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Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Linux Laptop?
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?
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?
Beautiful design, screen and battery life, plus it runs the latest Linux kernels without any issues whatsoever. I love mine.
My Dell laptop that I bought that I bought Linux has an Intel Centrino 6235. It doesn't work about 90% of the time.
I have an XPS 13. I installed the latest Fedora. I really like it--it drives the display at full resolution, and touch screen worked easily. There are a few well-documented small tweaks to the BIOS to get it to install and boot.
I use an old HP laptop (NC6400) to run Linux Mint. No problems at all.
Stay away from their consumer grade laptops. They're unreliable crap.
pick a thinkpad any thinkpad.
lose != loose
one that's 2 years old is 15% the cost of shiny new.
Remove systemd: make linux great again.
In general, choose a Thinkpad for great Linux support (BTW Avoid Ideapad, they are in a completely different class than Thinkpads).
For your specific personal needs (not games, light, battery-life), one of the Thinkpad X Series. So either the Thinkpad X1 Carbon or the Thinkpad X260.
Sounds like the typical Linux WiFi experience, may have worked at some point but is randomly broken and never fixed but will still be listed as supported for years
Running latest Ubuntu. Battery lasts forever, chroot running on Gentoo...
Check out Razor. They are the sexiest non-macs I know of, light, and powerful. I'm running Arch.
Someone that needs/wants a 10" ultra portable isn't going to be happy with a 17" mobile workstation.
I like my Dell M6700 with a i7-3940XM. 32 GB of RAM, 4 hard drives and space for 2x wifi cards. 17" screen. Full keyboard, with number pad. Trackpad and clit mouse (if you're into that). I only wish I could get a higher resolution screen.
Not the late 2016 model unless you use the Mac OS as the main OS. Drivers for other platforms are not mature.
The 2015 can boot or virtualize almost any OS you might care to work under.
Max out the RAM and boot drive. RAM's soldered and the SSD is unique.
I bought a Dell Latitude e7450, and quite happy with it. It does not come with Linux pre-installed, unfortunately, but other than that, it works great. (The only problem I've had was: the touchpad was detected as a mouse and therefore things like tap-to-click were not configurable. I'm now running a patched kernel - but looks like the patches went into 4.9, so it won't be a problem anymore.)
didn't have a lot of money. Bought a Thinkpad T420i off of ebay for $180 (came with 4 gb ram and a 160 ssd). Swapped the ssd for an extra 240 I had laying around and spent another ~$21 on another 4gb stick (this model only takes 8 gb).
Runs quite well. Linux Mint 18 (using cinnamon), customized the UI a little, usually run 2 workspaces with a VM in the 2nd one. It's actually more responsive than the pirate copy of Windows 8.1 the vendor included lol.
+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....
I'm typing this right now on a Dell laptop with Ubuntu 14.04 installed. I have never encountered a problem connecting to WiFi that was due to the software.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I run Linux, usually Debian or Ubuntu on Dell Precision or Latitude laptops. My current personal laptop is a Precision M4400, Core2Quad, 8GB ram, 500Gb SSD. I bought it originally with a 320GB hard drive and 4GB of ram for $200 from the Dell Offlease website. Admittedly, the M4400 is getting long in the tooth, but since I'm retired, don't have a lot of spare $$$ laying around to buy something newer. Since I supported/used Dell corporate systems in my last couple of jobs as a sysadmin, I'm kinda particular about them... Bottom line: If you buy a Dell *anywhere* but on a Dell website, you're getting one of the consumer-grade Dell systems, with less warantee, offshore scripted "support", lots of bloatware.. Just not a good quality product like the corporate systems... My .02
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I use Linux as my main OS since the late '90s, and I found that the best laptop for Linux is still the Thinkpad series. I have had 4 different Thinkpad, and a series of other laptop, such as HP, Dell, Sony, Asus, etc. But Thinkpad is the one with the least problems. I'm currently using a Thinkpad x250. Lightweight, good battery, everything works with Linux (screen resolution sucks though). The other really good laptops for travel were Asus Eee PC (the first generation) and the Sony Vaio 505 series (I bought the first generation in 1998), they all worked great with Linux. I really missed them, when backpacking.
Thats the trouble, an XPS is a Dell consumer-grade system, not one of the corporate models (Precision/Latitude).. I'm annoyed that Dell only ships Linux on consumer-grade systems, NOT Precisions/Latitudes.. Theres a significant difference between corporate models and consumer models, such as the consumer systems have off-shore script "support", shorter warantees and in the case of systems with Winblowz, endless bloatware.. At least the Linux models skip the bloatware... Thankfully...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Last time I checked Linux was an option on the Precision lines (at least when I was ordering M4700's and M4800's)
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
My work just bought one for me recently. Installation of Kubuntu 16.04 was a breeze, it's worked nearly flawlessly ever since install. My only regret is that I did a HDD instead of SDD. It's light, good battery life, great display (when I'm on the road) and great docking station (when I'm not).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Very happy with the touch-screen XPS 13 and Ubuntu. Basically no trouble that I didn't create myself.
Specifically, I immediately tried to upgrade to 16.04 from the (working-fine) out-of-the-box 14.04, which failed, and then discovered that there was bug in the Ubuntu installer so it couldn't cope with the SSD.
But all work-roundable with pretty minimal googling. I might have been more worried if I wasn't used to setting up linuxes on laptops (first time I did it, I needed a framebuffer for the video. Tell that to 'the young people of today, they don't believe you.) But surely the same is true for pretty such anyone who would actually *want* linux on a laptop?
The only other real problem I had was video (working, but tearing), which all got better with xorg-edgers. Again, not difficult to solve with a bit of searching.
Since then, it All. Just. Works. So to speak. And it's very nice hardware.
Aberrations have appeared in my destiny prognostication engine!
My dell xps that I bought about a month ago works flawlessly for wireless. Only problem I've had so far is once after resume I had to reboot to get wireless back up, but that was once out of dozens of time it has resumed with no problems.
It's not all great, however. The trackpad almost makes it unusable. You literally cannot type on it w/o triggering the trackpad, and if you are using a browser to post (like here), it will autohighlight everything you've written, then delete it when you hit the next key. Similar problems in thunderbird.
I've been able to get typing in X windows mostly working, with combo of turning down trackpad sensitivity and the fact that the highlight to delete doesn't kill everything every other syllable. I think to use this for serious typing in thunderbird or browser will require a external mouse and turn off trackpad.
TL;DR: Dell XPS would be close to perfect if it had ibm-style eraser-mouse or a trackpad that didn't trigger if gnat flew over it at around 5' distance.
Got a System76 Oryx Pro for work; it is a beast of a laptop/server /w i7, SSD and it can go up to 64G of RAM. Will never buy another non-linux laptop again for myself.
Try Panasonic RZ6 or SZ6 (Panasonic promise 18 hours of battery life with i7!)
While we're on this subject, I'd love to hear people's recommendations for buying a laptop without windows in Australia
I don't get it. Why don't you complain to the chipset manufacturer? Or the laptop manufacturer? Or better yet, just fix it yourself? It's open source...
For the past 10 + years, I have been using Linux exclusively as my desktop environment, and all on laptops. I use Kubuntu 14.04 at present, and have been on the LTS versions for many years.
I only buy laptops that are on sale, whatever is in the flyers the week I need to replace a laptop.
From a 'what works' point of view, most of the laptops I have used have fully worked with Linux. That includes Wifi and sound, the most pesky components. Years ago, one Dell laptop had an issue with Wifi and I had to download something or other to make it work. The last few releases did not need anything special for it to work.
I am writing this from a 2009 Toshiba that works well with Kubuntu 14.04. An older Toshiba (maybe 2006 or 2007) still works fine with the same Kubuntu version.
From a reliability point of view, avoid HP laptops. I had one where the screen hinge decided not to work, and broke, so it is now a special purpose server. Another HP was overheating and we got it exchanged under extended warranty and 3 strikes (sent for repair 3 times for the same issue).
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Try https://www.reddit.com/r/linux.... This gets asked a lot
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
I just bought an HP Envy x360 15-series this past week.
Basic specs:
Intel 7th Gen i5-7200u
8GB DDR4 RAM
256GB NVMe SSD drive
15 inch 1920x1080 screen
Backlit Keyboard with number pad
No CD drive
Nice and light and thin.
I run Funtoo Linux on it. Install was the same as usual, except I forgot to include the NVMe drivers when I built the kernel, so I had to load up System Rescue CD, chroot in and build it again.
I have no use for the touch screen, or the fact I can fold it in half, it just met all of my requirements (no cd drive, backlit keyboard, 15-inch 1080p screen). Could certainly use more RAM, but that SSD certainly helps.
How's the stability? Do the drivers break often or when you do package updates?
Purism - laptops look pretty sleek.
AC comments get piped to
Because the linux username is pretty small (desktop/laptop wise) and the percent of this users than can code chipset drivers is even smaller.
I have the 2015 Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition and I have been very happy with it. I was actually an HP employee when I purchased it and I would buy it again. I got the base model with a 1080p non-touch display for $950. It is incredibly small and light with amazing battery life. My touchpad sucks (I use a mouse), hopefully the new on is better.
I bought one four months ago. The reason was that the first series that come with Broadwell processors, present some peculiarities with Linux (sound and battery life related) This comes with Windows 10 preinstalled but i reformat the machine and Install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and ArchLinux later. No problems with both ones. I return tu Ubuntu 16.04 because I am more happy with Unity 7, but with Archlinux I used Plasma 5 (KDE) and no problems. Battery Life is good, I checked the last time 10 hours only with battery.
Seriously I love linux, but dealing with hardware issues is a PITA.
This is why I use a MacBook Pro. Ok, not linux, but unix. But there isn't anything I can't do on it that I could do on linux. It "just works".
But if you must, I'd suggest getting something a bit older. Nothing too new and fancy so that folks have had time to develop drivers for the hardware.
I guess it's not what you're looking for, but I still believe it's totally worth it. I recently got an Asus UX501VW (15"), core i7 6700HQ, 16GB of DDR4 ram, 512gb m.2 SSD, hybrid intel (530) and nvidia gtx 960m, 4K monitor. It's running really great, no issues whatsoever with Fedora at least (running on 25) and some virtual machines I need for development. Performance is really nice, it's acceptably silent most of the time (unless it's compiling using all the cores etc, but even then it's not THAT bad). Also I'm really happy with the HiDPI situation in linux. I thought I was going to have many problems with it, but I really got none (at least with the apps I use). Something that also got me impressed, is the hybrid graphics situation. It's certainly not the best in linux, but it really works, I run whatever apps I need on the dGPU and use most of the time the eGPU which is giving me a very good performance for what it is. The battery life is not the best, I got around 5 something hours out of it, but I guess I can't have it all. Initially I was going for the Dell XPS 15 infinity 9550, but it was out of stock and I needed a laptop asap. Turns out, I got lucky. After seeing the problems the XPS had (needed lots of bios upgrades, but even then, meh - plus the keyboard space bar bug) and the lower price of the Asus ($1499 at the time), I consider it one of the best options. I actually wish there was a cheaper version with ONLY linux on it.
Yeah it isn't a big deal. I did that on my MS Surface. Turn off secure boot and Linux runs fine.
I can not guarantee that this is the best fit for the original poster, as I did not personally try running a VM on those. But in general Chromebooks are great Linux laptops for those who value battery life/form factor/versatility over raw power. ChromeOS is great for web browsing, movie watching and, these days, Android apps/games. Then for everything else, you can run Crouton or dual boot Linux from USB. All in all, that's a lot of different uses from a single unit of hardware.
Just throwing in my vote for a Thinkpad. I personally won't even consider a laptop that doesn't have a Trackpoint. NVidia drivers should pretty much work no problem with Linux however there can be issues with certain apps running under Wine with NVidia drivers to to be completely safe you might want to stick with an Intel graphics chipset.
Stuff I run on Wine: Kindle for PC, Adobe Acrobat XI, and Adobe Photoshop that latter of which has an issue with NVidia.
As for models it seems like all the most recent ones are getting pretty light with amazing battery life, but if you want ultra-light and great battery then get the X1 Carbon. Personally I would love to get one of the new P series.
FYI if you're really going for it and have $$$ and intend to use VR - which I would definitely want to do, then you should take this into consideration.
Would they provide systems preloaded w/ SteamOS?
All of the systems listed in the post are good choices. To those, I would add only the Librem laptops, which are designed specifically for Free Software:
https://puri.sm/products/
Like a camera - the best is the one you have when you want to use it.
Just go for something with the specs you want at the price you want, then do a quick google search to see if it's one of the rare things where the manufacturer has not supplied linux drivers or given the community enough info to write them.
The best choice IMHO for anything that doesn't have to do workstation computing is something that's now too slow to run Win8/10, shove a cheap SSD in it and it will just fly with 99% of linux applications. Remember that even Libreoffice runs fairly well on a Raspberry Pi and there is no recent laptop with specs that low.
If it's to run workstation software check with the software vendor about what OS they need - some laptops have problems with CentOS5 (2007) if the vendor doesn't like 6 (2010) or 7 (current).
I have a Dell Chromebook 13 running GalliumOS. I could not be moe happy. Replaced the SSd with a 256GB one (really easy to do!) and the performance, battery life, keyboard etc are just great. I have the 8GB model, runs VirtualBox like a charm. Highly recoomended!
I got a precision with a touch screen and a Linux preinstall (No windows) a couple months ago and the thing works great. The default wireless doesn't connect so well, though. I found I get much faster wireless if I use wicd-gtk. Touch screen works with Ubuntu, as well!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm quite surprised to see nobody has yet recommended an Acer Aspire One for this use case. I got my first AAO in 2008, when they were still little crappy 9", 1024x600 screens, and when the keys were actualy not at a standard distance. From the period when "Netbook" was being defined. It was far from perfect, but I loved it. Back then, I also had a 12" Dell XPS, wayyyyy heavier and bulkier, but of course, terribly more powerful. I took the AAO with me to way more places than the Dell.
Five years later, it was time for an upgrade. I got a new AAO; its models by 2013 had improved to a 10" 1366x768 screen, full-sized keyboard, but kept basically the same weight (the computers are quite thinner than the older generation).
I have recommended and bought seven such computers for friends and family. Never regretted it. As the original poster says, I'm after portability much more than power-- And having a US$300 computer that travels with me... Is just great.
Of course, I never had a hiccup recognizing all of its modest hardware with Linux.
The Linux laptop I have here supports graphics drivers fine. Better than Windows since it doesn't come bundled with nagware and doesn't try to update Windows every time I boot.
The battery life is a problem, in Windows 10 that is. And at least on Linux I can have no Cortana sucking up whatever remains of the battery.
On the other hand I tried a CentOS install, but the kernel was so old (3.10 for crying out loud) that it didn't recognize several recent hardware. I saw that and installed kubuntu over it.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I've the same priorities than you, and am happily using a 3rd gen Thinkpad Carbon X1 with Debian and KDE. A lot of other hardware will be ok too nowadays.
To minimize the laptop power consumption, be sure to install and configure either the old "laptop mode" package, or the more recent "tlp" package (The Laptop Project, a successor to the laptop mode). With a SSD, you can aggressively turn off the disk as there's no spin up wear issue. With TLP installed I'm typically idling below 5W and often below 4. The battery life is so good that I don't charge the battery to 100%, but only 85% and rarely go below 45%. This is a good way to increase the battery life of a Li-ion battery, and a nice touch of all Thinkpads is that you can configure an upper bound for charging. At 85% the ACPI BIOS returns a battery life over 10h30.
It even has three mouse buttons. Anti-glare FHD should be enough. 16GB RAM if you plan to run IDEs like eclipse or need some VMs on it. It can take several M.2 sticks. Not sure whether it can fit the Samsung 950 pro M.2 stick though, but it would be a nice touch!
I have never encountered a problem connecting to WiFi that was due to the software.
Hug wood. Do it now. Don't just touch it, or tap it, or knock it, make damn love to it.
You have never had a problem connecting WiFi under Linux on a Dell laptop? It's here. Our moment. THE SAVIOUR IS COMING! I got to run to church and pr
I had a Dell XPS 13 (probably 5-6 years ago, one of the early models) and ran Ubuntu on it for a while; it worked perfectly out of the box.
One day I did a dist-upgrade to a new version and the wifi stopped working completely. I can't recall the details but I think the network icon vanished completely. After much messing about I learned about something called "NetworkManager" (IIRC), reinstalled it, and it started working again.
After I got it working again, the network light on the laptop would blink any time traffic was sent/received (i.e., non-stop and all the time). It was really annoying.
This was, for me, a fairly typical Linux experience. But to be fair, it's a pretty typical experience with almost any software (it was working, it stopped, had to mess around to fix it, then it started again but was different in a way that was irritating and confusing).
This was a while ago and I'd like to think the software has matured since then. But your anecdote was sitting in isolation and I thought I should share one of mine from the other side :)
I have an Acer laptop that's been running openSUSE without issues since 2006. Despite being dropped down a flight of stairs by a butter-fingered Customs dude about a year after I bought it and cracking the cover.
Not dead yet. Sorry if you're disappointed by that.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I have just (end September) switched to a Lenovo T460p (i7-6820HQ, HD530/940MX Optimus, 14" 2560x1440) running openSUSE Tumbleweed. The only thing I'm not sure if it runs is the fingerprint reader, as I don't care about it and never checked. Everything else (including the M2 WAN adapter, 9h battery life, HW keys, suspend....) works absolutely smooth.
You've not updated your list of stock troll messages since, what, 1998 or so?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Who even cares about wifi cards any more? Seriously?
I carry a separate wifi/mobile data receiver and attach it to my laptop via USB. If there's signal, it works.
My receiver happens to be made by Samsung, but there are lots of other manufacturers to choose from.
As a bonus, I can also use it to make phone calls.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Just use wifi or satellite... The firewall only blocks wired connections which hardly anyone uses.
If price is any bit of a concern then I recommend installing GalliumOS (an xubuntu based Linux distro made for Chromebooks) onto a Toshiba CB35 2015 edition. It has a 1080p display, weighs less than 3 pounds and is plenty fast for development work. The best part about it is it only costs $350 with a 128GB SSD modification. If you're interested I have a full write up and review on it here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog...
What's the Best Linux Laptop?
I don't bother with that anymore. I rather just run a Linux VM as a guest on a Windows 7 host with some type of X client on the later. I have a dedicated RH box with all the bells and whistles, but I typically just xterm or vnc to it to build, deploy, run services, etc. My main workhorse is Windows 7 (with Cygwin), however.
I just got tired of having to deal with wifi issues. I'm sure shit is better now, but for what I do, why bother changing. For back-end shit, serious work, Linux always. For working with a UI or in a laptop, nope.
Now, I'm seriously considering a Mac which gives me the bulk of Unix tools I come to depend on.
It's a Latitude E6430, if you're wondering.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No, I haven't moved to 16.04 yet, mostly to stay consistent with installs on other machines in my dojo.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Avoid systems with dual Intel/Nvidia graphics. Support for that combination is not fully there yet and while it works, the Nvidia card subjects you to bad video tearing.
That is the only problem with running Linux on Dell hardware: you need to use their preferred OS (Ubuntu 14.04) and no other version. You also need to install their proprietary drivers or nothing on machine works. Instead of, you know, contributing their drivers upstream so you could install a newer OS version...
For what it's worth, Dell didn't install Ubuntu 14.04 for me. I did it myself. So, there are no proprietary drivers on my system, as far as I know.
BTW, my machine is a Latitude E6430.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Probably not the *best* but lightweight,sturdy enough for me, cheap and with a great battery life. I never used it more than 6 hours off the wall but I never experienced a dead battery. At start the WiFi was bad and the trackpad nonfunctional but with Ubuntu 16.10 the WiFi is usable and the trackpad working. It's the basic model with the FullHD display.
Purism is a relatively new company that builds Linux-centric hardware with an emphasis on open hardware. They have a small but nice lineup.
As far as modern Linux laptops go, I'd suspect you can't do any better.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Whatever you do, steer well clear of the HP Envy series. I have tried pretty much everything I could but hibernation under Linux just doesn't work on this thing. Pity really, everything else works really well (from suspend to the temperature sensors to the fingerprint reader, even the Fn function keys such as the volume rocker, screen brightness, media controls etc have worked out of the box since at least Kubuntu 14.04 which is the oldest distro I've tried on this laptop) and overall it's a pretty decent machine.
I have an XPS 13 dev edition, loaded. It's a nice puter, but it's a laptop.
I have a big clicky keyboard for it when it's at home and a wireless mouse. Hate the keypad.
It locks up from time to time from running Steam. I assume that is the video driver.
the Windows is strong with this one
I just got a ZaReason Strata 8110 laptop with Mint 18. It is a nice system. Works really well. Quad-core i7 processor, 8GB (now 16GB) of RAM, DVD recorder. I'm using it right now to post this comment. I only wish they had 9 cell batteries available - the 6 cell on only lasts for about 1.5 hours. That is my major complaint. Otherwise, it is a really nice machine. It has replaced my 10 year old Dell D630 laptop quite nicely, which was running CentOS 6.8.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Linux Mint running in a VM on a Surface Book. Not a purist solution but performant and a good middle-ground between OS flavours.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I've had a ton of Thinkpad laptops, but my current favorite is the T450s with intel graphics. The batteries last forever on this thing under linux (with tlp installed) and you can change the battery. It has a built-in battery, and I have one normal battery and one big battery that I can switch between. Between the two external batteries I can swap, I easily get 20 hours of battery life from my laptop. (I can basically book any airline flight without regard to whether my seat will have a power port.)
The only thing that doesn't work on the laptop is hybernating to disk. (~20% of resumes hang.) But the battery life is so incredible that I just suspend to RAM. With recent kernels, I also had to enable CSM in the kernel or the laptop would freeze up occasionally, but it's never happened with CSM. I also enabled UXA rather than SNA in xorg.conf because otherwise okular was slow. Other than that, everything works flawlessly.
I would generally be wary of posts on here that recommend a laptop without mentioning little tweaks like that, because in my experience you always have to fiddle with something. Also, stay clear of recommendations for laptops with NVIDIA graphics (even if they also have intel graphics), because often even disabled the discrete NVIDIA graphics logic, it still draws a significant amount of power.
The other thing I'd consider, if I wanted absolutely everything to work, is libreboot-based laptops, endorsed by the FSF. Haven't tried them myself, but will if thinkpad ever stops being an option: https://minifree.org/
Thanks. No seriously thanks. I can probably get one of those since our work is getting rid of that if not a very similar generation model. I've had problems with my ancient Inspiron as well as a 3 year old XPS. The XPS is very hit and miss, but my old Inspiron ... well normally i'd make a Cubs joke but that's no longer appropriate :)
We are going to do it, and we are going to get Pottering to pay for it! - Donald "Bozo Orangutan Hitler Wannabe" Drumph
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No go. I don't want a phone home laptop.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Sounds like the typical Linux WiFi experience"
I find it depends on the kind of wifi. I've never had a problem connecting from linux to my home wifi, using WPA2-PSK. My association and IP stay constant for months. I've had no end of problems with the distributed wifi at work, using WPA2-EAP. I usually loose connectivity every time I move from one room to another. I sometimes loose my association and IP during a meeting (which orphans all of my ssh sessions). A few times I've had to rmmod and modprobe the wireless driver.
IIRC, there's a flag in /proc somewhere that changes the behaviour of that LED, and the default probably changed around the time you did that dist-upgrade....
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Aren't lots of them going to be doing that to charge the phone in any event?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
My Dell Inspiron has no issues with wifi or any other hardware. Well, so long as I stick with the 4.4 kernel. The video drivers in 4.5 and up cause me some problems that I haven't taken the time to quash, though preliminary research suggests it's a configuration issue that should be easily resolved. This is a laptop that was designed for Windows.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
I see some mentioned Syst76 (whose machines aren't delivered to Europe), but missing here I think are Zareason, ThinkPenguin and more prominently Tuxedo indeed. All of them sell you configuration with Linux pre-installed and working out of the box.
Starting there for instance: www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks/10-14-Zoll/TUXEDO-Book-BU1406-14-matt-Full-HD-IPS-bis-Intel-Core-i7-Energiespar-CPU-zwei-HDD/SSD-bis-32GB-RAM-bis-12h-Akku-Slim-Book-LTE-opt..geek
One can check spec-for-spec against the latest Apple gear (and easily can overpass all of them)
This is basically what I intend to switch to, in January...
Herve S.
This precise topic comes up so often that it might be worthwhile just re-starting the thread every month or two and archiving the previous version so people can go back to old commments relatively easily (if there's any relevance to that).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Our household has been running versions of Ubuntu on our laptops for the last decade. My son, who is nine, has never known had another OS (other than Ubuntu). My wife (a writer) wrote and formatted her book. My personal laptops all have been running versions of Ubuntu. I think we represent a fair distribution of users. Disclosure: we are still running 14.04 LTS. The 16.04 LTS upgrade has been problematic for our current hardware. Now, we have had a few issues. And mostly surrounding upgrades. The only truly serious one was a graphics driver on an older HP POS Desktop I was attempting to use as an experimental server. There have been a few issues with finding the right drivers/codex for foreign DVDs, but we did find them. Best of luck.
I have a Dell XPS 13. I was not able to get the Linux Developers version. The only real difference between the two is the wifi chipset. I have had absolutely zero issues with my XPS 13 and in fact, I like it a lot. I am currently running Linux Mint on it. I believe it is the 17.3 release? Regardless it is the one before they rebased on a newer Ubuntu LTS.
Simple. Easy. Trouble free. Rock solid. Oh... and a gorgeous screen. The colors are not faded and grey like lesser grade panels display.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
My Inspiron was flaky as heck with the WiFi under Linux.
Mind you this isn't a flag against Linux, more so the driver model. My HP Spectre has flaky WiFi in Windows.
And by flaky I mean refuses to connect to access points where many other devices have zero issue, but only some access points ruling out general hardware faults.
Got it second-hand a year or two back, running Arch (4.7.6-1). Never had any problems, wi-fi always worked perfectly. Never bothered to try getting the fingerprint reader to work, though I believe it can be done.
Core i5, Nvidia something
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I have a Dell Latitude E5440 running Linux Mint (17 - Rebecca), and I have issues with WiFi from time to time; mostly dropping the network and not being able to get it back unless I reboot the laptop. It's a real pain.
To give you another alternative to consider: TUXEDO Computers from Germany is producing Linux-tailored notebooks and PCs. We have around 20 different noteboook models from ultrabook-type 13" devices up to 17,3" desktop replacement monsters. Have a look here if your're interested: https://www.tuxedocomputers.co... Currently our shop unfortunately only offers German language, but we're working on that and in the meantime I'm happy to answer questions here (or via email if you prefer.)
I usually loose connectivity every time I move from one room to another. I sometimes loose my association and IP during a meeting
You should tighten that connectivity and association, you might lose a bolt or something.
I would also add to your statements, it depends on the wifi card. Some cards are much better than others, and some are much more supported than others. The Atheros chips seem to be pretty good.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?