I’m in the market for a new laptop. I’m currently considering the Framework 16 but I’m wondering if there’s anything else I should look at. The System 76 Adder WS seems like a better value, but I’m hesitant to buy Nvidia.
I don’t need anything super portable, just looking for a decently powerful laptop for some gaming and other basic tasks. I use openSUSE TW but even with the Nvidia repo I’ve had issues with Nvidia graphics.
Framework 16 is on preorder, take that in consideration if you need a laptop asap.
Otherwise highly recommend it for the dedicated graphics and future upgradability.
Gonna have to vouch for Thinkpads, wonderful compatibility. If you use a Libre distro, Intel wireless cards are gonna be your Achilles heel.
For computers I typically look at Lenovo, there’s a wide range of choices, and they can have some pretty sweet deals at times.
My personal experience with AMD GPU is way better than NVIDIA, even without proprietary driver
i recommend nvidia geforce now for game streaming, if your ok with some latency. then you dont need to get a gpu at all
Then your laptop requirements become super easy. I’m running a framework 13 and am quite happy with it.
The only down side is no coreboot, but I think repairable hardware is more important at the moment.
I don’t understand how people can use game streaming for anything besides something like a puzzle game, input response time absolutely kills me
I tried it with Cyberpunk 2077 and the latency was so low I couldn’t notice it. I had no issues weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds.
It’s really a matter of whether your ISP can handle it. Many of those in the US cannot because there’s not a lot of regulations regarding the minimum quality of service they have to provide.
Also depends on where the servers are - latency probably won’t be great if you’re on the literal opposite side of the world from the servers that you’re streaming the game from!
Interesting. I’m in Canada, maybe it’s worse up here.
I had an old manager telling me about the 5ms ping he had when living in the states. In my mind anything below 100 was great
GeForce now, and shadow, both let you test your connection to see how good it is. Basically you need a low latency and low jitter internet connection. To the data center.
The maximum latency you want is 40 milliseconds, and you want low jetter. Then you’re going to have a good experience. Obviously the lower the latency the better.
Speed.cloudflare.com is a good basic test, it’ll tell you what your average latency is to cloudflare, and your jitter is. If that’s good then game streaming might work for you.
You would be much better off using an egpu with the laptop. The latency from streaming is terrible.
Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition comes with Ubuntu. I have the non-developer edition which I run OpenSUSE with no problem.
To add to this, get the i5 version. The i7 is a power hog and overheats the laptop.
I’ve got a thinkbook (that makes sense , Lenovo) that I picked up for like <500 which has run Linux since day one. Price/performance is killer. Though, I’d probably go with a framework if I was shopping today. Modular + serviceability wins it for me.
Linux will run on p much anything; hardware modularity and repair resulting in longevity are my main considerations these days.
If you want a laptop for Linux then the obvious choices are Tuxedo and System76. Framework looks cool, but I haven’t heard much about it’s Linux support.
They officially support Ubuntu and Fedora, and it looks like people have decent experiences with other distros. That’s on the 13 though, nothing official about the 16.
I have a Lenovo Yoga. Love it to death and it hasn’t failed me yet!