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Ask HN: Best ultrabook for Linux?
- jordhy 11y agoTry a MacBook Air or a Dell XPS 13
- bonesinger 11y agoXPS 13 Developer Edition has been out for a bit and it comes with Ubuntu http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- scalesolved 11y agoThe 4th Gen X1 Carbon looks pretty awesome http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon-4/#SYSTEM http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca... $1857 gets you: i7 6600U processor 16gb ram 512gb SSD 2560x1440 WQHD Screen WiGig OneLink+ Mini DisplayPort™ HDMI™ 3 x USB 3.0 microSD™ Weight Starting at 2.6 lbs (1209 g) Damn I think I might have just convinced myself here!
- gnur 11y agoI have third gen X1 Carbon and I love it, I run openSuSE leap on it and I have never been more satisfied with a linux distro on a laptop.
- noir_lord 11y agoI keep been tempted by these.
- RivieraKid 11y agoIf it was a bit cheaper and had a 13" screen (or a smaller rim) I'd go for it. Right now the XPS 13 has an edge for me.
- MichaelGG 11y agoI wonder what the heat is like. All these slick looking things seem to get rather hot. Real X-series with throttling seems OK. It's rather absurd. Even the Nexus 9, doing light tasks, gets uncomfortably warm.
- b01t 11y agoI really want to get this one but have a few concerns - > Malware in BIOS preinstalled by Lenovo > Is dual core processor sufficient?
- scalesolved 11y agoI'm running a Lenovo S540 (the line has been discontinued but it is an ultrabook). It's processor isn't as good as the 4th gen X1 carbon you can check the comparison here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=2608&cmp%5B%5D=2248 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=2608&cmp%... My S540 has an SSD,16gb ram and the slower processor and it churns through work fine, I mainly do Java development and on top of that I use the Play Framework which compiles to both Java and Scala so it's more CPU intensive. I can easily run one or two IDE instances alongside 10+ chrome tabs,several terminals and mongo/mysql db GUIs.
- colsandurz 11y agoI've got a 3rd gen and I like except for button-less mouse, the weird touch-strip for the function key. They fixed both of these with the 4th gen though. I use Arch and pretty much everything "just works," the camera, sound, wireless, etc.
- grigio 11y agoProbably chromebook pixel 2,asus ux305 or xps13
- notacoward 11y agoDitto for the Pixel. I also have a ux305 and it's nice in a lot of ways but doesn't really have the battery life I want. The Pixel (what I'm using now) does, beating even my old MBA. As a bonus, I get to run low-maintenance ChromeOS and real Linux simultaneously via Crouton, including niceties like clipboard integration. Haven't missed either the MBA or the ux305 once since I got this.
- neverminder 11y agoI second Chromebook Pixel 2015 - quality tops macbooks.
- dajbelshaw 11y agoI think the Chromebook Pixel 2015 suffers from the same HDPI problem with Linux distros that I've got with the 2013 version. I've got GalliumOS (https://galliumos.org https://galliumos.org) working, but it's somewhat unusable. Linux Mint supports HDPI out-of-the-box, so that's what I'm going to try next...
- precision 11y agoI'm running Arch + Cinnamon on a Pixel 2 and HiDPI is not a problem at all. The last problem application for me as the Arduino IDE, but that has recently been fixed.
- neverminder 11y agoI'm running vanilla Ubuntu and not a single issue with HiDPI screen - it's razor sharp and after setting the right scale settings every component is the right size. HiDPI is not the future, it's present, and if some applications still haven't caught up with that - let's not blame the hardware.
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- jpgvm 11y agoI'm running Debian Unstable on a Macbook Pro Retina 13. Easily the best Linux box since the Thinkpad era.
- lxfontes 11y agocurious to know the 'what works / what doesn't work' here. I truly believe this battle to be between xps13 / retina 13.
- jpgvm 11y agoEverything I use works, hardware media keys, brightness controls etc. The only thing I am not sure about is bluetooth as I don't use it. I am not the biggest fan of the XPS 13, the few I have encountered all seem to have hardware issues of some sort. I bought one for my partner about 2 years ago (the developer edition with Ubuntu) and it had horrible screen whine that Dell wasn't interested in fixing.
- great_kraken 11y agoHow are your touchpad drivers doing? On every Macbook I've used with Linux, the touchpad was terrible, because it was missing palm detection and had awkwardness when using more than one finger.
- jpgvm 11y agoSeems fine to me but I don't really use the touchpad much, just occasional web surfing etc. I did remember it being a pain to setup customised acceleration etc for it in X.org but apart from that not too bad.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- evmar 11y agoIt's a year old but I'm still really happy with the ASUS Zenbook (UX305FA) I got: http://neugierig.org/software/blog/2015/07/linux-zenbook-ux305.html http://neugierig.org/software/blog/2015/07/linux-zenbook-ux3...
- idsout 11y agoThought I'd add, I love my UX51VZ three years later.
- esessoms 11y agoAnd updated UX305CA works great with a 4.5 kernel.
- luxpir 11y agoHow do you get on with the CPU - is the Core M series much different in practice?
- esessoms 11y agoWell, I wouldn't run Gentoo on it. Compiling Chromium takes about a day, and I'm not a big multimedia user. But in day-to-day development work (both client-side and server-side) I've never had any issues. I had actually forgotten it's a Core M.
- daveguy 11y agoI got an ASUS U31JG (13" non-ultrabook) about 5 years ago and added RAM and an SSD and it is still going strong (and nice to have HDMI and VGA). I think the Zenbooks evolved out of that line so an ASUS Zenbook (UX305) will be my likely replacement. Although I have also been eyeing the XPS13. It will likely be between XPS13 and UX305(FA or CA). But like I said, this 5 year old ASUS (with a few upgrades) is still chugging along.
- hardwaresofton 11y agoIf you're not trying to do anything too taxing (not planning on playing games): ASUS Zenbook UX305FA-ASM1 model M (the fanless processor) gives me great battery life, and works nicely with Arch.
- r4vik 11y agoLenovo Yoga 900
- starikovs 11y agoI use MacBook Air and Vagrant to run Linux (Ubuntu). Everything I need from Linux is a shell :) For other things OSX is enough.
- drakenot 11y agoWhat things do you do in Vagrant that you couldn't do in your OSX shell? I'm just curious.
- alexgandy 11y agoI'm in the same boat, and I have to use Vagrant + VirtualBox for just about anything docker related.
- cweagans 11y agoNot anymore :) https://blog.docker.com/2016/03/docker-for-mac-windows-beta/ https://blog.docker.com/2016/03/docker-for-mac-windows-beta/
- lewisl9029 11y agoNice! I just joined the waitlist. Managing docker-machines manually on non-Linux platforms was really starting to get tedious. Hoping this works as seamlessly as I imagine it would.
- mobilio 11y agoI was played on MacBook and everything run fantastic.
- plessthanpt05 11y agothe thinkpad t460s is amazing...and supports up to 20gb ram.
- imglorp 11y agoI have a T440S and love it. Decent legacy keyboard, not chicklets. All the devices work, including the fingerprint reader.
- tronje 11y agoI'm surprised a lot of people are recommending the X1 Carbon, with little mention of the T-series. The T-series is a favorite among a lot of people I know, and the T460s is very similar to the X1 Carbon, offering a WQHD screen, similar internals, similar battery life, at a lower price point. It's just slightly heavier, but it also has a port for a docking station which the X1 Carbon does not have, if I recall correctly. For a more low-budget option the Lenovo L-series thinkpads are also pretty cool.
- masida 11y agoI would prefer the T460 (or the bigger T560), just because the battery of the T460s isn't user replaceable.
- wyldfire 11y agoI can endorse the Dell XPS13 9343: small, light, great battery life, great screen/keyboard. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Some folks decided to replace the Broadcom wifi with Intel, because it's not ideal for linux. I believe that the newest XPS13 uses Intel instead.
- drakenot 11y agoHow is the build quality? I've had Dell laptops in the past given to me by my employer and the screen hinge has been a source of failure on two of them.
- krakensden 11y agoBetter than the HP Elitebook I had previously, and no problems after 9 months.
- maelito 11y agoThe touchpad on the skylake 13 is bad (not sure if it is broken).
- shorodei 11y agoMacbook touchpads are still a tier above the rest, but the Skylake XPS touchpads are pretty good (and better than the previous XPS 13) based on the reviews.
- aesthetics1 11y agoI have one. Build quality is excellent! No complaints.
- wyldfire 11y agoIt's excellent IMO
- RivieraKid 11y agoWhat about the surface finish, isn't it prone to fingerprints etc?
- anc84 11y agoNot sure if it is an ultrabook but I am extremely happy with my Fujitsu Lifebook S904. Put Archlinux on it and it works fantastically well. Great battery life and performance. Only problem is its HiDPI screen which way too much software cannot handle (Hi Java!).
- denniskubes 11y agoThe Asus Zenbook UX501. Great screen and specs. Runs Linux out of the box.
- jhebes 11y agoHave one. Support is a little flaky if you're on a distro that doesn't have >=linux 4.4 yet. Other than that, I agree
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoChromebook Pixel has been an awesome sometimes-Linux laptop for me. I'm still spending most of my time in ChromeOS, but the crouton project/extension allows me to have another linux chroot running for when I need to do work. There's a number of supported distros, although I've stuck with Ubuntu and XFCE, mostly because it stays out of my way. The fact that you can have the entire chroot or an individual app run in a window under xiwi as though it were a regular Chrome tab makes it even better. I regularly have everything running in ChromeOS except Sublime running in its own tab while I'm coding. Someone else can probably chime in as far as how well it works if you want to go full-Linux on the thing. FWIW, I believe Linus Torvalds uses a Chromebook Pixel running Fedora. [0] [0]: http://www.zdnet.com/article/chromebooks-biggest-fan-linus-torvalds/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/chromebooks-biggest-fan-linus-t...
- krakensden 11y agoDoes the pixel do the thing where your linux partition gets wiped out if you ever run down the battery? Because that scares me.
- precision 11y agoThe Pixel 1 did, but not the Pixel 2.
- neverminder 11y agoI can confirm that. Saw the comment of google rep last year on pixel's forum answering exactly this question.
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoCan't say that's ever happened to me, but I don't recall how many times I've ever let my Pixel completely run out on battery.
- daveguy 11y agoCan anyone comment on how difficult it is to put Linux on a chromebook? Is it locked down with a need to "root"/jailbreak or is it just a matter of some startup keys? I have avoided chromebooks because ChromeOS always seemed like a limiting factor and potential privacy issue. Can someone summarize the ChromeOS -> Linux process and pain factor?
- dikaiosune 11y agoI was going to get the XPS 13, but decided to perform some upgrades on my desktop at the same time. So to save a few bucks I got an X250 from Lenovo, and I've been very happy with it. It's a little bulky since I also got the large second battery, but the battery life is absolutely phenomenal, and everything works great on Arch.
- drallison 11y agoI have a System 76 Gazelle(https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops), which I use as my travel machine. It runs Ubuntu 14.04. Very nice machine.
- alvern 11y agoChromebook Pixel 2 users, i5 or i7?
- precision 11y agoi7, LS edition. And I still get >10hrs of battery life.
- rjzzleep 11y agoHere's my take on it: - Macbooks overall good, decent battery(if you configure it right), but terrible wifi and broken cam(some fiddling required, possibly unstable hibernate), no sysrq - Thinkpad X1 Probably the best support good battery, but no thunderbolt 3, so no external graphics, 16gb ram - X260 Awesome battery, slower SSD than its competitors 16gb ram, good cpu, mobile broadband, only HD520 graphics(if it had thunderbolt 3 you could upgrade it with a discrete external GPU, shame really ...) - Dell XPS 13, overall good up to 16 gb ram, Iris graphics, thunderbolt 3, so you could use a razer external discrete GPU(priced at 500 USD though). worse battery than the macbooks - Surfacebook/Pro probably my favorite device, but linux support is flakey see: https://github.com/jimdigriz/debian-mssp4 https://github.com/jimdigriz/debian-mssp4 https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/48dly5/is_there_a_guide_to_installing_linux_on_the_sp4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/48dly5/is_the... Personally i'm still holding off i have a macbook retina 2013 and an air mid 2013. the retina screen died and i'm aching for a replacement but i want both graphics and battery, but that seems to be a no go. I'm leaning towards the x260, unless surfacebook magically starts working by the time i'm getting a new device.....
- mkrajnak 11y agoI'm using a Asus UX305L with Ubuntu/Gnome and very happy with it. I went with 2015 model because I wanted the 1920x1080 non-touch screen to save battery. Ubuntu on the XPS 13 was unavailable in the time period I made the purchase and I didn't want to deal with the wifi hardware issue. One advantage of the XPS13 is a PCIe connection for the SSD. You didn't mention cost, but the Asus will generally be a little cheaper.
- acabal 11y agoI've been using the Razer Blade 2015 and I highly recommend it. It's expensive, but the machine itself has Macbook-level build quality and internals. The screen is great and everything works out of the box with Ubuntu. While I do have dual-boot set up, I run Ubuntu 95% of the time and it's been basically flawless. (Caveat: I haven't tried the webcam or hibernate, and I don't use the Nvidia card.) It's by far the best 14" machine I found when I was shopping around last year. While it's marketed as a gaming laptop it also happens to be a fantastic general-purpose or development machine, especially since Linux runs so well on it. IIRC they recently announced the 2016 model which is cheaper and lighter yet. Downsides are 1) it's expensive; 2) proprietary parts means no DIY repairs, and Razer requires you to ship your machine in for their very expensive in-house repairs; 3) the black/neon-green color scheme is a little silly, though it's not nearly as bad as pretty much any other laptop marketed as a gaming machine. I bought a round matte black sticker to cover the logo on the lid and it fits pretty well.
- ckrailo 11y agoJust in case others are looking at Blades... My 2012 blade went in for repairs several times and has the worst keyboard I've ever used on a laptop. I don't know if they've improved their quality control any, but AFAIK they're still using terrible keyboards. Be careful and try one out before you commit!
- acabal 11y agoPersonally I've found the keyboard on mine to be just fine, but I'm using a 2015, not a 2012. For those of you who are interested in a try-before-you-buy, when I was shopping around they were selling them at Microsoft stores and had a demo unit set up for people to play with.
- lictorlyons 11y agoI have to agree the XPS 13 is perfect for linux. I have been using the XPS 13 9333 for about 3 years now. I run debian, 7 but now 8, and it just works for most things. I had to install the firmware for the wireless card but that was simple enough. I just got the new XPS 13 9350 a couple of months ago and am using that daily running Debian 8. I had to add the firmware for the wireless, base broadcom controller, and it works great. USB-c works well too. I also have the Dell TB15 thunderbolt 3 dock but that does not work unfortunately. Once the thunderbolt 3 drivers for the dock are working I will have the prefect laptop. Right now I have to manually connect montitor/keyboard/power. Once the dock works its one cable to plug in at the office. There are lots of posts on the dell forums with steps to get linux installed on the XPS. The current developer edition is not supported on the latest hardware, 9350. Once the thunderbolt drivers are done they are supposed to release a new developer edition with Ubuntu. The dell Sputnik team posts on the forums regularly so you can stay up to date on the progress. They are fostering a very good community for linux enthusiast.
- lqdc13 11y agoUnfortunately, only 16 gb RAM. If you want 32GB+, need a gaming notebook: P series from Lenovo sucks for linux (keyboard and touchpad). We are basically left with Asus ROG machines. They're very comfortable to work on and touchpad is great, but really heavy and battery lasts for ~3-4 hrs. However, they have a fast Nvidia card for neural nets + can run 5 VMs at the same time.
- talideon 11y agoThe one problem I've had with the 9333 is with the fan, which has started acting erratically lately, causing the machine to come close to overheating. Other than that, I've had the machine for quite a while, and have been very happy with it up till the fan issues began. If/when the developer edition of the 9350 comes out over here in Rightpondia, I'll certainly be getting it.
- luxpir 11y agoThis is partly why I'm interested in fanless models now, such as the Asus Zenbook (CA/FA line afaik). Do we need moving parts in laptops any more?
- sandGorgon 11y agoThe T460s or the Thinkpad Yoga are brilliant ultrabooks. They are not as thin as the Carbon/Macbook Air, but they are definitely very good.