Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For a Reliable Linux Laptop? 237
An anonymous reader writes: I will be looking for a new laptop soon and I'm mostly interested in high reliability and Linux friendliness. I have been using an MSI laptop (with Windows 7) for the last five years as my main workhorse and did not have a single, even minor problem with the hardware nor the OS. It turned out to be a slam-dunk, although I didn't do any particular research before buying it, so I was just lucky. I would like to be more careful this time around, so this is a hardware question: What laptop do you recommend for high reliability with Linux? I will also appreciate any advice on what to avoid and any unfortunate horror stories; I guess we can all learn from those.
Anti-recommendations are probably just as valuable, a lesson I learned when an HP laptop I bought (low-end, I admit) turned out to be notoriously fickle when it comes to Linux support. Since our anonymous submitter doesn't specify his budget, it would be good if you specify the price for any specific laptops you recommend.
Dell's work OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Dell Precision and Latitude machines have mostly worked for me over the years. Thinkpads also.
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I'll second the recommendation for Dell Precision Mobile Workstations. I run Linux daily on my now-ancient M6400. I've been wanting to upgrade but the current screens are major downgrades (my M6400 is 1920x1200 with RGB-LED backlight array... the new model maxes out at 1080P and is lit with white LEDs). The RGB-LED screen was one of the major selling points of the M6400, as it exceeded the Adobe color gamut performing better for color purity than CRTs.
I've kept this notebook serviced and upgraded... upgrade
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I did some looking, and I am coming up dry on Xeon Laptops, are they on the way and don't exist yet? There was something about a Thinkpad P series, but it is unavailable from Lenovo. Who sells Xeon Laptops?
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All four models from Clevo have desktop i series processors, not a single Xeon there.
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I have a Dell Latitude E7240 that works fine with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - use it for work, even.
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Jumping on the Dell bandwagon - I have a Precision M4500 laptop I bought off-lease from dellrefurbished.com.
I run Debian Unstable on this machine and everything works except for the fingerprint reader, for which there is no Linux driver.
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Dell Precision and Latitude machines have mostly worked for me over the years. Thinkpads also.
My Lenovo G560 and Dell Latitude before it both worked beautifully with Ubuntu Linux. Multi-monitor support, webcams, wifi, bluetooth, suspend, everything just worked. In fact, the only real problems that I've had in the past decade vis a vis hardware support is with desktop motherboards:
http://linux.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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Another vote for Dell Latitudes here. I run Mint KDE on E6400 and E6410 laptops and it works perfectly. They're a little old now, admittedly, but for most tasks they're perfectly adequate. They also look great (unlike most modern laptops, including newer Latitudes), have excellent keyboards for laptops, and are rugged with magnesium chasses. Just make sure to get the higher-res screens (1440x900) instead of the crappier low-res ones. You can get them on Ebay for a song.
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+1 Dell. XPS12 i7 flipbook/touch has been the best linux laptop I've used to date. Built quality is Apple level too.
2012 15" macbook pro retina (Score:2, Informative)
linux mint runs really well on it! everything works out of the box except the wifi, but you can just use ethernet to download the driver for the wifi adapter in the mint driver manager app. plus the screen is beautiful
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+1 to this. You can dual boot or not, as you please. Any of the recent macbook air's or pro's should work great, with the possible exception of the very latest Macbook (the one with nothing but a USB-C connector) -- and the only reason I except that one is that I don't know for certain that it won't have some weird issue. It would probably work.
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How great is "great"?
My new employer has given me a new Macbook Pro, and Kubuntu mostly works, but it will require some manual fiddling.
Booting, thunderbolt ethernet, thunderbolt display, wifi, external mouse/keyboard, external HDD, and all essential things do work. Disconnecting and reconnecting the display works 90% of the time, which I'm pleased with -- KDE now remembers where my toolbars and windows should go.
I don't have power management working, the touchpad is half-working (no scrolling), and I gave
Samsung Series 9 (Score:4, Informative)
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System76 (Score:5, Informative)
Just buy a System76 laptop. Everything will work, including suspend.
System76 if you want a 14 to 17 inch (Score:2)
Just buy a System76 laptop.
Agreed, so long as System76 makes a laptop in the size you want. Right now I see nothing smaller than 14 inches.
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[If you want small,] Why not just buy a tablet?
A 10 inch 2-in-1, with a tablet and a keyboard that clips onto it, would be perfect for me. Which works well with GNU/Linux? The ASUS Transformer Book and Acer Aspire Switch sure don't.
System76 (Score:5, Informative)
System76 [system76.com] has been selling Linux laptops for years now. I've never bought one, but they certainly have expertise in getting it to work.
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I have a D900T clone. Installing was a PITA - it has an odd disk controller and you have to load drivers from a floppy - and it took some fiddling to get wifi & sound to work. Also, it uses about 97 different sizes of screws. (A stinkpad has about two). That's on Centos 6.5. The one stumbling block is that I can't get it to suspend/hibernate, but that aside, it works great.
It dual boots Win7, which was equally problematic in different ways.
And I'm going to have to do it all again, because I didn't
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So boot a Ubuntu LiveUSB, install GParted real quick, and then use that to modify partition sizes without having to reinstall. Easy peasy.
Back in the day, I would have recommended the Parted Magic live distro as it comes with GParted out-of-the-box, but it's gone to a pay model.
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The only Linux problems I've had with it have been related to the Nvidia Optimus dual-GPU handling, but that was a bigger problem toward the beginning since it was a fairly new feature in 2011, and Linux support hadn't quite caught up yet. It's less problema
Dell Precision (Score:3)
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I have a precision M3800 and love it! Lightweight, decent battery life, gorgeous 4K screen, wickedly fast i7 processor, dual HD ports, (one mSATA) HDMI support...
All of which makes it a beautiful laptop, but add to that native Linux support... I'm a Fedora fan so I bought with windows and dual boot. It "just works" with a Fedora install.
Zenbook UX305 (Score:2)
I've been running Fedora on mine for a few months. I had some early problems with wireless, but on my most recent trip (a few kernel updates later) it was fine. The touchpad seems to be working better too. My only real gripe at this point is that the battery doesn't quite last all day like my 13" MBA can, but then the Zenbook's considerably cheaper than most in the under-three-pound category so I guess sacrifices had to be made somewhere.
Dell Precision M3800 (Score:3, Insightful)
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Thinkpad T-series (Score:5, Interesting)
I still highly recommend the Thinkpad T-series line, now owned by Lenovo, for running Linux on a laptop. I've been running Linux on various generations of the T-series since when IBM introduced the line (T21 running Fedora Core 1-4, then Gentoo), and I've never had any significant or insurmountable problems. They use mostly Intel parts and Intel tends to be fairly open source friendly which leads to them being easy to support. My current laptop is a T430s running Gentoo, and my prior laptop was a T400 also running Gentoo. Sleep/hibernate both work as does all the other features (video camera, ultrabay, etc.). The build quality is quite solid too (I only replaced my T400 because I wanted more than 8GB of RAM).
I have less experience with the other Thinkpad lines, but I would imagine both the X-series & W-series would also work well. If you go with a different brand, I generally recommend going straight to the business line (i.e. Dell Latitues, etc.) of the laptops for better build quality.
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I have a Thinkpad X121e (pick them up on ebay pretty cheaply these days) - it's run various Fedoras over the years very successfully. I've used the Windows pre-install a diminishingly small number of times, but have had more fundamental problems with it than with Linux (recently I had Windows 7 just refuse to boot at all - it said "fixing" for about 20 minutes and just gave up with no further options to proceed). These days windows is in a VM and so it's 100% linux - its been kicked about a fair bit over th
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Seconded. I'm using a Thinkpad T440s for work, and when I installed Linux Mint on it, everything Just Worked out of the box. Audio, video, network, WiFi, multitouch... everything.
(Well, the fingerprint reader doesn't do anything right out of the box, but I have read that it can be enabled without too much difficulty. I'm going to look into that before the next time I travel with the laptop. It would be great to unlock the screen with a fingerprint.)
Now that the T450s is out, you might be able to find a
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Thirded, another T440s user here and very happy with it. I did faff about with it a bit to get some gestures working with the synaptics touch pad, two fingers scrolling etc.
OpenBSD also works on it, FreeBSD not yet as the wifi driver isn't working but it's nearly there.
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A T-series . . . !?!?!?! That is what managers and sales folks get around my parts. When it was time for me to get a new SchtinkPad, I wrote, ad nauseam, in the request form that I was a developer, and needed the "Big Iron", to coin a new phrase. So I have a SchtinkPad W520 now . . . with 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD.
It's butt ugly, compared to a shiny Apple. But I like it that way. No thief in the world would try to steal this thing. Oh, and the power supply is a whopping 170 watts. It's basically a brick t
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Best to stick to larger laptops and avoid ultrabooks etc. Anything super thin will have marginal cooling, and be reliant on power management to handle it. If Linux support for the power management isn't perfect, it's going to run hot and die fast.
Thinkpad, or maybe a Let's Note (Toughbook in the US).
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Thinkpads and more (Score:2)
Yeah, my T430s has been great with Linux and Qubes OS. Its also really tough, IMO. Thinkpads (not the consumer Ideapads) have remained near the very top in the Linux compatibility column.
OTOH, if you want something that is built to be SO compatible with Linux that all the hardware will run using open-source drivers, take a look at the Purism Librem. They have sexy 13" and 15" models.
Last but not least, you should know about Hardware Compatibility Lists (HCLs): All of the Linux ones I know about have become
system76 (Score:2)
Thinkpad X1 Carbon (Score:2)
I have the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. Mine was the first-gen model, and I still use it. I can't speak to following generations. Works great with Fedora Linux (GNOME desktop).
And before anyone asks: Yes, I completely wiped the hard drive and re-installed with Linux. It's a total "start from scratch" so I didn't inherit any spyware (that I know of).
That said, I'm thinking that my next Linux laptop will be a Purism Librem [puri.sm]. I've read very good reviews, and I kind of want to support someone who built a Linux-only lapto
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I just started at a new startup and asked for the 2015 Thnkpad X1 Carbon. I installed Fedora 22 on it and everything works perfectly. Highly recommended.
Ubuntu always worked for me on laptops (Score:2)
FSF has some recommendations (Score:4, Informative)
Check out the FSF's recommendations for hardware at https://www.gnu.org/links/companies.html. It's hard to see how these wouldn't work out with GNU/Linux. In particular Minifree Ltd (http://minifree.org/) has some laptops that might interest you. They're modified ThinkPads so the hardware is pretty reasonable.
OEM chipset, Atheros WiFi (Score:2)
I find that if the chipset is made by the same guys that made the CPU (pretty hard to find anything else these days) and the WiFi is made by Atheros, you will probably be able to get it to work. I used to always say intel WiFi but I've had some problems where APs got upset at intel NICs for no reason I could discern. I also like either nVidia or Intel graphics, but not AMD. Sometimes it will work great, sometimes it will blargh. Of course, last I heard that nVidia Optimus stuff still didn't work right... al
How long do you hang onto your laptops? (Score:2)
If you tend to buy a new one every 2-3 years, System76 is a good option.
If you hang onto them for a long time, you might appreciate the better structural strength and build quality of the Thinkpads.
I had a couple of System76's and they were great but around the 3-3.5 years the components and case parts (eg palm rest, display hinges) began to fail. I do have big gorilla hands and slap my keyboard like a pimp slapping a ho, though, so it could just be me.
In any event, I went with a T440s last time around. O
HP elite (Score:2)
Just avoid ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, Sony, Foxcomm, Panasonic, Itronix, Sharp and you will be fine.
Every maker has issues. All of them. Some are purely design. Some are HW failures and some are driver related.
Only a specific model, for a specific version of Linux can be commented about.
For example, I have an Acer C720 chromebook - wiped chromeOS in the first 5 minutes and loaded Ubuntu. That was almost 2 yrs ago. Touchpad driver issues were the beginning and the lack of a delete key (common to all chromebooks). About 3 weeks ago, the 'n' key started getting picky. Last July, it was the '7' - a simple cleaning made it a little better, but the 'n' is just screwed.
Had an Asus before. Chicklet keyboards suck. 'nuff said.
Still have a Dell that I like. Good keyboard and it is about 5 yrs old. The wifi support was hard to get working - should have spent the $15 upgrade for a better wifi microPCI card (better linux support).
A friend picked up a new Dell XPS 13 about a month ago - WOW! That thing is sexy, but at $1600, it should be.
We had an installfest last week and saw a lot of new laptops. Avoid HP. They break the BIOS, badly. I'd say to avoid Apple HW too - there was always 5 special incantations to get those to work ... except for one MBP which we never got installed. That was with 3 Mac-lovers and linux 20+ yr experts helping.
Lenovo is known to HW lock addon cards, so you can only put in approved replacements. That means replacing a bad wifi card isn't $25 - it is $50 because only specific models are allowed to work. It is a BIOS thing, I hear.
So - the old rule of making a list of chips and verifying each has Linux support is the best advice. Buying anything less than 6 months old is asking for driver trouble.
I also anti-recommend Toshiba s75 and Lenovo z710 (Score:2)
Using Ubuntu 15.04 LTS:
Both the Toshiba s75 and Lenovo z710 have:
- Terrible keyboards: Fat flat chicklets that don't work well and resul in lots of typos. The lettering is coming off the Toshiba's keys and the backlight doesn't work with Ubuntu. On the Lenovo I was able to get the backlight to work but the keys were painted clear plastic and after a few months not just the letters, but the black paint surrounding them, chipped away letting the light shine through horribly.
- Terrible touch
High end Dells (Score:3)
I've bought used high end Dells a generation or two behind for the past 15 years, ever since I've had a laptop. I've had an Inspiron 8000, 8200, 9400, and for the past 4+ years a Precision M6500, which is a beast -- i7-920XM,16 GB RAM (which can be expanded to 32 GB), 2x2.5" bays, optical bay, mSATA, 17" WUXGA screen w/Radeon HD7820, a pair of USB3 ports, and an eSATA port. The only things I've had to replace have been the keyboard twice (due to my sloppiness around it; it's no more fragile than any other), the battery, and some memory that developed errors (not likely due to the laptop). I've run various versions of openSUSE on it with no problems of any kind, and no blobs either. The tech's a bit dated -- first generation i7, SATA2 (3 Gb/sec), only 2 USB3 ports -- but with the mSATA it's plenty fast for the photo processing I do on it. If you need something more up to date, you can pay a bit more for a used M6600 or M6700, although you'll give up the WUXGA. No mechanical problems with the lids and that that I had with the 8000 and 8200 (the 9400 was disappointing, having a 64 bit processor but basically set up as a 32 bit system that couldn't exceed 3 GB of usable RAM).
There's no comparison between the low end and the high end Dell laptops. The high end ones are built solidly, easy to repair and upgrade, and just plain feel solid. Of course, this puppy isn't light, and the power brick itself is substantial. Battery life isn't great either. But if you want a solid system that will run Linux well and won't give you any trouble, this is worth considering. If you want a smaller system, the Precision M4x00 is a 15" screen but otherwise basically the same, I believe (it may not have the second drive bay).
I like my Lenovo Z580 (Score:2)
My Z580 has been rock-solid under Ubuntu 15.04, though I really don't use it as a laptop. But all the hardware worked without fussing around, and it's been 100% stable since I got rid of Windows 10. Windows 7 had been reliable on it, too, but I was having hardware problems with 10 (the sound drivers stopped working), so I switched.
My main system has been Ubuntu for years, but it was getting pretty old and slow and I didn't need to be able to run Windows database engines any more, so Microsquishy got th
Chromebook (Score:2)
Another option, if you want a true portable, is a Chromebook.
It is easy to add a full Linux desktop which runs in a chroot, using Crouton, a bit like a lightweight virtual machine, and flick between that and the ChromeOS desktop, if you like.
It means the vendor is looking after the tricky stuff like power management and wifi drivers, but you still can have a full Linux desktop of your choice.
And it helps that you can get a 4GB full-HD IPS with 9 hour battery for under $300. (Or the Pixel for a lot more.)
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What else is needed?
Emacs, of course. Firefox, skype, steam, ...
The poster is asking for a real Linux desktop.
Lenovo X series (Score:2)
Not only they're built as bricks but they have excellent Linux compatibility all across the board.
I want to get work done (Score:2)
Desktop is different, but still...
Lenovo is still king (Score:2)
I've always liked Thinkpad (Lenovo) laptops, they generally ship Linux-friendly hardware and are tough and durable, it's the company default where I work. If you were unfortunate enough to procure the second to last model the touchpad needs some work [hobo.house]
Regardless of the make/model you use, be sure to implement hybrid suspend [hobo.house] so you'll never lose your work should you run out of battery while suspended. I'm currently using a Lenovo x240 on Fedora 22 with great results, regardless of the spyware shipped on the
Lenovo Think Pad, refurbished (Score:3)
One of the few non-mac laptops with simular resellability are the ThinkPads. A refurbished one will come way less than half the original price and still have all the quality. Get a high-end refurbished thinkpad, max ou the memory, replace the hdd with an ssd and you've got yourself a high-end linux laptop for a bargain-deal. I use a pimped out refurbished TP W510 as my main linux machine - it's the best I ever had.
thinkpenguin (Score:3)
i recommend contacting http://thinkpenguin.com/ [thinkpenguin.com] for several reasons. firstly, yes they install GNU/Linux by default (so they've done all the hard work, and the research, in advance. is that worth paying for? yes!) secondly, they actually go to the trouble of replacing the BIOS with Coreboot. is _that_ worth it, and worth paying for? yes!
and thirdly, they make sure that the hardware that they've selected is FSF-Hardware-Endorseable, which needs some explanation as to why this is important - and it's not *actually* to do with some sort of stupid or idealistic or neo-fascist or brain-washed or self-righteous or [insert suitable continuation of series of derogatory sentences towards the FSF, Dr Stallman in general and their goals, here, which may be in your mind as to why you feel that you should completely ignore anything and everything associated with the FSF, which we're about to show you are completely moot] reason.
no, the clear benefit from buying FSF-Endorsed hardware such as printers, WIFI and 3G dongles etc. is that they JUST WORK. peripherals these days usually have built-in firmware. because the firmware is pre-loaded in FSF-Endorseable products onto NAND Flash or EEPROM, they're pretty much guaranteed to be more expensive than the devices that require the proprietary firmware to be uploaded to the device, from the main OS, before the device can actually function.... BUT...
what that means in practice is that if you don't *have* that proprietary firmware, or if it happens not to be compatible with the OS, or if you lose it, or if the file system becomes corrupted, or if you perform an upgrade of the OS, and many many other reasons all of which amount to a great deal of hassle, you cannot use that device, period.
the most ridiculous instance of this is that ethernet is becoming less common, CD/DVD drives are becoming less common, creating USB-sticks to boot-install systems has always been a pain, EFI-boot (only) is becoming more common.... how the hell is anyone supposed to install an OS when the only network access is WIFI, and the WIFI requires bloody proprietary firmware that has a license that prevents and prohibits that firmware from being installed on the bloody installation media?? how stupidly ridiculous a situation can you possibly get into! and don't get me started about usb-ethernet devices, which, due to them being USB, are often *excluded* from selection as a "main internet connection" during the install process, because, by nature of them being removable, the OS can't guarantee that the device will be there on the next boot.
avoiding all this hassle is what you pay for when you buy pre-vetted products from http://thinkpenguin.com/ [thinkpenguin.com] and other companies that are listed on the FSF's page http://www.fsf.org/resources/h... [fsf.org] . you can also go to http://h-node.org/ [h-node.org] and take a look there to see if what you want is listed.
so when you buy a product from http://thinkpenguin.com/ [thinkpenguin.com] you know that it's "just going to work". if you genuinely want to replace the OS, you can... and it will be a very straightforward job, unlike, i can guarantee, absolutely every other recommendation at the time of writing of this comment with a category "5" score here on slashdot.
ironically, and not surprisingly, thinkpenguin get less support calls (hardware "just works"). their customers are happier.... and so are more loyal. is that worth paying a bit extra for? yeah i'd say so.
Make sure the wireless will work beforehand (Score:2)
I'd hold off for a couple of months for Skylake (Score:2)
Most work fine ... (Score:2)
It has been my experience for a decade or so that everything works with Linux.
In our household, we have three laptops, all working fine with Linux.
One is Dell, and two are Toshibas. All are 6-7 years old.
None came with Linux pre-installed. All ran fine with Kubuntu LTS. Everything works, sound, WiFi.
What does not work are the multimedia buttons (a button may work, e.g. Mute, but the ones next to it would not, e.g. Play, Stop, ...etc.)
HP Stream 13 (Score:2)
I got an HP Stream 13 at Microcenter for $200. It's not a top-of-the-line machine and the keyboard has some annoyances (especially if you're used to quality Thinkpad ones which nobody else even comes close to anymore). It is good enough to play fullscreen video without issues. Ubuntu/Mint seem to work fine (not 100% out-of-the-box but pretty close to it by Linux standards) including wi-fi, webcam, bluetooth, and all the other bells and whistles I'm aware of.
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I have the XPS 15 (consumer version of the M3800) and it's a beautiful machine (I actually have 2 of them). I use them with Ubuntu as my main OS with no problems since day 1.
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I've got one- one of the few laptops I could find that had the capability of 16G and the UHD display. Ubuntu 15.04 installed fine, but I did have to do some fiddling to get the Wifi going. Still haven't gotten bluetooth working right. Doesn't have a built-in wired ethernet port- which can make things a pain. Definitely has issues with sleep/suspend- sometimes it wakes up, sometimes not, often it starts, but the Wifi chooses not to start.
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I got mine as a refurb from woot so I didn't have the option- but the microsoft tax is not all that big relative to the cost of the laptop, I think that you might save $50- if you're buying a $2000 laptop, that may be in the noise. I decided that there are some times that I may need windows (sometimes you can't get around it), so I decided to get another mSATA drive, and I'll just swap the whole drive when I need to go Microsoft.
I do like it- especially the screen- it's beautiful. I tried an XPS13- the comb
Re:MacBook Pro (Score:5, Interesting)
Just not worth it...
Had one for a couple of years up until last year.
- Fan control was a problem, would get hot, then run fans on max.
- Wifi drivers were a pain, and didn't always recover from suspend reliably (needed reboots).
- Dealing with poorly documented Ubuntu PPAs to get drivers and docs for configuration is a chore.
- There are enough differences between model years that what once worked now doesn't. User's writing 'works for me' without specify which MacBook pro vintage they use is not helpful.
Replaced with an ASUS G550JK(https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/G550JK/) last year. Has same or better specs than a MacBook pro of the time, for a little over half the price, and the IPS display is beautiful. Everything just worked (Ubuntu 14.04). I almost miss messing about with drivers to make them work (not!).
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My quad i7 2011MBP works perfectly. what era of MBP were you using?
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This is Off-topic, but I've had 3 MacBook pros over the years and all were awesome as Windows machines. Today all three of them are still in active use, not bad since the oldest one was purchased in 2008. Before then I had Dell, Toshiba, Compaq, Sony, and Gateway laptops, all of which had a critical failure by year 2. (With the exception of Dell they all had terrible displays, Toshiba by far being the worst.) I did have one Macbook whose logic board burnt out, but Apple fixed it and for some reason replac
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My Macbooks were all about $2,300 each, give or take a little. Most of the non-Apple laptops I had were between $1,000 and $1,500. One of the Toshibas I had was a little over $2,000 and the Dell I had was $2,200. The one non-Apple laptop I had that at least behaved well was a second-hand business-class Compaq from the late 90's, I don't know what it originally sold for.
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I'm curious, were your non Apple laptops a match in terms of $. I have a theory that if you spend the same amount on a Windows machine it would last just as long.
That depends on the 'Windows Machine' you buy (Let's call them PCs since you can run more OS'es on them than just Windows ++shock/awe++). My experience with large laptop pools have taught me that the really cheap ones that ship with chargers the size of a lunch box, batteries that last a two to three hours and cases that are made of plastic tend to age fast while the MacBooks and other PC's with metal housings last longer although there are also some gracefully designed and light high quality laptops with p
Re: MacBook Pro (Score:2)
It's awesome that the xps 13 ships with linux.
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I got the "hiDPI" XPS 13 before they finished the linux version, but it works like a charm.
Two issues:
- It occassionaly hangs (flashing caps = kernel panic?). I blame the broadcom wifi chip.
- The hiDPI is gorgeous but sometimes annoying if applications assume that 10pt should be enough for anyone. My main gripe is actually that it is difficult to work with an external monitor. The hiDPI 13" requires something like 16 - 18 pt fonts to be usable, which is completely silly on a normal 27" HD screen. So, if I h
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Different DPI on monitors is not a trivial problem.
It might get solved, but on a future version of Gnome, KDE or Cinnamon running on a future version of Wayland.
A shameless quote from Clem here :
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2... [linuxmint.com]
Edit by Clem: I’m not 100% sure, but I think that’s not possible with Xorg. The wayland developers talked about implementing this feature but although promising for the future, wayland is still too early to consider.
It is perhaps possible to hack up a partial solution by running a secondary X session or X server just for the second monitor. Would be fun if that works (although the two screens are now "islands" that only share the mouse pointer)
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I hate the crap Broadcom WiFi card in it ...
Not sure why so many people make a big deal out of this. I had a crappy wifi card in an old dell. Bought a new one Intel Centrino one and it's been rock solid. Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate... [amazon.com]
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz : $10.69
That's a half-height Mini PCE-E. You can get a bracket on there to extend it to full height for $4 (or just make your own).
(that's not the card I got, but it should do better than what I had picked up - mine lacks "a", but also has bluetooth)
Re:MacBook Pro (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing "pro" about a laptop with no hardware buttons.
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TLDR; A 'Pro' product isn't defined by some arbitrary nonsense like the number of buttons it has. It's defined by how well it does the job it is set out to do. Use the tool that matches your needs.
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If you think the definition of "Pro" requires having a nasa-like control panel to manage the fiddly details of your equipment, then your not a professional... you're a child who only wants to impress his friends.
A professional-level device helps you get your work done with as minimal hassle as possible. A pr
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I had initially tried to switch to linux, multiple times, but I couldn't find a single distro that could handle suspending properly,
Works great for me on Linux Mint KDE on a Dell Latitude E6400. A big part of the suspend problem is probably with the hardware. You probably had a crappy laptop. Get a business-class computer with Intel hardware; that's the secret recipe for running Linux reliably and everything working well.
not to mention there was no decent virtualization software to run non-linux applica
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You can't take current tools and retroactively apply them to a situation from over a decade ago.
Linux Mint didn't exist. Heck, Ubuntu itself was relatively new.
VMWare workstation didn't support linux until v6.
Virtualbox was very mediocre at best.
So yeah, if I try to make the switch now, I'll probably have much better success. But then? Not even remotely.
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http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
But I will check out Robo Linux. I hadn't heard of that distro before.
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Hey, I gotta afford that Macbook Pro somehow!
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Yeah, this. Only thing I don't like is you have to take an extra step and install a driver for the crappy broadcom wifi it has, but otherwise macbook pros, especially the retina versions, really rock and run linux like a champ.
Yup. Linux finally clicked 100 percent for me when my mentor told me that you just have to think of OSX as the shiniest slickest ditro of Linux. I run linux on my iMac from time to time, and haven't had a problem yet.
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Your 'mentor' is a fucking tool.
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Your 'mentor' is a fucking tool.
Explain. You're in at the deep end of the pool now, so it better be good.
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Besides, the main attraction to a linux distro is that it is configurable. Want it to act like Windows? Fine. Want it to act like a Mac? That's fine too. It's all configurable; unlike OSX, which is basically not configurable at all. (Try setting up a Mac with focus-follows-mouse and see what I mean).
As to the original question: Lenovo. Every one I've tried works fine. The *only* thing to watch out for (and this is true of any brand l
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Well, by definition it isn't linux, since it runs a different kernel.
And yet how odd. I open up a terminal, and viola, almost everything is the same.
Your kernel distinction is interesting and true enough. but in everyday use, it's a Unixy OS, and whether or not my mentor is a "fucking tool " as the AC so eloquently put it, once he noted that fact to me, I suddenly became a whole lot more capable in Linux, because I applied OSX knowledge to it.
As for his work, he uses a Macbook Pro for all his development work on emergency communication programs, a complete cross platfo
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Note that "almost everything is the same" is not "almost everything is similar". Both linux and OSX are indeed based on the same fundamentals as Unix; but neither is Unix, they just look and feel much the same. You can't take a program from one and run it on the othe
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...but the distinction should be maintained.
Why? How "unixy" Linux or MacOS is is a really rather tired argument by now, isn't? Having cut my unix teeth on Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX, seems like I should be able to tell how "unixy" something is. I have MacOS because of my work, but I hate it. It doesn't really fee like unix to me at all, and I have a hard time understanding how "unixy" it really is since the kernel is a heavily modified mach clone. But whatever, just saying your reasoning on how "unixy" Mac is seems a bit strained to me, even with a b
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Let's clarify real quick. Overall I agree with your point, but:
My full apologies here folks, This is slashdot, and I probably insulted some of the linux folks with my asinine comparison.
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i'm sure psychiatrists have a word for it. somebody more knowledgeable please help me. what is it called when somebody makes other people do the thing they feel guilty about, to feel less guilty themselves (because others are now doing it too)?
i've had Macbook Pros. that's not a computer, it's a fashionable legburner with built in pipe organ (as soon as you do anything even remotely resembling work). that thing just can't cool itself and stay quiet. i also tried running gnu/linux on it but the story was the
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Yeah, this. Only thing I don't like is you have to take an extra step and install a driver for the crappy broadcom wifi it has, but otherwise macbook pros, especially the retina versions, really rock and run linux like a champ.
My MacBook Pro Retina does okay. They keyboard drives me nuts so I've always got another keyboard attached; and the wifi on it has some issues - like killing the VPN connection after several hours of use and not allowing me to maintain a connection thereafter unless I enable/disable the wifi (just figured that one out). But overall, it's okay. I'd still prefer something non-Apple though.
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I am also curious about this. I also purchased an MSI laptop (roughly, iirc a ; 17" 1680x1050 oddball, with a something Intel core that I forget (most likely 2, as i think i would remember if it was 4).
it had an nvidia 4-- something (460?)m card. roughly a 160gig hd, and had the msi dragon stylized decal in a plastic circle on the back.
i went to buy the same model with a 1080p display at the same price, but they had ran out of stock, and i had a deadline with which to submit my order for reimbursement.
All
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to reply to myself i just want to iterate that i think it's a bad idea to just as for 'best linux laptop' -- and that has always been the case.
Pick a pricepoint, then look at places to see what fallsin that range. Then do some research on cpu/gpu/chipsets (are chipsets even relevant these days?!) and perhaps the drivers behind your usb ports.
That's like 3, maybe 4 things you need to check facts on before you can tell if it'll work with .
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All of that, plus what's wrong with the one you've already got?
But is there a 2-in-1 that works? (Score:2)
Two-in-one or classic laptop?
Which 2-in-1s work well with Linux? I've read horror stories about Wi-Fi and suspend not working on 10 inch 2-in-1s like the ASUS Transformer Book and the Acer Aspire Switch. Debian says [debian.org] screen backlight control on the Transformer Book T100TA is "Unsupported (No Driver)", suspend is "Error (Couldn't get it working)", and Wi-Fi is "Only works with a non-free driver".
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Then which processor used in 2-in-1s does work well with Linux? Or are 2-in-1s themselves only for masochists?
linux-on-laptops is four years out of date (Score:2)
When "new" entries [linux-on-laptops.com] are submitted against Ubuntu 11.10, and this month is 15.09, it makes me think the site is four years out of date.
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Back in the day I always used to go with AMD because it offered more bang-for-buck than Intel. After switching to using Intel chipsets - with their open source graphics drivers - I found using Linux with them so trouble free I never went back. My current machine is a 3 year old Sony VAIO laptop with an Intel HM65 Express chipset. Runs better on Debian 8 than it does using Windows 10...