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Microsoft surface laptop 4 is likely to be this - looks like the 3 was close - except for poor battery: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3449758/microsoft-surfa

by e12e 6y ago

Microsoft surface laptop 4 is likely to be this - looks like the 3 was close - except for poor battery: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3449758/microsoft-surface-laptop-3-15-inch-ryzen-7-review.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3449758/microsoft-surface-la...

chrismorgan 6y ago
But it’s unlikely to be great at Linux out of the box. The Surface families have a history of doing things their own way, which means being poor at running Linux until people reverse-engineer things. Per https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte..., Surface Laptop 3 (AMD) still isn’t perfect: like most of the Surface families it requires a special kernel for most stuff to work, and the touchscreen and pen support don’t work (admittedly functionality outright missing from most laptops, so perhaps not a big deal), and if you suspend it, you need an external keyboard to wake it up again! Also I’m shocked at the price hike from 16GB RAM, 512GB storage to 32GB RAM, 1TB storage: it goes up from AUD 2931 to AUD 4399. A $1,468 increase. I would consider $468 not unreasonable (even though the retail cost delta on the actual parts should be under half of that), but it’s like they hoped you wouldn’t notice them slipping an extra $1,000 onto the price. But then, given that the second and third configurations increase the first’s $1,699 by $425 to increase 128GB of storage to 256GB (that’s more than even Apple charge for such things!), and then by another $255 to increase 8GB of RAM to 16GB, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Still am, though.
- e12e 6y ago
  I didn't see Linux support in your 3 points, though! As an owner of a surface 4 pro, I feel the pain of almost good Linux support - and is a little surprised and dismayed at the rate of mainline kernel support. Also agreed on the pricing model - but in my experience the hardware is very good. Arguably, I prefer it to Apple hw (except for the m1 cpu, that looks nice).
  - chrismorgan 6y ago
    Eh, I reckoned it was kinda implied in my reasons for wanting no NVIDIA. I also didn’t say “must have more than 4GB of RAM”. :-) (A funny fact about it all is that I purchased the Surface Book a few years back simply because its hardware was so good on paper for what I wanted to do that I was willing even to switch from Linux back to Windows. Admittedly I would never have done it without WSL existing, but still. Anyway, a few years later I’m hankering to get back to Arch Linux and i3, or perhaps Sway now. The Surface Book has been good hardware, except that unit #1 was developing some problems at the age of 19 months, #2 was basically DOA, #3 had Battery 1 disappear after four months, and a couple of weeks ago #4 at the age of 2¼ had its Battery 1 die in a more unpleasant way: the computer will spontaneously lose power typically 1–4 times per day. But I have probably used it an average of over 10 hours a day, and regularly very heavily at that, except for its dGPU which is almost untouched.)

by e12e 6y ago

chrismorgan 6y ago

But it’s unlikely to be great at Linux out of the box. The Surface families have a history of doing things their own way, which means being poor at running Linux until people reverse-engineer things. Per https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte..., Surface Laptop 3 (AMD) still isn’t perfect: like most of the Surface families it requires a special kernel for most stuff to work, and the touchscreen and pen support don’t work (admittedly functionality outright missing from most laptops, so perhaps not a big deal), and if you suspend it, you need an external keyboard to wake it up again! Also I’m shocked at the price hike from 16GB RAM, 512GB storage to 32GB RAM, 1TB storage: it goes up from AUD 2931 to AUD 4399. A $1,468 increase. I would consider $468 not unreasonable (even though the retail cost delta on the actual parts should be under half of that), but it’s like they hoped you wouldn’t notice them slipping an extra $1,000 onto the price. But then, given that the second and third configurations increase the first’s $1,699 by $425 to increase 128GB of storage to 256GB (that’s more than even Apple charge for such things!), and then by another $255 to increase 8GB of RAM to 16GB, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Still am, though.

e12e 6y ago
I didn't see Linux support in your 3 points, though! As an owner of a surface 4 pro, I feel the pain of almost good Linux support - and is a little surprised and dismayed at the rate of mainline kernel support. Also agreed on the pricing model - but in my experience the hardware is very good. Arguably, I prefer it to Apple hw (except for the m1 cpu, that looks nice).
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Eh, I reckoned it was kinda implied in my reasons for wanting no NVIDIA. I also didn’t say “must have more than 4GB of RAM”. :-) (A funny fact about it all is that I purchased the Surface Book a few years back simply because its hardware was so good on paper for what I wanted to do that I was willing even to switch from Linux back to Windows. Admittedly I would never have done it without WSL existing, but still. Anyway, a few years later I’m hankering to get back to Arch Linux and i3, or perhaps Sway now. The Surface Book has been good hardware, except that unit #1 was developing some problems at the age of 19 months, #2 was basically DOA, #3 had Battery 1 disappear after four months, and a couple of weeks ago #4 at the age of 2¼ had its Battery 1 die in a more unpleasant way: the computer will spontaneously lose power typically 1–4 times per day. But I have probably used it an average of over 10 hours a day, and regularly very heavily at that, except for its dGPU which is almost untouched.)