7 ms·

Any developers out there that truly love their Linux-based, non-Apple laptop? If so, what's your make & model? What do you love about it?

wyldfire 10y ago
Dell XPS13 9343. I love that it's super light, long battery life, high res screen, adequate performance. I use Ubuntu 16.04. I usually use chrome with a gazillion tabs open at any time + gnome-terminal running python or C/C++ compiles. Suspend/resume works very well. Caveat: eventually I tired of the occasional wifi problems and I replaced the broadcom wifi module with an intel one (~$25). Flawless wifi since. I think my only regret/disappointment would be the memory -- this one is limited to 4GB and I can't upgrade it.
- mr337 10y ago
  I second this, I have the 2015 XPS13 with 8GB of ram. It has been a champ, I too had to ditch the broadcom wifi and replace it with an Intel one.
- elcct 10y ago
  Just replace the motherboard. Sometimes you can score cheap one on eBay and there are manuals with step by step instructions how to replace it on Dell site.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    It's not a bad idea. I hadn't considered that. But it looks like the going rate for 8GB is > $300 which represents over 30% of what I paid originally. I'll probably consider it as it ages, though.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
  I wish you could get the hi-res display as a non-touch screen; unless that's an option, my personal search for a MBP replacement will continue.
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    Agreed, what is it with the push to touch screen? Although I expect it's manufacturing - better to make all of them touch and then up-sell the customers :/
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      I find it interesting this reversal of the argument versus when the iPhone originally debuted and people were questioning that decision to go to almost nothing but touch for the device. Touch is one of the most natural forms of interaction to people. A screen without touch, to a young child, is "broken". The more screens with touch in our lives (such as say the iPhones and iPads), the more that seems to apply to any age that a screen without touch starts to feel "broken". This is what I find strangest about the arguments by people for the MBP Touch Bar: so many people that support agree how useful touch is. Wouldn't it be more useful just to make the whole screen touch capable than to stop part of the way there with just a tiny strip? The boldness of the original iPhone at the time was relying entirely on touch. The MBP Touch Bar seems a strange hesitation relative to that.
      - contingencies 10y ago
        What's wrong with touch? Critically, it lacks the bandwidth of other forms of input. It's for consumption, not creation. It leaves the screen dirty. It encourages wasteful use of screen real estate by UI. You imply everything else is 'broken' because children like touch, however I believe that's just because touch mirrors physical interaction which we are all familiar with from birth, and thus 'better for the less cognitively developed'. You can't touch this.
        WorldMaker 10y ago
        «Critically, it lacks the bandwidth of other forms of input.» The most classic forms of input (keyboard and mouse) are touch manipulations of plastic artifacts: their bandwidth is essentially a subset of touch rather than any other way around. With modern touch screens we are only beginning to scratch the surface of touch sensory bandwidth. Certainly there remains plenty of interesting areas to expand haptic feedback. There's also plenty of ways left to blend and hybridize touch sensitivity and gestures and even context sensitive/context reliant physical objects (like digital pens/pencils or even how our keyboards might interact with touch). «It's for consumption, not creation.» Many of the earliest forms of human creativity were manipulating things through touch. Maybe we haven't yet arrived at something like a good approach to digital sculpting or pottery, but that doesn't mean that we won't. Even then, I've seen amazingly creative touch apps. There are some really cool touch apps in music creation, just off the top of my head. The fact that you associate touch with consumption (and "less cognitive development") may say more about you than the world of touch apps that already exist. «It leaves the screen dirty.» Yeah. So? Things get dirty when you use them. You find ways to clean them. Are you keeping your screen pristine and untouched/undirtied because it needs to be sconced in a museum some day? I get that it's a personal preference and it plainly drives the Monk-esque sorts of OCD wild, but at the end of the day, entropy wins anyway. «It encourages wasteful use of screen real estate by UI.» One person's waste of space is another person's accessibility. Touch invites larger click targets to better accommodate the fatness of people's fingers. That accommodation, however, also helps people with accuracy issues with a mouse (which has always been a big deal easily ignored). Even further, it helps those situations that shouldn't demand accuracy in the first place. When I'm working on a spreadsheet at work, why does every click need to be a "headshot" to get my work accomplished? Lining up those shots takes time and energy I could be spending on the actual work. Just because mice can be pixel accurate doesn't mean they should be. As monitor resolutions increase and DPI increases and pixels shrink this only becomes crazier when an application has a small pixel-accurate hitbox. (It amazes me how many mission critical Enterprise apps you see with old school 16x16 pixel icons on toolbars running on modern hardware as if those businesses have a need to be FPS sniper schools.) Fitt's Law suggests we should do better than that. Targets that are bigger and/or closer to the mouse pointer are easier to hit. If it takes touch to force more developers to be more mindful of Fitt's Law, then that alone is reason enough to support touch.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
Thinkpad T450s. Lightweight, matte non-glare screen, and double battery. The latter means I can swap batteries if I'm out and about without shutting down. 100% Linux compatibility. Also under $1K even considering an aftermarket SSD & RAM.
- jhugg 10y ago
  Our office is split mac/pc. We bought about 12 of the T440s/T450s for the pc folks. There is a lot to like. One surprise perk: they use the same mini-displayport dongles to connect to projectors, so we can just leave the dongles on. Downsides: The screens are pretty washed out and blah compared to the mac screens, but ok for coding. The trackpads also holdup very poorly against the macs. The key problem for us though is they fail way more than the macs. Probably about half of them have had some issue or another after 2yrs. For the macs it's been closer to 1 in 10 or 1 in 15. We decided to spend more and push people toward more expensive macs. It saves us so much IT time.
- sf_rob 10y ago
  +1 Lenovo. I have a slight preference for the sleek form factor of the X1. I imagine Mac fans might take issues with the textured trackpad, the all plastic surfaces (though high-density plastic at least), and the aforementioned matte screen. Ran Ubuntu on one for years before switching to OSX for a few years (switching back if Apple doesn't give the Pro a spec bump soon (unlikely) ).
jacek 10y ago
Thinkpad X1 Yoga. Light, great keyboard, trackpoint is surprisingly useful (and I use it a lot actually), decent touchpad (not as good as on Macbook though), nice WQHD screen, everything works of of the box with Linux (including touchscreen and wacom pen) but fingerprint scanner and auto rotate (I prefer to switch manually anyway, feature will be in kernel 4.9). Hi-DPI app support could be better (improves rapidly). EDIT: Battery lasts ~6.5 in real life settings, but charging is super fast. I am sure battery would be better with i5 (I have i7), FHD and a non NVMe drive. I think I would like X260 more though. I do not use touchscreen and pen very often and hot-swappable battery would be great.
brendoncrawford 10y ago
ThinkPad T450s running XUbuntu 16.04 LTS. Everything just worked with a default Xubuntu install.
izzard 10y ago
I commented in the other thread a few days ago, but I LOVE my XPS 15. I opted for the lower res matte screen, but otherwise maxed out the available specs. The battery life is fantastic. The touchpad is the best I've ever used on a Windows laptop. The GPU is excellent (960m). The keyboard is great. Overall, no complaints. I did also purchase an XPS 13, which I thought was great, but the screen was just a little too small. FWIW I purchased my 'refurb', they pop up from time to time on Dell Outlet, but they go quick. EDIT: Oh yeah, Linux works flawlessly. Currently running Antergos, but have also run Ubuntu.
- sn0v 10y ago
  Any idea if Dell refurbs are as good as Apple refurbs in terms of QA and warranty?
  - izzard 10y ago
    Very similar, with options for extended warranty, etc.
Svenstaro 10y ago
T550. Probably the best laptop that I've ever laid eyes on. I can switch batteries while it's running because it has two batteries. I get a total of 16h of normal-duty work time out of it. It has 16 GB of RAM and a NVMe as well as a SSD, 3K screen and a pretty good touchpad and usable keyboard. I think the build quality is nice, it has a serious appeal to it and has a nice weight and feel to it when carried. I'm a 100% Arch Linux based developer doing all kinds of work.
anuragsoni 10y ago
I have the Precision 5510 which is basically the XPS 15 with the intel wifi card instead of Broadcom. I have had it since April. I initially bought it as it was one of the few laptops that ship with Linux. I have been happy with the battery life and the touchpad.
weavie 10y ago
Thinkpad X61. Solidly built. Compact. Linux runs out of the box. Currently running Fedora. I honestly never max out the 2 gb memory available - it can take 4gb, but I haven't had the need to upgrade yet. I did need to put an SSD in it. It's been going for 10 years, and probably has at least another 10 years left. Cons, does get a little hot on my lap from time to time. The little red joystick thing takes a little getting used to. I'm not much of a mouse user so it isn't too much of a problem, I run the i3 window manager. No space is wasted on a trackpad.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Yay another X61 fan. At home I am still using an X61 Tablet with the 1400x1050 AFFS display. I maxed it out at 8GB of memory and installed an SSD. It is so choice.
pmontra 10y ago
HP ZBook 15, first generation. I don't truly love it because they added a number pad to the keyboard which skewed the spacebar and the touchpad to the left, so I shift the PC to the right to get the touchpad aligned with the center of my body. There were no better alternatives when I had to buy it (I needed a 15" screen). What I like is that I can replace almost anything, even the CPU and the GPU. I added RAM, 16 GB out of 32 now and swapped the DVD burner for a 1 TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I was using the 32 GB SSD cache of the HDD for the OS so it was already fast, but it's faster now. THD screen is good, the touchpad has 3 physical buttons. The battery lasts 3, maybe 4 hours with care, which is more than enough for me. It's 3 kg and the power brick is a brick but it's ok. Ubuntu 16.04 works pretty well on it. Almost: it has two problems I can live with, shared by Ubuntu 12.04: 1) it doesn't shutdown, only suspend or restart. If I have to turn it off before going on vacation I press the power button when it restarts 2) plugging out the USB 3 HD I use for backups does something to the USB port and I have to reset the port or the PC won't suspend. Every other drive works. I have a script for that and it runs at the end of the backup script. I'm a developer so it's OK. If you're not, look at another hw. Everything else is OK, support included. Next business day on site assistance was about 100 Euro for 3 years. The second and third generation models look iteratively better. Maybe they work better with Linux too. Edit: however any 15" model without the number pad will win me over.
stormbrew 10y ago
Lenovo Yoga 900. Only thing I don't like about it is to get upgraded specs I had to get a hidpi screen and Linux just ain't there yet. Especially if you're not using a DE. Great battery life (it's a charge every couple of days laptop for me), love the watch-style hinge (which is really solid), and the keyboard has all the keys I want on it.
jtolmar 10y ago
Dell XPS 13. Got it preloaded with Linux, which isn't important but felt nice. It's super light, powerful enough for everything I do (giant pile of chrome tabs + one of gimp, gaming, or webdev), has incredible battery life, and is well-built and generally sturdy. Also the tiny bezel is amazing - it makes the laptop smaller, makes the screen feel bigger, and lets you see more of the rest of the world behind the laptop. My next laptop will probably be an XPS 15 to see what those are like.
soulnothing 10y ago
I've posted in a couple other threads. But Thinkpad T430. My only complaint is the screen at 1600x900. But I have it docked with 3 24" @ 1920x1200. Every day I use my macbook pro at work, I curse under my breath and wish for my Thinkpad. It's maxed out, I bought it back in 2013 used from ebay base was 500, with dock and extra parts ~900 total. The specs outside of GPU for gaming are still more than adequate. I5 dual w. hyperthreading. 16GB Ram, 2 SSD (2.5 128GB, M2 256GB). Spare battery in optical slot, or 1TB sata. About 10 hours battery life. That's one of the biggest things to me, is the flexibility and expansion. It's the best Linux laptop I've used. Everything on Arch works flawlessly. I haven't done a full reboot in months, opting to suspend. The dock with a custom script, is a breeze. The keyboard, almost as good as my Unicomp. Lastly ease of maintenance. I replaced the screen after leaving earbuds on the keyboard and cracking it (60$). Dropped it down a flight of stairs, toasted I don't know what [wouldn't boot]. New motherboard, CPU, and stick of ram (80$). Dropped a box on it, broke one hinge (15$). There are also some HiDPI mods floating around replacing the screen with either 2560x1440 or 1920x1080. I'm either waiting to build a gaming rig, or a laptop with external gpu at this point. There are pain points, the screen viewing angles are atrocious. Speakers are tinny and useless. I gutted them on a rebuild years ago. But I mean when I'm at work or on any other laptop I want my think pad. I feel I'm an outlier in what I want. I want the old used car of a laptop. Something that has good bones, and I can maitnain myself. Rice it up, soup it up, and use it for several years. I don't mind heft, 6lb is max for me. Give me expansion and good battery life, with linux support. Also things happen, so durability is key.
mmphosis 10y ago
It's a Dell. Love? No way. I am using xmodmap to swap left Control and left Alt because the Alt key is located where I expect the Command key would be on a Mac. So, my Alt-C copies to the clipboard. Using AutoKey, I've got most of the Terminal control keys remapped to Alt keys when in the Terminal. Using AutoKey, my Alt-C does Control-Shift-C in Terminal, and Control-C works as I expect in the Terminal.
snowwindwaves 10y ago
I have a T420s. Actually I have two because I bought a second as a spare in case my first one dies. Pros: * matte screen * aftermarket upgrade to 16 GB ram * aftermarket upgrade to 2 SSDs, one in the normal SATA6 connection and another in the ultrabay with a caddy, so I can always remove it and put the cd/dvd driveback in if required. * still have a spare PCIe slot so I could add another SSD there or use that instead of getting a caddy for ultrabay The biggest draw for me: power, ethernet, VGA, 2x USB and mini display port are all on the back of the machine so the cables stay out of the way when it is on a desk connected to external monitors. If I am using the keyboard on the laptop then I can have my paper notebook on the right and it isn't in a tangle of wires, or a wireless mouse and mousepad. CONS: * 1600x900, but I use external monitors 95% of the time * the first T420s had some battery firmware issue so it wouldn't hibernate when the battery got low, it would just turn off. Doesn't seem to happen any more and the problem was only with one of three suppliers of batteries so not everyone had that problem
CoffeeDregs 10y ago
I've been using Lenovo X1 Carbons for about 4 years (since they came out) and love them. Super light, enough RAM and CPU, great keyboard (after 3rd Gen...), has a TrackPoint (which I require). I'm been using Debian exclusively since 2008 and Gnome 3 since 3.4 or so. Highly recommended, though HiDPI support is not perfect...
JackMorgan 10y ago
From work I have both a ThinkPad T450s, and a 2011 MBP. I work on the train at least an hour a day. I greatly prefer the ThinkPad for the following reasons: much better battery (even after a brand new battery for the MBP), it is much lighter weight, non-glossy screen (better to counter train window glare), and the keys requires much less force to actuate. I miss the smooth MBP track pad, but I rarely use the mouse anyway. I'd never buy a Mac for personal use, even without any price either way I prefer the Thinkpad.
mr_spothawk 10y ago
the Lenovo x220 has the best keyboard in the business & an overhead lighting system that i'm fond of. it's very "throwback" but there are some aftermarket upgrades for it to make it significantly quicker.

wyldfire 10y ago

Dell XPS13 9343. I love that it's super light, long battery life, high res screen, adequate performance. I use Ubuntu 16.04. I usually use chrome with a gazillion tabs open at any time + gnome-terminal running python or C/C++ compiles. Suspend/resume works very well. Caveat: eventually I tired of the occasional wifi problems and I replaced the broadcom wifi module with an intel one (~$25). Flawless wifi since. I think my only regret/disappointment would be the memory -- this one is limited to 4GB and I can't upgrade it.

mr337 10y ago
I second this, I have the 2015 XPS13 with 8GB of ram. It has been a champ, I too had to ditch the broadcom wifi and replace it with an Intel one.
elcct 10y ago
Just replace the motherboard. Sometimes you can score cheap one on eBay and there are manuals with step by step instructions how to replace it on Dell site.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  It's not a bad idea. I hadn't considered that. But it looks like the going rate for 8GB is > $300 which represents over 30% of what I paid originally. I'll probably consider it as it ages, though.
oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
I wish you could get the hi-res display as a non-touch screen; unless that's an option, my personal search for a MBP replacement will continue.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  Agreed, what is it with the push to touch screen? Although I expect it's manufacturing - better to make all of them touch and then up-sell the customers :/
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    I find it interesting this reversal of the argument versus when the iPhone originally debuted and people were questioning that decision to go to almost nothing but touch for the device. Touch is one of the most natural forms of interaction to people. A screen without touch, to a young child, is "broken". The more screens with touch in our lives (such as say the iPhones and iPads), the more that seems to apply to any age that a screen without touch starts to feel "broken". This is what I find strangest about the arguments by people for the MBP Touch Bar: so many people that support agree how useful touch is. Wouldn't it be more useful just to make the whole screen touch capable than to stop part of the way there with just a tiny strip? The boldness of the original iPhone at the time was relying entirely on touch. The MBP Touch Bar seems a strange hesitation relative to that.
    - contingencies 10y ago
      What's wrong with touch? Critically, it lacks the bandwidth of other forms of input. It's for consumption, not creation. It leaves the screen dirty. It encourages wasteful use of screen real estate by UI. You imply everything else is 'broken' because children like touch, however I believe that's just because touch mirrors physical interaction which we are all familiar with from birth, and thus 'better for the less cognitively developed'. You can't touch this.
      - WorldMaker 10y ago
        «Critically, it lacks the bandwidth of other forms of input.» The most classic forms of input (keyboard and mouse) are touch manipulations of plastic artifacts: their bandwidth is essentially a subset of touch rather than any other way around. With modern touch screens we are only beginning to scratch the surface of touch sensory bandwidth. Certainly there remains plenty of interesting areas to expand haptic feedback. There's also plenty of ways left to blend and hybridize touch sensitivity and gestures and even context sensitive/context reliant physical objects (like digital pens/pencils or even how our keyboards might interact with touch). «It's for consumption, not creation.» Many of the earliest forms of human creativity were manipulating things through touch. Maybe we haven't yet arrived at something like a good approach to digital sculpting or pottery, but that doesn't mean that we won't. Even then, I've seen amazingly creative touch apps. There are some really cool touch apps in music creation, just off the top of my head. The fact that you associate touch with consumption (and "less cognitive development") may say more about you than the world of touch apps that already exist. «It leaves the screen dirty.» Yeah. So? Things get dirty when you use them. You find ways to clean them. Are you keeping your screen pristine and untouched/undirtied because it needs to be sconced in a museum some day? I get that it's a personal preference and it plainly drives the Monk-esque sorts of OCD wild, but at the end of the day, entropy wins anyway. «It encourages wasteful use of screen real estate by UI.» One person's waste of space is another person's accessibility. Touch invites larger click targets to better accommodate the fatness of people's fingers. That accommodation, however, also helps people with accuracy issues with a mouse (which has always been a big deal easily ignored). Even further, it helps those situations that shouldn't demand accuracy in the first place. When I'm working on a spreadsheet at work, why does every click need to be a "headshot" to get my work accomplished? Lining up those shots takes time and energy I could be spending on the actual work. Just because mice can be pixel accurate doesn't mean they should be. As monitor resolutions increase and DPI increases and pixels shrink this only becomes crazier when an application has a small pixel-accurate hitbox. (It amazes me how many mission critical Enterprise apps you see with old school 16x16 pixel icons on toolbars running on modern hardware as if those businesses have a need to be FPS sniper schools.) Fitt's Law suggests we should do better than that. Targets that are bigger and/or closer to the mouse pointer are easier to hit. If it takes touch to force more developers to be more mindful of Fitt's Law, then that alone is reason enough to support touch.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

Thinkpad T450s. Lightweight, matte non-glare screen, and double battery. The latter means I can swap batteries if I'm out and about without shutting down. 100% Linux compatibility. Also under $1K even considering an aftermarket SSD & RAM.

jhugg 10y ago
Our office is split mac/pc. We bought about 12 of the T440s/T450s for the pc folks. There is a lot to like. One surprise perk: they use the same mini-displayport dongles to connect to projectors, so we can just leave the dongles on. Downsides: The screens are pretty washed out and blah compared to the mac screens, but ok for coding. The trackpads also holdup very poorly against the macs. The key problem for us though is they fail way more than the macs. Probably about half of them have had some issue or another after 2yrs. For the macs it's been closer to 1 in 10 or 1 in 15. We decided to spend more and push people toward more expensive macs. It saves us so much IT time.
sf_rob 10y ago
+1 Lenovo. I have a slight preference for the sleek form factor of the X1. I imagine Mac fans might take issues with the textured trackpad, the all plastic surfaces (though high-density plastic at least), and the aforementioned matte screen. Ran Ubuntu on one for years before switching to OSX for a few years (switching back if Apple doesn't give the Pro a spec bump soon (unlikely) ).

jacek 10y ago

Thinkpad X1 Yoga. Light, great keyboard, trackpoint is surprisingly useful (and I use it a lot actually), decent touchpad (not as good as on Macbook though), nice WQHD screen, everything works of of the box with Linux (including touchscreen and wacom pen) but fingerprint scanner and auto rotate (I prefer to switch manually anyway, feature will be in kernel 4.9). Hi-DPI app support could be better (improves rapidly). EDIT: Battery lasts ~6.5 in real life settings, but charging is super fast. I am sure battery would be better with i5 (I have i7), FHD and a non NVMe drive. I think I would like X260 more though. I do not use touchscreen and pen very often and hot-swappable battery would be great.

brendoncrawford 10y ago

ThinkPad T450s running XUbuntu 16.04 LTS. Everything just worked with a default Xubuntu install.

izzard 10y ago

I commented in the other thread a few days ago, but I LOVE my XPS 15. I opted for the lower res matte screen, but otherwise maxed out the available specs. The battery life is fantastic. The touchpad is the best I've ever used on a Windows laptop. The GPU is excellent (960m). The keyboard is great. Overall, no complaints. I did also purchase an XPS 13, which I thought was great, but the screen was just a little too small. FWIW I purchased my 'refurb', they pop up from time to time on Dell Outlet, but they go quick. EDIT: Oh yeah, Linux works flawlessly. Currently running Antergos, but have also run Ubuntu.

sn0v 10y ago
Any idea if Dell refurbs are as good as Apple refurbs in terms of QA and warranty?
- izzard 10y ago
  Very similar, with options for extended warranty, etc.

Svenstaro 10y ago

T550. Probably the best laptop that I've ever laid eyes on. I can switch batteries while it's running because it has two batteries. I get a total of 16h of normal-duty work time out of it. It has 16 GB of RAM and a NVMe as well as a SSD, 3K screen and a pretty good touchpad and usable keyboard. I think the build quality is nice, it has a serious appeal to it and has a nice weight and feel to it when carried. I'm a 100% Arch Linux based developer doing all kinds of work.

anuragsoni 10y ago

I have the Precision 5510 which is basically the XPS 15 with the intel wifi card instead of Broadcom. I have had it since April. I initially bought it as it was one of the few laptops that ship with Linux. I have been happy with the battery life and the touchpad.

weavie 10y ago

Thinkpad X61. Solidly built. Compact. Linux runs out of the box. Currently running Fedora. I honestly never max out the 2 gb memory available - it can take 4gb, but I haven't had the need to upgrade yet. I did need to put an SSD in it. It's been going for 10 years, and probably has at least another 10 years left. Cons, does get a little hot on my lap from time to time. The little red joystick thing takes a little getting used to. I'm not much of a mouse user so it isn't too much of a problem, I run the i3 window manager. No space is wasted on a trackpad.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
Yay another X61 fan. At home I am still using an X61 Tablet with the 1400x1050 AFFS display. I maxed it out at 8GB of memory and installed an SSD. It is so choice.

pmontra 10y ago

HP ZBook 15, first generation. I don't truly love it because they added a number pad to the keyboard which skewed the spacebar and the touchpad to the left, so I shift the PC to the right to get the touchpad aligned with the center of my body. There were no better alternatives when I had to buy it (I needed a 15" screen). What I like is that I can replace almost anything, even the CPU and the GPU. I added RAM, 16 GB out of 32 now and swapped the DVD burner for a 1 TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I was using the 32 GB SSD cache of the HDD for the OS so it was already fast, but it's faster now. THD screen is good, the touchpad has 3 physical buttons. The battery lasts 3, maybe 4 hours with care, which is more than enough for me. It's 3 kg and the power brick is a brick but it's ok. Ubuntu 16.04 works pretty well on it. Almost: it has two problems I can live with, shared by Ubuntu 12.04: 1) it doesn't shutdown, only suspend or restart. If I have to turn it off before going on vacation I press the power button when it restarts 2) plugging out the USB 3 HD I use for backups does something to the USB port and I have to reset the port or the PC won't suspend. Every other drive works. I have a script for that and it runs at the end of the backup script. I'm a developer so it's OK. If you're not, look at another hw. Everything else is OK, support included. Next business day on site assistance was about 100 Euro for 3 years. The second and third generation models look iteratively better. Maybe they work better with Linux too. Edit: however any 15" model without the number pad will win me over.

stormbrew 10y ago

Lenovo Yoga 900. Only thing I don't like about it is to get upgraded specs I had to get a hidpi screen and Linux just ain't there yet. Especially if you're not using a DE. Great battery life (it's a charge every couple of days laptop for me), love the watch-style hinge (which is really solid), and the keyboard has all the keys I want on it.

jtolmar 10y ago

Dell XPS 13. Got it preloaded with Linux, which isn't important but felt nice. It's super light, powerful enough for everything I do (giant pile of chrome tabs + one of gimp, gaming, or webdev), has incredible battery life, and is well-built and generally sturdy. Also the tiny bezel is amazing - it makes the laptop smaller, makes the screen feel bigger, and lets you see more of the rest of the world behind the laptop. My next laptop will probably be an XPS 15 to see what those are like.

soulnothing 10y ago

I've posted in a couple other threads. But Thinkpad T430. My only complaint is the screen at 1600x900. But I have it docked with 3 24" @ 1920x1200. Every day I use my macbook pro at work, I curse under my breath and wish for my Thinkpad. It's maxed out, I bought it back in 2013 used from ebay base was 500, with dock and extra parts ~900 total. The specs outside of GPU for gaming are still more than adequate. I5 dual w. hyperthreading. 16GB Ram, 2 SSD (2.5 128GB, M2 256GB). Spare battery in optical slot, or 1TB sata. About 10 hours battery life. That's one of the biggest things to me, is the flexibility and expansion. It's the best Linux laptop I've used. Everything on Arch works flawlessly. I haven't done a full reboot in months, opting to suspend. The dock with a custom script, is a breeze. The keyboard, almost as good as my Unicomp. Lastly ease of maintenance. I replaced the screen after leaving earbuds on the keyboard and cracking it (60$). Dropped it down a flight of stairs, toasted I don't know what [wouldn't boot]. New motherboard, CPU, and stick of ram (80$). Dropped a box on it, broke one hinge (15$). There are also some HiDPI mods floating around replacing the screen with either 2560x1440 or 1920x1080. I'm either waiting to build a gaming rig, or a laptop with external gpu at this point. There are pain points, the screen viewing angles are atrocious. Speakers are tinny and useless. I gutted them on a rebuild years ago. But I mean when I'm at work or on any other laptop I want my think pad. I feel I'm an outlier in what I want. I want the old used car of a laptop. Something that has good bones, and I can maitnain myself. Rice it up, soup it up, and use it for several years. I don't mind heft, 6lb is max for me. Give me expansion and good battery life, with linux support. Also things happen, so durability is key.

mmphosis 10y ago

It's a Dell. Love? No way. I am using xmodmap to swap left Control and left Alt because the Alt key is located where I expect the Command key would be on a Mac. So, my Alt-C copies to the clipboard. Using AutoKey, I've got most of the Terminal control keys remapped to Alt keys when in the Terminal. Using AutoKey, my Alt-C does Control-Shift-C in Terminal, and Control-C works as I expect in the Terminal.

snowwindwaves 10y ago

I have a T420s. Actually I have two because I bought a second as a spare in case my first one dies. Pros: * matte screen * aftermarket upgrade to 16 GB ram * aftermarket upgrade to 2 SSDs, one in the normal SATA6 connection and another in the ultrabay with a caddy, so I can always remove it and put the cd/dvd driveback in if required. * still have a spare PCIe slot so I could add another SSD there or use that instead of getting a caddy for ultrabay The biggest draw for me: power, ethernet, VGA, 2x USB and mini display port are all on the back of the machine so the cables stay out of the way when it is on a desk connected to external monitors. If I am using the keyboard on the laptop then I can have my paper notebook on the right and it isn't in a tangle of wires, or a wireless mouse and mousepad. CONS: * 1600x900, but I use external monitors 95% of the time * the first T420s had some battery firmware issue so it wouldn't hibernate when the battery got low, it would just turn off. Doesn't seem to happen any more and the problem was only with one of three suppliers of batteries so not everyone had that problem

CoffeeDregs 10y ago

I've been using Lenovo X1 Carbons for about 4 years (since they came out) and love them. Super light, enough RAM and CPU, great keyboard (after 3rd Gen...), has a TrackPoint (which I require). I'm been using Debian exclusively since 2008 and Gnome 3 since 3.4 or so. Highly recommended, though HiDPI support is not perfect...

JackMorgan 10y ago

From work I have both a ThinkPad T450s, and a 2011 MBP. I work on the train at least an hour a day. I greatly prefer the ThinkPad for the following reasons: much better battery (even after a brand new battery for the MBP), it is much lighter weight, non-glossy screen (better to counter train window glare), and the keys requires much less force to actuate. I miss the smooth MBP track pad, but I rarely use the mouse anyway. I'd never buy a Mac for personal use, even without any price either way I prefer the Thinkpad.

mr_spothawk 10y ago

the Lenovo x220 has the best keyboard in the business & an overhead lighting system that i'm fond of. it's very "throwback" but there are some aftermarket upgrades for it to make it significantly quicker.