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Some tips from someone who's been doing this linux laptop thing for a long while now (6 year's ago, I replaced my aging MBP with a cheap HP) 0. TAKE NOTES! Mak
by asciimov 6y ago
Some tips from someone who's been doing this linux laptop thing for a long while now (6 year's ago, I replaced my aging MBP with a cheap HP)
0. TAKE NOTES! Make a setup doc that keeps up with the issues of setting up your computer. ie... I have to do some funky things to get my onboard speakers to work, I never remember how to do it, but my notes remember it for me.
1. The trackpad will suck. Just get an external trackball or mouse, use it instead.
2. Pay for a good built-in keyboard.
3. Make sure you can swap your network card. I have my preference on manufacturer. For historical reasons I typically replace whatever it comes with.
4. If graphics matter to you, avoid NVidia GPU's.
5. Avoid laptops with restrictive bioses. (wifi whitelists, wont let you change boot order but supports two drives, etc)
- stinos 6y agoWrt note taking for setting up software: I gave up on that in favor of a shell script for initial setup, and pretty much everything else is in Ansible. Works for almost everything, does take some work and sometimes needs updating. But also serves as notes by itself. Anyway the main advantage over notes for me is that I don't have to copy-paste a bunch of commands from notes anymore, and that large parts of it are common to multiple computers I use.
- asciimov 6y agoShell scripting is good when you can use it. Some software I use is manually patched and that doesn't lend itself to automation. The notes are also geared for the times I move distros or change a major component in the system. I include what I did, why I did it, where the info came from, and why I removed it or decided to go a different direction.