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I run Linux on a ThinkPad P51: powerful hardware, good 4K screen, excellent keyboard, all the ports. Not small. You could also just put Linux on a Mac, alright

I run Linux on a ThinkPad P51: powerful hardware, good 4K screen, excellent keyboard, all the ports. Not small. You could also just put Linux on a Mac, alright you'd be paying the Mac premium for sort of not a Mac, and you'd be stuck in dongle land.

movedx 7y ago
I've never found 4K screens to be all that good/useful. Maybe my experience of them is aged, but even Windows 10 fails to scale the UI all that well on a 4K screen. Ideally I'd want the a 1440p screen.
- ohples 7y ago
  IMHO On a laptop there isn't' much benefit . But on a monitor >= 32 inch it's great
  - movedx 7y ago
    I'm running 1440p on a 27". That works so beautifully.
bluedino 7y ago
The best part of the P50 line - you can stick 64-128GB of RAM in there (depending on which model) as well as dual SATA, or single SATA plus dual M.2 drives.
nextos 7y ago
I was about to ask the same question. The default answer is a ThinkPad. X1C and T495s (AMD Ryzen!) are very interesting options. Sadly delivery times are really long now due to Intel supply problems or COVID disruptions. Dell XPS 2020 is cool, but I have had many QC problems with Dell expensive hardware. So I try to skip Dell except for UltraSharp screens. T2 chip will block access to disk in most recent Macs, so that's not an option. Which is unfortunate, as some MacBook Airs were perfect Linux machines. Linus himself used one a few years ago as his main machine before switching to a Pixel. IMHO, surprisingly, Microsoft Surface devices are worth considering. The most recent batch is mostly Intel/AMD hardware top-down. Surface Go works perfectly with a mainline kernel. Surface Book 2, Pro 7 and Laptop 3 work quite well, except minor glitches and touch support (which is still being worked out in some models). A caveat is that camera support is non-existent in non-Book devices. Some Windows Hello cameras are weird I guess. Else, hardware is fantastic, keyboard is a delight and those 3:2 screens are really good.

movedx 7y ago

I've never found 4K screens to be all that good/useful. Maybe my experience of them is aged, but even Windows 10 fails to scale the UI all that well on a 4K screen. Ideally I'd want the a 1440p screen.

ohples 7y ago
IMHO On a laptop there isn't' much benefit . But on a monitor >= 32 inch it's great
- movedx 7y ago
  I'm running 1440p on a 27". That works so beautifully.

bluedino 7y ago

The best part of the P50 line - you can stick 64-128GB of RAM in there (depending on which model) as well as dual SATA, or single SATA plus dual M.2 drives.

nextos 7y ago

I was about to ask the same question. The default answer is a ThinkPad. X1C and T495s (AMD Ryzen!) are very interesting options. Sadly delivery times are really long now due to Intel supply problems or COVID disruptions. Dell XPS 2020 is cool, but I have had many QC problems with Dell expensive hardware. So I try to skip Dell except for UltraSharp screens. T2 chip will block access to disk in most recent Macs, so that's not an option. Which is unfortunate, as some MacBook Airs were perfect Linux machines. Linus himself used one a few years ago as his main machine before switching to a Pixel. IMHO, surprisingly, Microsoft Surface devices are worth considering. The most recent batch is mostly Intel/AMD hardware top-down. Surface Go works perfectly with a mainline kernel. Surface Book 2, Pro 7 and Laptop 3 work quite well, except minor glitches and touch support (which is still being worked out in some models). A caveat is that camera support is non-existent in non-Book devices. Some Windows Hello cameras are weird I guess. Else, hardware is fantastic, keyboard is a delight and those 3:2 screens are really good.