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Ask Slashdot: GNU/Linux Laptops?

Posted by Unknown on from the the-internet-tells-me-this-is-easier-today dept.

"I'm an OS X user looking to switch to a Linux laptop. I like the Unix/BSD aspect of OS X. Simple things like when I close the lid the laptop goes to sleep, the sound card works out of the box, long battery life, minimum cooling fan noise, and a comprehensive but relatively straightforward backup system and 'AppleCare' package are important to me. What all-inclusive model of laptop and distro would you recommend?" He didn't mention it, but I am presuming that working Wifi should be on that list too.

34 of 708 comments (clear)

  1. Not a troll but.... by SultanCemil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Honestly, wouldn't a MacBook of some description be the best choice? You "like the Unix/BSD aspect...", hardware working, good battery life, AppleCare-type support, etc. Why switch? Are you looking for cheaper hardware? Philosophical leaning towards Linux?

    --
    Cemil.
    1. Re:Not a troll but.... by SultanCemil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your username implies a bias :-)

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      Cemil.
    2. Re:Not a troll but.... by GreatDrok · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A modern MacBook has no mouse buttons since it is multitouch. They are simply the best mouse pad on any laptop currently available.

      My feeling having gone the other way some time back is that a MacBook is the cheapest way of getting a decent UNIX laptop with all the hardware working, plus the hardware is well built and the OS works nicely. You can even run Linux on a MacBook if you really want to go that route. The build quality of most PC laptops is so poor that you end up paying just as much for a good Windows laptop to run Linux as you would buying a MacBook.

      --
      "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    3. Re:Not a troll but.... by exomondo · · Score: 4, Funny

      he wants to fit in with the cool gang at Slashdot

      also,

      IT"S THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

      yeah but he wants a linux laptop ;)

    4. Re:Not a troll but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because you like the feeling of completely owning and controlling your laptop?

      Try a laptop from System 76. Everything works right out of the box.

    5. Re:Not a troll but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've got a System76 laptop. They're good, and they have good support. They're pricey though (but nowhere near as bad as Apple).

    6. Re:Not a troll but.... by SerpentMage · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I completely agree here. I have been looking at laptops to buy and quite frankly it is scary. The cheap notebooks are Windows proprietary s**t. And if you start to move to anything better quality with better hardware you get close to Apple hardware. I thought I was seeing things, but Apple hardware is not that much more expensive. And if you want to get anything without windows on it, well good luck with that!

      I am not saying that you can't find a laptop, but it is truly becoming like pulling teeth. The entire industry outside of Apple has decided to jump on the Windows bandwagon. It leads me to wonder what happened to the separation of OEM from Microsoft? Oh yeah went down the tubers when the legal restrictions expired.

      I am not impressed!!!

      --

      "You can't make a race horse of a pig"
      "No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
    7. Re:Not a troll but.... by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why not put Linux on a MacBook? I have.

      https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook

      "I listen to Fela Kuti and I Vote!"

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    8. Re:Not a troll but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So... nothing RMS codes either, right?

    9. Re:Not a troll but.... by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am not saying that you can't find a laptop, but it is truly becoming like pulling teeth. The entire industry outside of Apple has decided to jump on the Windows bandwagon.

      I'm not sure what mythical age you're referring to when PCs didn't come pre-bundled with Windows.

      What does seem to have changed, though, is that laptops now seem almost completely homogeneous. You can pick from just a few screen sizes -- 14" and 15.6" seemingly being the two most popular. But guess what? Whichever size you pick, they all have the same resolution: 1366x768. For the majority of models, the graphics will be powered by Intel onboard graphics -- which, by the way, are now actually integrated into the CPU dies. You can pick from a few different hard drive sizes -- 320GB, 500GB, and now 640GB being typical. Those will be 5400rpm drives, BTW. And the drive sizes will be closely tied to the CPU speed for pricing reasons -- so you might find a Core i3 with a 500GB drive, but if you want a Core i5 for just $50 more or so, it will come with a smaller drive. If you want the whole shebang, you'll have to pay more, plus they'll throw in something extra you didn't want (like WiMax or something).

      Basically it's just an all-out price war, where all the manufacturers are producing virtually identical models while trying everything in their power to undersell the other guys. That means most of them are cutting a lot of corners. One reasonable shopping strategy is to find a configuration you like, list all the specific models that have those exact specs, and decide which brand you trust not to build a complete piece of shit -- but you can't even rely on brands these days, it seems.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    10. Re:Not a troll but.... by jmelchio · · Score: 4, Informative

      Until recently I had an old PowerBook G4 and a Macbook Pro. When the Powerbook died I had to make a choice of forking out significant money to replace it with another apple product or get something cheaper. The Macbook Pro allows me to do iOS development which I need for work, the second machine is really more for wife and kids so it's not that important what it runs but I still like the idea of having a Unix/Linux system.
      I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ubuntu listed several laptops on their site that would work with their distro so I ended up getting a Dell Inspiron 15 which I re-partitioned. After that I installed Ubuntu 11.04 without a problem and everything works after installation.
      Wife and kids use the Windows 7 partition and I use the Ubuntu partition when I use it which is actually quite often. The machine is obviously not as nice as a Macbook Pro but it costs only a third of what the smallest Macbook Pro costs and as far as I've been able to tell it works just as well for most purposes.

      If you're after a good Unix/Linux experience for a reasonable price I think this is a good option.

      --
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    11. Re:Not a troll but.... by itsdapead · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because you want more than one mouse button, for instance?

      You've been able to plug a standard USB 3 button/wheel mouse into a Mac and use all the buttons since last century - which is good, because mice are the one thing that Apple don't seem to be able to get right (although they've had multiple virtual buttons using touch sensors for years) . Their trackpads, however, are the best in town and support multiple buttons/scrolling via multitouch gestures. You can even enable 3-finger dragging, which finaly makes click-drag usable on a trackpad and is almost (but not quite) enough to wean me off a mouse.

      --
      In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
    12. Re:Not a troll but.... by billcopc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Applecare, as I understand it, is just an extended hardware warranty with limited software support ("How do I ____ with OSX?" type stuff).

      I didn't buy it for mine, because $379 seems a bit egregious. If a manufacturing defect doesn't manifest in the first year, I don't see the point in paying for 2 more years of coverage. I use my laptop every day on the go, if something's screwy on it, it's gonna die young.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    13. Re:Not a troll but.... by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I always get refurbished Thinkpads. 1) you get cheap high end hardware that lasts and lasts and lasts,... and is actually designed to be opened up for maintenance. 2) there's good linux hardware support since you're not on the bleeding marketing edge. 3) The nipple rocks.

    14. Re:Not a troll but.... by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I didn't buy it for mine, because $379 seems a bit egregious. If a manufacturing defect doesn't manifest in the first year, I don't see the point in paying for 2 more years of coverage. I use my laptop every day on the go, if something's screwy on it, it's gonna die young.

      Because Apple's bad cooling designs cause normal failure in 2-3 years even without manufacturing defects.

    15. Re:Not a troll but.... by mspohr · · Score: 4, Informative
      Having recently switched from Linux on a Dell laptop to a MacBook Air (which I bought because I fell in love with the design), I would have to say the the Mac UI definitely has a few oddities that just don't make sense (except in a historical context). My biggest gripe is the menubar on the top of the primary screen. I can understand that this made sense in 1984 when screens were small (and there was only one). Now that it is the 21st century, it drives me crazy to have to mouse up to the menubar at the top of the screen. I go absolutely batshit insane when I have a window on my secondary monitor and I need to use the menubar which is many thousands of pixels away at the top of the primary screen. The keyboard is missing a bunch of keys (a real delete key, pgup, pgdn, home, end, etc.). They also have this odd Command key (flower power) which seems to have taken over a lot of the functions of the Control key (but not all... I'm still figuring this out). Build quality seems fine but I'm not that happy with the chiclet keyboard. Touch pad is nice but I still prefer a mouse. I think I much prefer the Linux UI (any of them, all of them) and standard PC hardware.

      BTW, a good backup solution for Linux is "Back in Time" which is a nice shell built on rsync similar to Apple's Time machine. Linux on my Dell was just fine. Everything (including power management) "just worked".

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    16. Re:Not a troll but.... by JWSmythe · · Score: 3, Insightful

          Actually, no... But not in any sort of good way. They are x86 based, but only a few parts (CPU, hard drive, DVD) are PC parts.

          My girlfriend has a Mac Pro, dual quad core 2.8Ghz... For Christmas, I upgraded the memory. Apple's site had it listed for something like $800. I got it from Crucial for $200. From what I read, Crucial makes it for Apple, so that's a clue about their mark up.

          In the last month, according to the sensors, the power supply is overheating. Everything on forums, and according to Apple, is the power sensors are defective. The recommendation is to ignore them. Great. But we didn't pay attention to it until it started crashing. The fans are spinning fine, so it's something else. She has to leave a big desk fan blowing on it while it's on, to keep it from crashing.

          The price for a power supply? About $300. No, it's not ATX. I can't find an ATX adapter, and I can't find a way to adapt it. So I can try for about $300.

          The price for a motherboard? About $800 or so.

          Since normal diagnostics haven't shown anything, and it's out of Apple's warranty, I have to figure it out on my own... If I want to pick up parts to experiment with, I'll be spending about $1,000. I'd probably buy a new PS first. Knowing how things turn out, that won't be the fault. Even if I buy both to test, there's still a good chance it's something else, like a flaky CPU.

          To get a used one like it will cost a small fortune. Even still, a used one may have the same problems.

          I never believe in the invincible Apple platform. I know that components fail. Anything with overpriced components isn't worth it, no matter how shiny the packaging is, nor how much fanboys proclaim they are the greatest.

          And any fanboy wanting to argue this, send me a motherboard and power supply, so I can make her machine stable again. I'll send you a PC motherboard and power supply in exchange. :)

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  2. ThinkPads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    ThinkPad + Ubuntu will probably work pretty well for you. ThinkPads have tended to have good linux support for a very long time. Check out ThinkWiki.org

    Of course, they still come with Windows (you used to be able to order them without, but I think they have done away with that now) but they still work pretty good with Ubuntu.

  3. http://www.system76.com/ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.system76.com/

    System76 is the closest your going to get to a Apple experience with Linux.
    Pre-installed so you don't have to muck around with drivers
    Comprehensive testing and configuration of the hardware by professionals.
    Support and documentation.
    Company officially supports Linux.
    Provides custom driver bundles to make upgrading effortless as possible.
    etc etc.

    You will get NONE of those things if you go with a Windows system from a large OEM and then try to install Linux on it yourself. You will be your only source for OS support and hardware configuration. You can have Ubuntu forums and mailing lists, but to be honest the chances of you getting useful answers is about 1 in 4.

    1. Re:http://www.system76.com/ by Rastor · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, it would be good to get it from a supplier who has actually heard of Linux. So System 76, or maybe Emperor Linux or The Linux Laptop or Linux-Certified or ZaReason etc.

    2. Re:http://www.system76.com/ by seandiggity · · Score: 4, Informative

      Typing this on a 4-year-old System76 now. Great hardware, and it's important to support GNU/Linux vendors.

      System76 has an update tool that will install anything specific to their hardware as a .deb package, so you shouldn't have any driver problems as long as you only upgrade your distro when System76 says they support it. For some time now, however, I haven't needed any updates directly from System76, as driver support for all my hardware is now available in the default repos.

      --
      Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
  4. There are actual lists ya know by jmorris42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ubuntu has a list of Certified Hardware for ya. But I have yet to get a Thinkpad at least 90% running. I don't have the fingerprint reader on my X200s working with Fedora but everything else works, including the dock. The boss's Thinkpad T520 runs Ubuntu and has everything working except audio through the dock, but dual DVI displays on the dock do work.

    Of course once you get a laptop working expect updates to constantly break things until you just get tired of rolling back failed updates and just stop, only taking critical security updates you can't live without.

    It is worse with Linux because almost no OEMs are involved in keeping it working, most aren't even involved in initially getting it going so folks have to guess. But raise your hand if you haven't had to roll back a driver or update on that 'other' popular OS. Last week I had to roll back a mouse driver on a Dell laptop to get the pointer working.

    --
    Democrat delenda est
  5. My $0.02 by someSnarkyBastard · · Score: 4, Informative

    System76 and ZaReason are both good dedicated Linux laptop companies. Personally, I have a Dell n-series laptop .

  6. System 76 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I purchased a System 76 laptop a few months ago after being on MacBooks for 7+ years and haven't looked back. My requirements weren't the same as yours so you might want to contact their customer support to ask specific questions, which I found to be responsive and friendly when I was researching them.

  7. These issues are largely gone. by reiscw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This weekend, I went to Office Depot, bought an HP 2000 laptop for about $329, brought it home, backed up the windows image, and installed Ubuntu 11.10. All of the conditions of his post are met. Battery life is good, fan is quiet, sound works, closing the laptop lid causes the machine to sleep, etc. Not sure what he means about backup - I use grsync which is easy enough to back up my home directory to a flash drive (primitive, I know, but I've never been burnt). No special configurations were necessary to install Ubuntu. It's funny that people keep bringing up WiFi. The last time I had problems with WiFi on Linux was a Broadcom chipset on Ubuntu 8.04. After that, everything has worked without issue (and I could get it working by extracting / copying firmware). Sometimes I think a lot of the Linux complaints about sound and wifi are out of date.

    I'm not sure what "AppleCare" is unless it's some sort of extended warranty / replacement program. Unless you're very unlucky, a decent laptop is cheap enough that you're better off self-insuring. While it might make sense for an Apple product (I'm being generous) I don't think it makes sense for a basic laptop workstation.

  8. Fan noise? by devleopard · · Score: 4, Informative

    " ... minimum cooling fan noise ..."

    I have a 2011 15" MacBook Pro. The new i7 quad-core + new GPU gets crazy hot. Often the temp gauge jumps to 80 degrees C + and the fans spin up. Those 2 fans maxed out at 6200 RPM is anything but quiet.

    --
    The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
  9. SLASHDOT...SERIOUSLY STOP COMMENTING AT THE BOTTOM by TheDarkener · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It gets really annoying. 'I presume he wants working wifi, too'... ok, how about a working video chipset? If you're presuming, and you live in a 3rd world country, maybe you'd presume he wanted a modem.

    If this is dude's submission, don't mess with it, it just doesn't help the guy get the answers he needs. Besides, most wifi chipsets I've used recently have been pretty damn good.

    More-so I am aggravated at the editorial nature of these footer comments in general. Nerds don't like editorials, they like facts. Maybe that's my assumption, but I've been reading Slashdot for 11 years now. It. Gets. flippin'. Old.

    I probably should have ranted on some other, more deserving article footer comment...oh well. I love you guys

    --
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  10. Stick with a Macbook by John+Bresnahan · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used to run various versions of Linux on a couple different ThinkPads, and over the last few years (2006 - 2008 or so), each new release seemed less solid than the one before. I would spend days or weeks trying to hunt down fixes for various problems (sleep wouldn't work, WiFi wouldn't work, audio wouldn't work, etc.).

    Finally, in 2009, I bought a MacBook Pro (17", 8GB RAM), and used that as my primary machine. Best decision I've made in a long time. I wanted one laptop that I could use for everything, and with VMs running Windows 8 and whatever flavor of Linux I feel like playing with at the moment, I can develop and run any software for any platform.

    I might feel differently if I were a gamer, but I'm not, so this is the best setup. Since you're coming from a Linux system, I'm guessing that any games you might play are already available on the Mac.

  11. Re:SLASHDOT...SERIOUSLY STOP COMMENTING AT THE BOT by bmo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >I probably should have ranted on some other, more deserving article footer comment

    Nah, this one deserves it. The footer is a backhanded slap at WiFi support for Linux when it's greatly improved over the years. When I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on this laptop, which was current when I bought it, everything worked, including the touch panel below the screen and the infrared remote.

    Trolling in the summary is bad form, and yes, it did get old a long time ago.

    --
    BMO

  12. Re:SLASHDOT...SERIOUSLY STOP COMMENTING AT THE BOT by Bob9113 · · Score: 4, Informative

    oh well. I love you guys

    A worthwhile point that made me smile -- always remember, Slashdot, we wouldn't bitch about you if we didn't care. :)

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  13. Re:Walled Garden by Gizzmonic · · Score: 3, Informative

    The whole "walled garden" metaphor applies to iOS products, not Mac OS X. You can download and install whatever you want on a Mac. Including Linux or Windows if that floats your boat.

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    (-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
  14. Updates break things at random by jmorris42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    > Is this really your current experience?

    Yup, take the two examples I noted. The Thinkpad 200s I'm typing this on was installed with Fedora 12. During it's errata stream the kernel broke undocking. So I had to roll back and hold.... all the way through the F13 and F14 cycles I got to stay midway in F12 and hope a remote exploit didn't force me to upgrade anyway and just shutdown and reboot instead of undocking. The bugzilla is now closed since things started working with F15. So I could chose stay with a totally unsupported OS or GNOME3. I'd much preferred F14 so now I run XFCE on F15.

    The Boss's Thinkpad can't update Ubuntu anymore unless great care is taken to ensiure Xorg doesn't update lest the second DVI port stop working and of course a distro update is out of the question because of the GNOME problem, so she will be stuck on 11.04 until that situation improves.

    I have a machine at home with a PATA RAID card that hasn't worked with new kernels for years. RHEL4/(clone of) is rock solid though. Stuff doesn't officially go depracted very often while examples are still in the wild, but most stuff will eventually stop working unless a lot of people use it or a key kernel dev uses it.

    --
    Democrat delenda est
  15. Virtual Machine on a Macbook Pro by Acheron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would recommend buying yourself a Macbook Pro, getting VMWare Fusion or if you're low on funds after buying the MB, then VirtualBox, and running a Linux VM. You get the solid quality of the MBPro hardware and the standardised hardware environment that a VM offers and the resulting good linux driver behaviour.

    I use VirtualBox on my 2010 MBPro and it works like a charm.

  16. I believe he needs my username. by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    I believe he needs my username

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