my research, it will not work. I also want a thin and light laptop with good battery life and would have loved the A14 if Qualcomm had not butchered linux support.
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