I’m considering getting a laptop for Linux and want to know a few things before I do. Some important info before I start: I don’t plan on using the laptop for anything too intense, mainly writing, digital art, streaming, browsing, and maybe very mild video editing (cropping at least and shortening at most). I would also prefer the laptop to be inexpensive, preferably under 1000 USD
I mainly want to know if whether I should get a laptop by a manufacturer that specializes in Linux or a laptop that runs a different OS (exp: Windows) to install Linux on later. I’ve also scouted out quite a few distros and have a good idea of which ones I would like using
I’ve already looked at a few mainline Linux hardware producers like System76 but want to know if it’s worth it before sinking money into it
I would recommend looking at Lenovo, they can have some really good deals. I’m rocking an IdeaPad Flex 5, though I don’t actually use the touchscreen features, but it works solid for me (email, document writing/editing, web surfing, movie watching).
Ooo, nice! They seem to have a real nice selection, too!
And they can have some good deals if’n you keep your eyes open, I got an Android tablet from them for $100 off at one point, which is impressive since it was a $275 tablet.
I want a system76 pangolin but I’m broke.
GODDDD u have no idea how much I feel u there
Any will do, just make sure it has Intel WiFi.
Eh, I run Ubuntu on my newish XPS and it has issues I’ve never seen with using Linux before. If I knew ahead of time I would’ve gladly paid a few hundred extra not to have these problems.
Specifically, sometimes the keyboard just stops working (after waking from sleep) and I’ll need to restart once or twice to get it working again. Also, 5G wifi loses its shit when I’m at home due to it randomly switching between my main AP and the extender. I only use 2G at home 😔.
I’ve been running Debian 11 and now 12 on an HP EliteBook 840 G5 (i7 8550U) and everything works out flawlessly out of the box. When I say everything I really mean everything, even special keyboard keys for brightness, volume working after install. Battery lasts way longer than under Windows and the computer runs much colder.
Novacustom looks pretty good. Wish it had amd GPU options but other than that the prices are right for the hardware.
System 76 customer here. I just replaced my 2011 system 76 lemur with a new lemur. I have Ubuntu installed on both and have never tried pop os. I was very happy with that laptop and the company in general. It actually still runs okay. I did replace the battery after about 5 or 6 years. I’m thinking of trying out nixos on it.
My guilty reason for upgrading was I wanted to play dwarf fortress at more than 5 fps…
I’m curious why you’ve never tried pop? I thought i’d hate the tiling and all that, but it and the gestures are so intuitive… i’ve used all sorts of desktop environments on linux over the last 20 some years, and pop is by far the most usabunity with the least learning curve.
Well, Pop was released way after I bought the first laptop. I guess I haven’t had any reason to try it out, as I’m happy with my i3/sway setup. I don’t really hop distros at all. Maybe when system76 completes/releases their full cosmic desktop (not based on gnome) I’ll give it a spin.
@PurrJPro You can’t go wrong with @tuxedocomputers but it’s gonna be hard to stay under 1000USD. Everything they have runs beautifully with linux and their support is far better than you’ll find anywhere else. I’ve bought more laptops over the past 20 years than anyone probably should, and finally going with #TUXEDOComputers was worth the little extra I spent on it.
If you want to just buy some cheap laptop off the shelf, that’s okay too, just do your homework first. Find out what hardware that exact part/model number has in it so you can know what sort of problems you may be dealing with later. I’ve bought at least 2 different models each of Sony, DELL, Acer, ASUS, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Apple, Compaq, 5~6 different off-brands I can’t remember. Some work great with no hassle at all, some take loads of fiddling, and some have hardware that just doesn’t work at all.
Tuxedo’s laptops r enticing from their sleek look alone, and their Linux support is enticing. If I’m ever in a spot to buy from them, I definitely will! As for cheap laptops, I’m heavily leaning towards a ThinkPad, although I’ll probably look at what other vendors offer Linux compatibility and how good it is. Thank you!
Used Thinkpad from eBay is your best bet to start imo.
This, got me through my entire cybersecurity & digital forensics undergrad
What did you do to the previous owner? oi
Some things are better kept a secret ;)
Jkjk it was the old work laptop of someone i knew so i got it from them for the extremely low price of $0, slapped linux onto it, and went about my business
I agree, I have two Thinkpads, an older T450S that lives out in the shop for me to reference things, and my mainstay which is a T480S. If OP does want to do video editing or gaming or anything that might be more intensive, I also have had a Legion 5 and similarly had absolutely no problems with Linux on it.
Yeah I’m considering getting one simply bc of the affordability. They also seem to be pretty highly regarded (if the amount of recommendations I’ve gotten says anything)
You could get the education edition. I have a new yoga 11e and it has a great keyboard, and it’s just… way too good for the money (250 bucks). I love that if I break or lose it I can just get an idenical one for super cheap in a couple days. But they’re made for kids so they’re pretty durable anyway.
No question, excellent compatibility, will last you a while, you can get a nicer one once you get comfortable.
Spent $500 on this one to hold you over till you can afford a framework, or spend less, you can still get by with a decent one for $250 or so.
System76 is plenty great. Not cheap, though. Thinkpads also have never let me down
Thinkpad T480s if you wanna save money for another something but get a good screen version. To take it to 1000USD on refurb /2nd hand Thinkpad Carbon.
Youre in a Linux thread, these run Linux like a dream.
I’ve heard they run Linux well before, but I certainly didn’t expect them to be so popular, lol. Plus they’re cheap, which make them seem like a very nice choice. Thanks for the model specific recs, too!
I’m relatively happy with my System76, but based on your needs you could get a lot of value from a $500 used ThinkPad on Ebay.
I get a lot of value from my 150.00 ThinkPad T430s but then all I do is web browsing and occasionally compiling software on it so not exactly intensive things. It’s a basic machine. A ThinkPad T series closer to 500.00 would be very functional.
Yeah, I have a couple T420 ThinkPads, and for $100 they’re pretty sweet, but they show their age.
Ooo, what do you like about System76? I know they’re well respected, but I’d like to hear about it from somebody who actually uses the hardware, especially since Pop!_OS has caught my attention more than once
My laptop still runs Ubuntu. But the 500 mb boot partition is basically now non functional and since I use luks on the main partition and hate snap I’m just strongly considering moving to pop. I also use an egpu quite frequently.
Ahh, I see. Well, what’s your experience with the hardware itself, then? Specifically the durability, weight, etc.
Sorry. I dont use a system76 laptop, i looked at getting the Lemur when i bought mine, but stock was hard to come by (it was the whole covid and supply chain nonsense).
I ended up getting a razer blade stealth 13 with the 11th Gen intel CPU.
Ultimately I wanted portability to be the primary thing over all else. BUt a GPU was nice to have.
My laptop is solid. But i tend to take pretty solid care of this stuff. Wouldnt necessarily reccomend any razer product to most personally. Their QA is questionable. And I take certain steps to keep it stable (ie: blocking some of their software at the firewall etc)
AH. Regardless, thanks for the reply. And I’m happy your Razer is doing u well :)
lol me too. Was pretty risky for me, even going in eyes wide open. Would probably do a lemur or framework next laptop. In fact that may be what I get the wife.
That or a MacBook Air. But I’d like to avoid that.
I’ve heard amazing things about noth Framework nd System76! I’m sure u can’t go wrong with either :) and I feel ya w/ ur avoidance of Apple products, lol
The main thing I like is the hardware support. I knew before purchasing that everything would work, and that helped me feel okay dropping a pretty penny on a new laptop. Besides that, I’d say they’re fine. They aren’t designing and manufacturing their own hardware (at least not back when I bought one); the laptops are pretty standard off-the-shelf stuff. System76 just promises that it’ll all work out-of-the-box. I’ve never used Pop!_OS, so I can’t speak to that. Arch and Debian work great, though.
The only negative I can think of is: once the battery started to go after several years, they didn’t have a replacement in their store, but because it’s a generic laptop, there were new ones available on Amazon. It just would’ve been nice to get it from System76.
All-in-all, I’m a happy customer. I’m keeping my eye on Framework, though. The MNT Reform is also interesting. I don’t like how thick it is, but that’s because it uses 18650s for the battery, which would solve the problem of buying a new battery just to find that all the batteries were manufactured at the same time, so there are no working replacements.
Ooo, good to know! It sucks they don’t offer hardware replacements on-site, but it’s good to know that they’re easy to find. And I doubt I’m going to be using Arch anytime soon (due to personal inexperience) but I would like to test Pop!_OS. Thank you for the detailed reply :D
Their battery can be replaced with any battery? How to do that? Other manufacture OEM battery?
@letbelight
18650s are a standard size. Several companies make decent ones.It’s like taking AA cells, but lithium.
@delialah… you mean refilling the battery right?
I tried that last time… I have no luck… Poor X220 can’t get 10 hours with 9 cell like old times :'(
It’s not any battery. They just didn’t do the original manufacturing, so you can find compatible replacements elsewhere.
I bought the System76 Kudu laptop back in 2016, but it is actually a W670RZ model laptop manufactured by Clevo Co. in China (unlike my previous laptop which was a MacBook Pro manufactured by Apple in China). System76 wasn’t the only company selling the W670RZ, so they’re not the only ones you can go to for replacement parts.
OH, so it’s generic product… I see, thank you for the information
FWIW, I have a galp5, and had a lot of stability issues with Pop. I used it for well over a year, as I thought using their own OS on the machine they sold me would give the best results. Ultimately I spent a lot of time opening support tickets, and trying to work around issues (desktop stuttering, crashes, touchpad randomly would stop responding, etc). I did not find their support team particularly helpful. I finally installed stock Ubuntu, and it’s been significantly more stable.
I don’t plan to buy from them again. If I were buying now, I’d be looking at Framework (probably their upcoming, larger model with the dedicated GPU).
If you’re thinking of getting one, i personally would recommend getting one from https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/. Extremely good quality and a really clean distro with Tuxedo OS 2 although you are able to install on it whatever you want.
Thanks! They look good but are a little expensive :( they’re definitely a vendor I’ll look into in the future, though!
I’m fairly new to Linux, but I quickly learned that AMD based stuff is better for Linux.
Oh, really? I knew AMD was more popular among Linux users, but I never really made the connection that it was better, lol. Thanks!
Oooooh yeah. I currently have an AMD video card and it’s heaven. No drivers problems, KDE Wayland works perfectly, it’s just absolutely awesome.
Ooo, nice!
nvidia drivers on linux is troublesome. They don’t support their own proprietary drivers well and don’t share with the devs working on open source ones. As expected, you end up with two different feature incomplete drivers and it’s a huge hassle.
iirc you should be fine with an intel or and cpu and it’s just the gpu you need to be careful with, but my experience is with an amd cpu and nvidia gpu so I may be wrong
I see. It sucks that proprietary stuff clashes so much with open source stuff but it’s not unexpected unfortunately :( thank you for this!
If I’d buy a new laptop these days I’d go with a framework. Other than that, buying a refurbished ThinkPad is always a great option and they generally run really good with Linux. As for support I wouldn’t be too afraid, almost all hardware is supported these days as long as it’s not something really obscure. The main thing worth checking is probably the WiFi card, I heard there are some that are a pain to set up, but I never ran into that. That being said most manufacturers won’t officially support Linux and if they do they’ll only support fedora or Ubuntu (speaking about big manufacturers, ofc there’s system76 and stuff), but as I said I don’t think I’ve encountered a laptop that straight up wasn’t able to run Linux. Also if possible avoid Nvidia GPUs, they work, but can be a pain with drivers breaking on the regular
I’m heavily considering just getting a refurbished Thinkpad just because of the low cost, along with the support. And yeah, I’ve been making a point to avoid Nvdia for that reason, lol. Thanks!
IMO refurbished ThinkPad is the way for almost anything that is not gaming, working on huge code bases (without having a build server) or heavy graphical work like video editing or heavy photo editing. For most other things a decently new and well specced ThinkPad will do the job while still maintaining that feeling of a “new and snappy pc”
Yeah, it seems like the most worth-it option so far. As much as I’d like a newer laptop getting a refurbished ThinkPad is a pretty nice choice too
I’d say Framework, but I don’t think they have stuff under $1000 unfortunately.
I’ve never heard of framework so I’ll check them out, although it’s a bit unfortunate they might not have anything in my price range :( thanks regardless!
Their main draw is modularity. You can replace the components with newer ones down the line (need to replace entire motherboard for CPU upgrade, but that’s not really their fault). You also choose which ports you want.
That is quite a bonus! Framework seems like a really nice choice so far
