Why do you want a laptop ? Building your own computer have never been easier. Just buy the parts and plug them in. (and make sure there are drivers for Linux).

Why do you want a laptop ? Building your own computer have never been easier. Just buy the parts and plug them in. (and make sure there are drivers for Linux). First pick a mother-board, probably a server grade MB from Supermicro, because many HDD, controlled fan connectors, memory slots, and possible also dual CPU, and many PCI:e if you are into machine learning. Then read the manual to see known working modules. Just an example of what you can't do on a laptop is having 6 disks in mirror/stripe mode using ZFS. Instead of taking the computer with you, you can SSH into it, maybe use X-server to run the apps on the work machine. Just leave it on when you go home or travel, so you can run lab on it. You can give shell accounts to your jealous colleges, run the git server on it. Use it instead of "cloud" computing and save thousands of dollar, etc.