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Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Linux Laptop?

Posted by EditorDavid on from the longing-for-Linux-laptops dept.

Long-Time Slashdot reader sconeu is finally replacing his 10-year-old Toshiba Satellite laptop, and needs suggestions on the best current laptops for running Linux. I'm looking to run some flavor of Linux (probably KDE-based UI, but not mandatory) while using a virtual machine to run Windows 7 (for stuff needed for work). For me personally, battery life and weight are more important than raw power. I'm not going to be running games on this. I've been considering an XPS 13 Developer Edition, or something from System76, ZaReason or Emperor Linux. What laptop do you use? Do you have any suggestions?
It's your chance to share useful information, recommendations, and your own experiences with various brands of laptop. So leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best Linux laptop?

3 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Stay away from Skylake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    +1 for that, the HP commercial laptops are very good.

    I use to have an HP EliteBook Folio 9470m, I was quite happy with it running Debian. Everything worked as expected, after some tweaking with tlp and running a newer kernel from ubuntu.

    I have now an HP EliteBook 1030 G1, Im happy with the built, display and the new CPU but the linux support for the Skylake is awfull. I have problems with bluetooth, power consumption and the graphics card. After some work I have a working Debian, but I could not fix a couple of annoying bugs . The machine hangs almost every time that I plug an external monitor or when the monitor enters sleep mode. I installed the latest X drivers from intel (www.01.org), the latest build of the Kernel 4.9rc and configure the "modesetting" X driver, but the issues remains, I got better power usage though.
      I read in the intel site, that the fixes are planned to be integrated in the kernel 4.11, 4 months ahead.

    For fist time in 15 years of running linux in my main machine, Im about to install windows 10, I need my machine to work, I can't keep spending my time rebooting or start compiling patched kernels.

    My two cents, stay away from skylake and newer CPUs and get a good Haswell basd laptop.

    I wished I asked the OP question before buying the newest and greatest, as I download the Win10 Recovery image....

  2. Re:Asus UX305CA by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Running the kernel is no problem.

    Having working sound, volume controls, 3d support, wifi, touchpad w. multi-touch, Bluetooth, suspend, hibernate (and resume), etc, etc. is another matter.

    For me, having a keyboard which doesn't mix up Fn and Ctrl (with no abilty to remap), or disposes of home/end/pgup/pgdn in favour of putting prtscr next to Ctrl, or forward/back buttons over the arrow keys, keeps function keys as function keys and possibly has a mouse with three buttons... these are the difference between an crappy Linux laptop and an ok Linux laptop.

    Give it 8h battery life (genuine 8h, not pretend 8h), upgradable RAM, upgradable storage, and a high resolution display with good viewing angles, HDMI out (or similar)... then we're talkign a great Linux laptop.

    This might only be the XPS13 or circa 2011 Thinkpads.

  3. Purism? by Sebby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Purism - laptops look pretty sleek.

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