Linux Laptop Recommendations

http://jc00ke.com/2014/09/02/linux-laptop-recommendations/

by kyledrake • 12 years ago

51 89 12 years ago

nextos3• 12 years ago

I'm wondering if Google will update their Chromebook Pixel, which was almost perfect.

I'm using a Chromebook pixel at the moment, with Ubuntu sideloaded and elementaryOS installed as a Window Manager on top of that. It's working pretty well.

kyledrake2• 12 years ago

I would pay serious money for a beefed-up i7 Chromebook Pixel with an actual hard drive that runs Linux. I love the non-MS keyboard.

jeorgun• 12 years ago

I'm using a Chromebook Pixel running Arch right now. It works pretty well with KDE, and almost perfectly with GNOME, with the exception of— stupidly— Chromium, which has pretty minimal high-DPI support.

nextos3• 12 years ago

That's interesting as I also use Arch and I'm looking forward to getting a second hand one.

Have they solved the EFI glitch when power was lost?

What's the baseline power consumption (as reported by powertop)?

CoffeeDregs• 12 years ago

I've been using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon for 2 years (I pre-ordered one and then upgraded it a year later). I have nothing but good things to say about it. I'm an avid user of the Trackpoint and only use the mousepad for scrolling so can't comment on the quality of the mousepad... Otherwise, the machine is perfect. Build quality is good, performance is fine and it's got a nice sized screen. Mini-DisplayPort. Excellent keyboard layout. Bog standard hardware, so everything is well supported by Linux.

I have a hard time imagining a more suitable laptop for Linux.

gerner• 12 years ago

I also have an X1 Carbon, been running linux flawlessly for over a year, probably close to 2. I love it. It's great. I got some bleeding edge graphics drivers and play Strike Suit Zero without issues (but my standards are low) when I'm not having it do map reduce jobs :)

That said, we've got some Lenovo T440s in the office that come with a wifi card (Realtek RTL8192EE) that's unsupported by ubuntu at the moment (there's an active bug at ubuntu [1] that walks through the issues and has workarounds)

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1239578

nextos3• 12 years ago

Sadly they botched the new one by introducing those horrid function keys.

w1ntermute2• 12 years ago

Same here, the X1 Carbon (2013) is the best Linux laptop I've found to date. Unfortunately, the 2014 refresh completely screwed things up with both the TrackPoint[0] and the keyboard[1].

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXa0XzNvuZU

1. http://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/01/stop-trying-to-innovate...

nfmangano• 12 years ago

I got the Carbon X1 Touch myself, and absolutely love it. I only have two complaints:

(1) my battery only lasts for 2.5 hours in linux on a good day, while it lasts over 6 hours in windows, and

(2) I develop touch-based apps, and ubuntu doesn't broadcast touch events to its browser. The system itself can receive touch events (if you tap three fingers on a window, it triggers the move mode), but the browsers themselves only receive mouse events. The result is that I cannot use pinch-and-zoom on touch-enabled webapps.

ShinyCyril• 12 years ago

I had similar problems with battery life. Take a look at TLP [1] - my battery life improved dramatically after installing it (mostly on default settings).

[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XXVnP0Y...

kyledrake2• 12 years ago

I'm using the Dell Developer XPS 13, fresh installed with Xubuntu 14.04 (XFCE is by far the best), with no problems. It's very competitive with the MacBook Air line, similar lightness but with good performance. The keyboard types really well, and doesn't have a lot of weird extra buttons like many PC laptops do. It's also devoid of the legacy oddities many PC laptops have (red nipples in the keyboard, VGA ports, etc).

I did have to make a slight tweak to the trackpad config, but I believe they have fixed that with a recent change. If not, google for synaptics AreaBottomEdge and that will give you what you need to tune it.

I previously had a MacBook, and decided to stop using Apple products after the Bitcoin app ban fiasco (and because I don't agree with many of their policies). Now that I'm comfortable with my Linux laptop, I like it a lot more than my old MacBook. It's been a great experience, and it also means my development environment is closer to my production one, so I'm happy with it.

Edit: Despite my reservations towards the legacy weirdness of the Thinkpad line, I've learned through observation that they are kindof the industry standard for Linux laptops right now, and people seem to like them. When I meet someone running a Linux laptop, it's usually a thinkpad.

Istof• 12 years ago

I think Kubuntu is slightly better

tedunangst• 12 years ago

I must say it's strange to me to pick dell over apple because of an App Store policy. If dell had an App Store, how confident are you their policies would be better than apple's?

dmix2• 12 years ago

Dell is a hardware company, Apple is primarily a closed-garden software company with hardware as a lock-in to the former.

dfox• 12 years ago

The "legacy ThinkPad weirdness" is one of the reasons why ThinkPads are popular for Linux (and free OS's in general). Older ThinkPads were IBM PC first and laptop second, thus were designed such that the whole thing works reasonably well when you run DOS on it (ie. OS that predates ACPI and thus has no idea that such thing even exists) and it not only worked, but was actually supported by IBM. This allowed Linux to work reasonably without any special considerations towards laptop-specific hardware. Somehow, this was deemed insufficient and commmunity had reverse engineered almost complete BIOS and embedded controller APIs for ThinkPad line (it certainly helps that these APIs are remarkably backward compatible, even though IBM->Lenovo transition had broken some important features like hardware volume control)

w1ntermute2• 12 years ago

the legacy oddities many PC laptops have (red nipples in the keyboard

The TrackPoint is not a "legacy oddity," it's a far superior input method compared to a trackpad, if you take the time to learn how to use it.

soperj• 12 years ago

Exactly. I hate trackpads, and would love to be able to buy a new thinkpad without one.

philsnow2• 12 years ago

The TrackPoint is not a "legacy oddity," it's a far superior input method compared to a trackpad, if you take the time to learn how to use it.

IMHO the proper way to use a pointing device is "sparingly", which suits the trackpoint _perfectly_.

de_dave• 12 years ago

+1 on the XPS 13 (although I got mine refurbed rather than the dev edition) - aside from a little typical wifi flakiness, it's bloody fantastic and very un-Dell!

mindslight3• 12 years ago

Have shortscreens started to fall out of fashion at all yet? I'm having a serious case of tech-inadequacy after I got my mom an X230 and my girlfriend decided she wanted one too. But looking at that X230 side-by-side with my identical-width T61, I can't bring myself to give up 2.5 inches of vertical screen real estate. (And the "14 inch" T440p is still a whole 1.5 inches shorter, in addition to the whole thing being much wider).

I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)

I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up at all, given that manufacturers have moved on to even more terrible ideas like soldering a paltry amount of RAM to the motherboard, and then removing one or even both sodimm slots. Maybe I just need a NUC strapped to a car battery.

NovaS1X4• 12 years ago

I'm an avid Thinkpad user and one of the many reason is the 16:10 screens. What is largely the reason that I have not upgraded from my current x200/201 hybrid[1] is the lack of 16:10 screens. I've considered a Mac but I can't get past the keyboard/glass screen and lack of trackpoint.

Either way I understand you position.

[1] x200 chassis with x201 motherboard. Ask for more details if you're interested.

philsnow2• 12 years ago

... i'm interested. why / how did you do that ?

JoshTriplett2• 12 years ago

I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)

It does not erase your installation when it loses power. If you switch into or out of developer mode, it'll wipe user data, but otherwise your data is safe.

As for "locked-down computing", as long as Google continues to mandate developer mode as part of their hardware requirements, that seems quite sufficient to me.

dman• 12 years ago

Yes it does lose data if you run out of battery while your laptop is sleeping! You have been warned - https://plus.google.com/117057264318218846563/posts/hnVnjpF5...

https://plus.google.com/111049168280159033135/posts/4nkSEmGo...

Its the main reason why I dont use my pixel anymore.

mindslight3• 12 years ago

Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:

[Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch

I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?

I wouldn't be worried about my data per se (backed up with unison, etc), just the hassle of reinstalling and ultimately wary of electing into that kind of user-hostile design.

"Developer mode" is equivalent to rooting your phone - something that most users won't do, and that some misguided developers will even think they should discriminate against (I believe some banking apps were recently mentioned here). Even if you go out of your way to do it and suffer the oddities, buying such a device sends an economic signal (to Google and developers) and social signal (to less-clued friends) that the official locked-down experience is desirable.

gue5t• 12 years ago

I can't fathom why so many laptops feature half-height arrow keys. Do all important consumer segments use vim keybinds?

Plus, the images of the products are always at oblique angle that make seeing the keyboard unnecessarily difficult. Nobody gives two shits what a laptop looks like 85%-shut from the corner.

Mikeb85• 12 years ago

I've got a ThinkPad (albeit a T530) and it runs Linux flawlessly...

codemac• 12 years ago

Thinkpad t440s has been great for me besides SATA link power management issues (which I had on my linux macbook air as well).

bluedino• 12 years ago

The Acer C720 does a really good job of running Ubuntu natively and can be had for under $199 USD if you search around

CraigJPerry• 12 years ago

I picked up a £200 refurbed thinkpad x201 at the beginning of the year as a travel laptop that could get damaged and i wouldn't care.

Everything works perfectly, including integrated GPS and 3G modem. Here's the setup instructions captured in Ansible so i don't need to do it manually when wiping: https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home-network/blob/master/role...

hadoukenio2• 12 years ago

Thinkpad. Period.

vhost-• 12 years ago

Seriously! I'm very surprised Thinkpads (outside of the x1) were not mentioned at all. This blows my mind!

tbatterii• 12 years ago

Yep, for under 2K that w540 would be awesome. I had the previous version and it was probably my favorite laptop ever, ran linux like a champ.

warble• 12 years ago

Love my T431 running kubuntu. Works great.

scottlocklin• 12 years ago

x220 here. The only bad thing I'll say about it is the out of the box wireless was crap. I caused myself endless problems by not selecting the $5 Intel 6205 upgrade. Battery life is only 4-5 hours (Windows squeezes out 6-8), but I can live with it.

tdicola• 12 years ago

I would also add Macbook Air with Parallels/VMware/etc. running Linux. Price is in the $900 range for an entry level one, build quality is great, and battery life is amazing. Running Linux in a VM is nice because you get working power management, touchpad, etc. from the host OS without any screwing around.

pan69• 12 years ago

I'm also running Linux (XUbuntu) as my development environment of a MacAir. It's been pretty sweet so far. The only thing it could use is more memory. A 32GB option would actually be nice in the MacAir but there might be hardware limitations for this.

Pengwin• 12 years ago

I'm using a Samsung NP900x3c with a plain ubuntu 14.04 install and I have to say its the smoothest experience i've had with linux on a laptop so far. Everything works out of the box and the most technical thing you have to do is disable windows 8's securite/quick book options.

I would have really loved to use elementaryOS on it but without the 3.13 kernel the CPU and GPU refused to play nicely and the machine refused to sleep. These issues were fixed in the 3.13 kernel.

The main problem I have found with laptops and linux is still GPU. Im reluctant to use a laptop with anything but an intel GPU these days because the last experience I had with an AMD GPU was simply terrible. The AMD drivers refused to install on anything but a specific kernel and even when installed the laptop performed better when i told the AMD control panel to always use the intel chip over the AMD one.

Id like to be able to change my opinion, but AMD and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still some sort of absurd joke.

jiggy2011• 12 years ago

You could built 3.13 from source as an interim measure. The kernel compiles pretty fast these days.

aidenn02• 12 years ago

I've had zero problems with the nvidia drivers, so long as I use the binary ones. Nouveau has been useless. radeon has been very crashy, NoAccel is my only option for it being stable.

brerlapn3• 12 years ago

I posted separately on my experience with my laptop, but I would vehemently +1 the driver issues for AMD Radeon. My laptop has Radeon 7700 graphics, which in practice means I have had to wipe and reinstall Ubuntu four or five times in the past year after a system upgrade broke the graphics. Catalyst drivers work great, but they break completely upon some combination of upgrade (kernel? who knows). I realize this was naive reasoning, but I assumed that AMD's sponsorship of OpenSUSE would mean better support for Linux.

I didn't have trouble with my Dell e1505 running Nvidia drivers, but I didn't tax it very hard, either, other than using Compiz for some desktop effects.

I thought having a proper graphics chip rather than integrated Intel graphics would make for a snappier experience, but in the future I'll just stick with integrated graphics and max out the RAM.

Edit: Good to hear the Samsung works so well. I remember seeing some issues with those on the Ubuntu forums when they came out, which is why I opted for a different brand, but I'd expect to revisit them on my next purchase.

hnriot• 12 years ago

T440p, works great with Ubuntu 14.04. I've not figured out the driver for the fingerprint detector yet though. Not that I care much about that. The SSD makes it super fast to boot and autologin (~7 seconds)

secstate• 12 years ago

I've got the t440s. Not sure the readers has the same specs, but this got it working on mine:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_integrated_finge...

infinotize• 12 years ago

I have one of the old Lenovo X1 Carbons from when they first came out. It's great, I had been considering a MacBook Air, but I liked the thin bezel on the X1, a little more screen resolution, and Linux-ability (was also a couple hundred cheaper at the time). I mainly use it for coding and web browsing and the slowest CPU with 4GB memory and 128GB SSD does fine for a dual boot setup with Win7 and Ubuntu. The overall look and feel, and the keyboard (pre-weird function row thing) are the highlights, but the screen is not the best, especially after using a MBP retina often. But it works and I'm happy with it. The changed keyboard would make me question a new model, and I'm not interested in a touch screen. Also, the touchpad is the best I've used on a non-Apple laptop, and is of comparable quality. It has a trackpoint, but I never use it.

vacri5• 12 years ago

I have a very old x201 that I love... except for that damned screen. The visual angle is so small that even sited directly in front of it, looking square on, the blacks around the edges look bad. Makes it hard to watch a dark movie.

The other thinkpads I've seen don't have screens this bad, but this one is a corker. Apart from that, I love the little thing.

NovaS1X4• 12 years ago

You can upgrade the screens on the x200 and x201 to an AFFS (IPS) model quite easily.

scythe• 12 years ago

These look pretty nice, especially the 1920x1080, despite the 14.1-inch form factor -- https://system76.com/laptops/model/galu1 -- especially if you're weary[1] of configuring binary drivers for the 9001st time, and again whenever you install a new distribution. I've never actually met anyone who has a system76, though, and personally, I think that installing Debian on a MacBook is a big pain (REFind notwithstanding), though it is nice once you get it going.

Only problem is that system76 seems to be stuck in the early 2000s, making laptops which are simply bigger than anyone really wants these days. Pixel density on the small ones, at least, has come on par with many PCs, but still lags Apple.

cik• 12 years ago

Earlier this year, I raved about my System76, it blew my Macbook away. Then is died a horrible death - thankfully, it was a client's.

Now, I've gotten a custom build Sager from ReflexNotebook (reflexnotebook.ca). It screams, it's 13", it was fully supported out of the box by Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17, and more importantly, a full 3 year warranty.

Though, if you'd like to support the community, check out ZaReason. I'm done buying from everyone else. Linux support is (shockingly) finally at the point where usually, things just work.

aidenn02• 12 years ago

I saw no notebooks with higher vertical res than 1080; that's a dealbreaker for me.

tenken• 12 years ago

I have a 3 year System76 warranty for my laptop ...

kaji882• 12 years ago

I might be the odd one out. I have a macbook pro retina running ubuntu 14 using parallels. Could not happier.

Assuming budget isn't an issue, I find many linux laptops (including the 13inch Dell) to have bad UX. Relatively short battery life, low res screen, and may i say, terrible trackpad.

Apple trackpads are significantly better than all competitors.

On top of that, a lot of nice to have apps don't run on linux. Things like screenhero. And apps that do have a linux build often don't work as well. (Think skype, hipchat)

Running VM on macbooks is the best of both worlds, you get linux for development and OSX for everything else.

vacri5• 12 years ago

Comparing notes with an OSX colleague, hipchat runs as poorly on OSX as it does on Linux. Mine sometimes gets random freezes (1/fortnight), his gets unreconnectable disconnections (1-2/week), both require relaunching the app. We have no devs on Win, so I don't know how that compares.

dmix2• 12 years ago

What is the best VM software for OSX? I tried using VirtualBox but it seems kind of slow and unreliable for daily use.

kaji882• 12 years ago

Go with parallels, without a doubt the best you can go with. Very fast and feels native.

The downside if you won't be able to use a windows manager like WMII. Because parallels provide bindings for unity that makes the whole experience smooth and they don't provide bindings for other windows managers

https://www.parallels.com/

cjbprime• 12 years ago

Here's a blog post I made about Linux on modern Ultrabooks, including the one I ended up with (Fujitsu Lifebook U904): http://blog.printf.net/articles/2014/02/02/fujitsu-lifebook-...

w0uld• 12 years ago

Linux (various flavors) runs exceptionally well on my Lenovo Y580 with Nvidia GTX660M.

ck2• 12 years ago

What about that $130 refurb chromebook.

I think people have been putting ubuntu on it.

xkiwi2• 12 years ago

I have t42p, t43p, t60 and t61 running CentOS and Ubuntu.

#All of them has up time for more than 500 days. #T42p been on since 2007. #I am missing old IBM laptop, almost everything are serviceable.

I believe in "user-serviceable" of anything, Cars, Washing Machines and old IBM/Lenovo laptops.

bd_at_rivenhill• 12 years ago

I had to take my old T60 apart last summer to clean out all the fans and apply more heatsink compound. Runs smooth now, but had an annoying habit of crashing during heat waves before I did this.

xkiwi2• 12 years ago

I use compressed air to clean the fans every 6 months, also applied new Arctic Silver 5 cpu paste.

I have fans controlled not to run unless CPU or GPU over 52C.

Looking for a replacement like Thinkpad is extreme hard.

userbinator• 12 years ago

If you don't mind a slightly slower CPU and less RAM, the Thinkpad X60 is probably the only laptop that can run 100% free software:

http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-...

This also means that you shouldn't have any issues with running Linux distros on it. I have one and it is more than enough for the things I'd use a laptop for - email, SSH, programming, light web browsing.

Anthony-G• 12 years ago

As I need a new laptop, I was excited to see this – even more when I followed the link and saw that you could buy one with 3GB RAM and an SSD hard drive. What killed it for me was the screen size: 12 inches is much too small for me. :(

PostOnce• 12 years ago

I got a secondhand laptop, works great for the bulk of my work. HP 6910p, 2.4ghz core2duo, 4gb ram, $160. Pretty magnesium case and a ton of features and a trackpoint, easy sell for me, I'd have to spend ~$1500 that I consider much of an improvement.

Running Lubuntu 14.04 -- most of my work is Python related at the moment. I'm happy with this setup -- if I need more power I can always use the desktop which is a Core i5, $1500 to carry that around with me wasnt convincing

kristianp• 12 years ago

This guy is a big fan of Samsung, despite the case cracking on his? Sounds like a range of laptops to avoid.

I have a Thinkpad T410, it has been very solid, I don't think there is one item that will physically wear out anytime soon, except for the power plug, which is larger than most brands, but has started to become loose. Oh for a magsafe power plug! Actually the little bumps on the trackpad are starting to wear off in the middle, but this doesn't seem to affect it's function.

mindslight3• 12 years ago

except for the power plug ... has started to become loose

Another great thing about Thinkpads is they're quite easy to fix.

I assume you mean the jack? That should be a separate piece, attached to the motherboard with a cable. If it's just wobbly, then it just needs to be tightened, possibly even without opening the laptop. If it's a poor connection, then you should be able to get a new one for <$5. On the T61, both of these things are dead easy, but check the T410 Hardware Maintenance Manual for the details.

(of course, now I'm thinking about the prospect of replacing this piece with a magsafe connector...)

jc00ke3• 12 years ago

You're right, after 2 years it shouldn't be cracking, but I really do like everything else about the machine.

I just want nice things! ;)

davidy1232• 12 years ago

Would need more qualifiers; do you want a big screen, minimum size+weight, etc?

I just got a "new" Thinkpad T530. It's a two year old model, but the last of the Thinkpads with physical mouse buttons, essential for using the Trackpoint. Got it for $550 with three year warranty after rebates; the specs are comparable to a current model. It takes up to 16GB RAM and supports up to three dedicated storage devices. In general Thinkpads run Linux very well. This was mainly for the larger screen, I saved enough I can wait for a travel computer in early 2015 based on Broadwell.

whopa• 12 years ago

Where'd you get a "new" one? I'm in the market for a new laptop, but I'm highly disappointed with the changes made to the current Thinkpad line.

davidy1232• 12 years ago

You can find them from various closeout locations. They aren't usually such a great deal (value of unremoved features aside) but the 2392APU I got for an effective $550 is a very good deal.

https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=t530&...

jjsz• 12 years ago

For under $1000 one can get a year or two late Gigabyte on Newegg or wherevere with ram for dedicated graphics.

I'm not affiliated with them, I just own an U2442, and am extremely satisfied.

zihotki• 12 years ago

I personally recommend Asus N550JV - IPS screen, good CPU and GPU, a lot of memory, very good build quality, not expensive, and runs Ubuntu as well as Mint (and probably other Debian-based distros)

edtechdev• 12 years ago

By chance is there a detachable/convertible tablet that anyone would recommend that runs Ubuntu well?

There's a detachable Ekoore Python S3 tablet which triple boots to Ubuntu, Windows, and Android, but it doesn't appear to be available in the U.S.

brerlapn3• 12 years ago

I'm running an Asus U38n, which has AMD chipset and graphics. I picked it because I liked the Asus design, AMD made it substantially cheaper than the Intel Asus Zenbook, and it allowed me to upgrade RAM and hard drive (unlike the unibody Zenbook). However, I've had repeated problems with Ubuntu updates breaking the Radeon graphics support, to the point where I've had to reinstall from scratch several times (and currently have 400MB of delayed upgrades to avoid going through that rigamarole again). 14.04 has greatly improved power management, moving from 2.5-3 hours in earlier kernels to well over 4 hours now, in part because my display brightness settings now work correctly.

Because of the problem with the Radeon graphics support, I wouldn't recommend using a laptop with AMD graphics. I previously had a Dell e1505 with Nvidia graphics that worked without trouble, and I've had no trouble with integrated Intel graphics support.

Also, I have a 1.5 year-old Sony Vaio from work. The weird BIOS Sony uses is completely borked for Linux, as I have not been able to so much as boot from a USB drive, much less dual boot. Actually, I may have gotten it to boot to a USB drive once using some dark voodoo magic, but you shouldn't have to sacrifice a chicken to Jobu just to boot into Linux, so I strongly recommend against even trying with the Sony laptops.

zanny2• 12 years ago

Aw man, I guess I have to be the sweaty neckbeard...

The right notebook for Linux is a Linux notebook. Vendors of such machines are still boutique, but unlike in the past they actually exist. Just a few are Zareason, Thinkpenguin, and System76. I personally have an off brand Clevo 740 SU (same model as the System76 Galago) because I had confidence in the notebooks ability and got it OSless since I'd have to install Arch anyway.

But recommending all these Samsung and Llenovo Windows machines is a disservice to everyone. It is a disservice to the Linux ecosystem because you cannot guarantee hardware support and using a non-Windows OS will void your warranty most of the time (at least if they catch you with it). It means that you get a bad impression of the experience due to any bugs or glitches you encounter, and rather than acknowledge you crossed into the land of dragons and took the risk many end up blaming the ecosystem that cannot provide hardware support realistically for any parts the vendors do not support in kernel themselves - especially those that are actively hostile to attempts to implement hardware support (video drivers - Android ones are really bad right now, but Nouveau had to wage a tangible uphill battle to get where it is today, but a lot of wifi cards, pci cards, etc can have no vendor support).

It also means you are paying your MS tax, and getting a Windows license you intend not to use. I'm not even going to argue the price aspect, because we know it really does not matter - if Linux were ever a threat (and really, it already is with Windows talking about version 9 possibly being free or ultra low cost with the looming threat of Android) they would just give away licenses, and that combined with bloatware contracts would provide the vendors more revene than just shipping Ubuntu (or whatever distro).

What I care about is the message. Every Linux Thinkpad fanboy is one bullet point in the Llenovo board meeting affirming the need not to ever ship a non-Windows notebook (except in countries like Germany that actually force them to). It sends the message "go ahead, bill me for a Windows license I'll never use, and make me fight the hardware to make it work, but I will still buy your stuff because having a pleasant straightforward and painless Linux experience is not one of my priorities.

It also obscures how large the market segment is, because to these vendors every machine sold is a mark that Windows is still king. If they do not see retailors selling real Linux machines (including the Dell one) they have absoutely no reason to ever fathom selling Linux native machines themselves.

And that hurts you, because that means there is less adoption, fewer options, and less pressure towards more widespread use of the platform. And for whatever your reason, you want to use Linux right now, and buying these Windows machines denies others from having the chance to even know it exists, and supports the continued monopoly Microsoft has on the personal computing industry (and Apple is not even on that radar).

So please, when you are looking for a new notebook with the intent to run a Linux distro on it, give some consideration to the vendors actually selling Linux machines, with support, as first class citizens. If you cannot find one that meets you needs so be it, but don't go out of your way to buy a Windows notebook and hope it can run a Linux distro flawlessly.

dllthomas• 12 years ago

My last several laptops have been System76, and I've been increasingly pleased with them (and satisfied from the outset).

brerlapn3• 12 years ago

I looked into these when I was shopping for a laptop, in hopes of avoiding problems with hardware compatibility. Between lackluster display specs on a couple of models, some very mixed reviews of build quality, and no way to check one out in person, I had to reluctantly move onto other options. Since my purchase, it looks like the specs have improved on the Linux vendor laptops, but at the time it was just too much of a risk to take on a +$1000 purchase that was at that a compromise. You state the sweaty neckbeard case well, but pragmatically the lack of MS tax didn't make them any cheaper than comparable Windows machines and making it less risky to buy one site unseen would likely help, too.

jc00ke3• 12 years ago

One important factor for my choice in laptops is the physical attributes of the machine. IMO, Samsung and Apple, and to some extent Asus, have very well designed machines. Maybe I'm a little bit vain, but I'd like for my Linux laptop to look good too. That's one thing Apple always got right. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is rad, but I don't really like the way it looks. I'm not sure how to reconcile that.

ZaReason and System76 are awesome companies! I purchased a small notebook from ZaReason back in '08 but returned it because it was too underpowered. I would happily buy a laptop from either ZaReason or System76 if it was in the same vein of well designed hardware like the 3 companies I mentioned above.

I'm also very familiar with the Windows tax. A few years back I tried, very hard, to get HP to refund the Windows license on 2 desktops I bought for my dad. It was futile. Here are the blog posts from '09

HP Refund for Windows Tax: So far so good - http://bit.ly/wy4zC HP Refund for Windows Tax: No refund policy - http://bit.ly/1a0FW1

Trust me, I hate seeing the little Windows 7 sticker and Windows super key on my laptop, but the hardware is good and I have no compatibility issues. Ideal? Nope. But good enough, and unfortunately that's what we Linux users have to contend with for now.

zanny2• 12 years ago

unfortunately that's what we Linux users have to contend with for now.

And my point is that any sale of a Lenovo Thinkpad does zilch to solve it, and only reinforces their position of Windows-only. So if you do go and buy that ASUS / Samsung / Apple notebook, and put Linux on it, that means the next time you are looking for a notebook, you will have to do the exact same thing because nobody is buying Linux machines to show the market there is any demand.

RossM• 12 years ago

Does anyone have any recommendations for a 10-11 inch netbook for ultra portable hacking? It's rather hard to find places that still sell them nowadays (lots of tablet-a-likes with a keyboard attached). Basically going to be a vim-box.

Linux Laptop Recommendations

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