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?

Comments

Asus UX305CA

[Lisandro]

Beautiful design, screen and battery life, plus it runs the latest Linux kernels without any issues whatsoever. I love mine.

Re: Asus UX305CA

[Anonymous Coward]

Typing this on one. Got it for only $450 used on Amazon. SSD is a little small at 256GB, but it's got 8GB of RAM and will go for 5-6 hours on medium brightness. So light and easy to carry that I've had two people remark on how little it weighs. Fanless, so it's silent, and while the processor is a little underpowered for serious multi-tasking as long as you're not running multiple VMs at a time it'll be fine.

Re:Asus UX305CA

[Dr. Evil]

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.

Re:Asus UX305CA

[eneville]

Asus x200ca, it's been a great portable. Very light. It had Windows 8 forced onto it by the retailer, but that has never been booted. First boot was a deb install, and that has been perfect since day 1. The laptop was bought for me to do oncall work for $employer at the time. The Fujitsu they gave me was terrible, the battery lasted for half an hour, if that and it was too heavy. Had to put my hand into my pocket to get this but it's been a dream and has meant when on a call-out I could do work with relative ease.

I'm half tempted to get an SSD for it.

Re:Asus UX305CA

[AmiMoJo]

NEC LaVie X. Well supported Intel chipset, Core i7, Intel wifi/BT that is easily replaceable, upgradable SSD, full size keyboard with all the right keys in the right place including a numpad, full HD screen. The only thing it lacks is upgradable RAM.

Re:Asus UX305CA

[Dr. Evil]

Awesome, I'll add it to my list to check out. I'm not thrilled about the keyboard layout, but there isn't a manufacturer left who respects keyboard layouts. Apple and Lenovo used to be good about it, but those days are over.

Any old HP commercial grade laptop

[hambone142]

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.

Re:Any old HP commercial grade laptop

[0123456]

Or a new one. I bought a Probook 470 G3 recently, and it all just works with Ubuntu 16.04. Only issue I had was that Ubuntu wouldn't boot in EFI mode (it booted from CD and ran through the full install, then wouldn't boot after), so I had to reinstall in legacy mode.

same as it ever was

[steak]

pick a thinkpad any thinkpad.

Re:same as it ever was

[rsw]

Generally agreed that Thinkpads should be at or near the top of the list.

But maybe not quite "any Thinkpad": some of the more recent models have RAM soldered to the motherboard or have just one SODIMM slot. The first makes it hard to upgrade (likely on purpose: you want more RAM, you have to buy it from Lenovo) and the second hurts performance (single channel rather than dual-channel RAM configuration).

I looked at Thinkpads recently and liked the specs and price on the Thinkpad 13: two SODIMM slots (supports 16 GB of RAM, maybe even 32), an i5 or i7, and a 1920x1080, matte, non-touch 13" screen. I liked the old Thinkpad keyboards more than the new ones, but the latter are still much better than your average laptop keyboard (and, of course, you get the Touchpoint---a must!).

At higher price points there are other good options, but you should be able to get something like the above for under $1k. Hard to beat.

Re: same as it ever was

[Luthair]

One other issues with thinkpads is that WiFi card are 'white listed' in the BIOS and must be purchased from lenovo. So if there card doesn't wish or support is stopped you either trust a hacked BIOS or buy at 5-7x the price from lenovo

Re:I use Trump distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove systemd: make linux great again.

Re: My Dell XPS that came with Linux installed...

[Luthair]

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

What do you need?

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re: What do you need?

[ranton]

I imagine it would have terrible battery life with that spec

Laptops like those are mobile workstations, meant to be moved from one desk to another. They are usually plugged in at all times. At least mine was when I had one. I personally would love a laptop with a desktop class processor even if it only have a half hour battery life. But I've never found one yet.

Re: What do you need?

[0100010001010011]

The new Dell Precision line has a Xeon as an option. For being a 4 year old chip my 3940XM still benchmarks rather well for a fraction of what the new machines cost.

Re:What do you need?

[0100010001010011]

It's centered on the keyboard sans num pad, which to me, is where it belongs. With my hands on the home row I can touch it equally with both thumbs. With a centered track pad I'd be resting my right palm on it.

I needed something simple and

[waspleg]

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.

Stay away from Skylake

[Anonymous Coward]

+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....

Re:Stay away from Skylake

[adolf]

Go to their (any manufacturer's) website, look for laptops that are for business. And then look for the expensive lines to see what names they have in common.

For Dell, this is Latitude and Precision (and kinda XPS). For HP, it seems that Elitebook is the proper nomenclature.

HP's consumer notebooks are absolutely the worst I've ever had to fix. HP's good notebooks are fine.

My old, stripped-down Dell Precision has a magnesium bottom panel that comes off with one screw, and has been a joy to use: I wanted a budget computer with plenty of I/O for the work that I do, that was easy to work on, and I got it used for less than $200. (Runs Linux fine, of course, including bells and whistles. Slackware currently.)

A cheap consumerish Dell, though? I worked on one a couple of years ago that was unstable. Through troubleshooting, the next move was to simply re-seat the RAM.

The RAM was on the bottom of the motherboard as is commonly the case. But the chassis had no access panel there. The entire bloody thing had to be disassembled, and the motherboard removed, to re-seat the RAM. This did solve the problem, but holy fuck it was a PITA to fix this (amazingly common, anywhere) glitch.

Re:Stay away from Skylake

[adolf]

Have new Skylake desktop, with persnickity Radeon RX 460 video card, with Ubuntu 16.04.

It is running drivers from both AMD and Intel's websites, and I'm using both the IGP and RX 460 to drive monitors. Works fine. I hotplug monitors with it, and they just work with the default Unity.

It was an unrepentant pain in the dick to actually download those drivers (since neither website is navigable using links or lynx): It is literally impossible to install AMD's drivers for this card on a new installation of Ubuntu without outside assistance. (I wound up using a thumb drive and another computer.)

But once the drivers were installed, I've had no problems. (OK, some problems: I get some video tearing on pornhub.com, but I don't find it distracting in that context. Youtube and other video sites work fine. Haven't done anything with local media and a real media player, but I expect it to be fine.)

Monitors sleep fine, everything runs cool and damn-near silent with no effort on my part -- power consumption must be low. Zero hangs, but it's only been a week of solid use. Who knows.

Anyhow, by all accounts I should have a ridiculously unstable, hard-to-configure system, and while the latter is true the former is not: Again, it's fine. I'm impressed by how well it works.

A laptop with Skylake's IGP should be exactly the same except perhaps for suspend/resume: After all, the functional difference (as software is concerned) between a laptop and a desktop, both with Skylake and IGP, is almost nil. This stuff is rather completely homogenized.

Re: My Dell XPS that came with Linux installed...

[ClickOnThis]

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.

Re:My Dell XPS that came with Linux installed...

[armanox]

Last time I checked Linux was an option on the Precision lines (at least when I was ordering M4700's and M4800's)

System76 Oryx Pro

[AnthonywC]

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.

Purism?

[Sebby]

Purism - laptops look pretty sleek.

MacBook Pro

[whitelabrat]

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.

Chromebooks

[iamacat]

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.

Throwing in my vote for a Thinkpad

[execthis]

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.

Re:Throwing in my vote for a Thinkpad

[AHuxley]

+1 for any good Thinkpad. A lot of the people who code seem to ensure most things are supported.

Re: Throwing in my vote for a Thinkpad

[execthis]

sounds more like the copper would have corroded from salt not oxidized. oxidation happens all the time from air exposure.

Re:Stability

[AnthonywC]

I run Ubuntu LTS 16.04 (and briefly 14.04) version; wireless & video are both quite stable. System76 actually recommend to install their own driver so maybe that helps. I haven't had any driver break during upgrade but I did mange to break lightdm with a manual kernel upgrade but I think that was more of a kernel or lightdm bug. Ubuntu also has a stupid wireless resume from suspend bug that requires me to hack a script to fix.

Dell Chromebook 13 - love it

[profke]

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!

No comments on Acer Aspire One so far?

[gwolf]

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.

Same priority - a recommendation

[YoopDaDum]

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.

Re: My Dell XPS that came with Linux installed...

[thegarbz]

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

Re:WSL?

[sconeu]

No go. I don't want a phone home laptop.