8 ms·

Best Ultrabook for Linux?

• phunehehe 15y ago
  You can get one of those from System76. The 14" Lemur Ultra looks like what you may want, though I'm not really sure if that's an ultrabook. Their price is among the best (if not _the_ best). https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/lemur https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/lemur
  • chashaz 15y ago
    I haven't heard of System76 before but their pricing is pretty competitive not to mention they claim to officially support a linux distro. Thanks for sharing :)
• aeeeee 15y ago
  Last December I bought a ASUS U31 (U31SD-A1 Intel Core i3 2310M 2.10GHz 13.3" 4GB Memory 640GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M) and I absolutely love it. I don't know if the same model is available but I would definitely look into it if you can find it. For Linux I use Mint and you although it uses the Optimus stuff for video bumblebee works great. You don't need to run in NVidia mode to get 3D effects either I only use bumblebee to turn it off. I get 10hours+ of battery life, the keyboard is awesome (chicklet style). I did replace the internal drive with an SSD drive which makes it boot much faster, less than 5 seconds. Also dual boot windows for games and the NVidia graphics are great for that. EDIT: removed some of my !!!!s since they made this sound like it was written by a teenage girl. (I really do love this laptop)
  • gcb 15y ago
    Thanks, will look this one. My favorite machine is still an eeepc1000, but since then, all i saw from Asus was crap. hopefully they are back to decent designs
  • maxs 15y ago
    Another vote for ASUS U31SD!!! (I am also excited like a teenage girl about this laptop!) I bought it for $650 from Amazon almost a year ago. It is not really an Ultrabook. But, I think it is perfect. The screen size is a 13", it is incredibly light, yet still has a full-size keyboard, all ports you will ever need, and quite A LOT of power (4Gb RAM expandable to 8Gb, 2 cores, 4 hardware threads). I use Ubuntu with Unity, with a lot of browser windows, a heavyweight IDE (NetBeans), lots of terminal windows and it works very snappy. It also never gets hot. The battery life is terrific.. 7-8 hours! I didn't buy an SSD yet, but I intend to, in a few years when they get cheaper. I dual boot Windows for gaming, and I've even played some relatively recent video games (like Just Cause 2, Mass Effect 3), with maxed-out resolution on an external monitor. Works like a charm.
    • aeeeee 15y ago
      Nice! Happy to hear that there is another person running Linux. I honestly get a good 10 hours (or at least that's what the power manager reports). It boots so fast with SSD I don't think I'll ever go back :)
• traxtech 15y ago
  The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 is really great, and it's also Ubuntu certified since a long time (10.10) so it should be okay with others distros.
  • ghost91 15y ago
    also the battery life beats any ultrabook
  • freyrs3 15y ago
    X220 is a great line, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Linux notebook with better hardware support. It can also get extremely competitive battery life with a little bit of kernel tweaking.
    • btam 15y ago
      Can you give examples or links that explain what sort of "tweaking" you're referring to?
      • jodoherty 15y ago
        I've added the following to my grub options (this helps a lot if you use Gnome3 like me): pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 Which makes the complete entry look like: title Arch Linux root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda5 ro pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 initrd /initramfs-linux.img I also use thinkfan to keep reasonable fan speeds along with the ondemand cpu-frequency scaling policy on battery power keep power usage down. I also minimize disk usage by taking advantage of my 8GB of memory and placing /tmp in tmpfs. These days I usually get 8-10 hours of actual use on a single charge, but most of that is writing/running code and browsing the web. If you usually do something more CPU taxing, you'll probably run closer to 5-7 hours. That's using the 9-cell battery that juts out from the case slightly and a low power SSD. The most annoying part of the X220 is the buttonless clickpad. It works really well if you use the tap to click features, especially since the multi-touch lets you scroll around and double/triple click with multi-taps, but in the end I just couldn't get used to tap to click. Using the actual click/button, click and drag is so horribly broken with clickpads on Linux (and even Windows, if you ask me), that I gave up on that fairly quickly too. Finally I just disabled the touchpad in the BIOS. The touchpoint works too well to bother stressing over the ill-conceived touchpad on this model. The IPS screen is great, but there is some occasional ghosting. It's only a temporary effect though, so it's a price I'll gladly pay for having a better image than any of the external monitors here in the house. It's also extremely bright, so I suggest turning down the brightness a few steps and letting your eyes adjust, otherwise you'll unknowingly burn your eyeballs out. The battery also has a little bit of looseness when it's locked in. Based on what I've seen on other forums, this one's hit or miss, with some people having the same problem and many others not. Overall though, the laptop feels fairly solid without being heavy, but it's not nearly as solid as the X120e (which feels dependable) or the aluminum-body Macbooks. Finally, the keyboard on this thing is great. The keys are nice and big, the escape key is prominent and in the right spot, and the quality of the tactile feedback is perfect. If I had to choose all over again, I would've gotten an X220T, since I underestimated how much I use my wacom tablet, but other than that, I'm quite happy with the X220.
• LarryMade 15y ago
  Well most of the issue I have with Linux is graphics compatibility, that being said, I'd recommend any with an nVidia GPU over one with an ATI one. With that you will certainly have a much better experience.
  • orlandu63 15y ago
    On the contrary I suggest either Intel or ATI graphics because unlike nVidia, Intel and ATI actually contribute to their open source drivers.
    • 4ad 15y ago
      On the other hand, NVidia proprietary drivers actually work better than ATI drivers. I suggest Intel because of the lower power consumption.
      • glogla 15y ago
        On the other other (third?) hand, sometimes you want GPGPU which even in laptops can give some speedup, not to mention not having to debug it on large computer. With intel, you're out of luck there. But I think they promised OpenCL for Ivy Bridge.
      • gcb 15y ago
        Read the ati support list before buying an still closed source driver board. Nvidia may seem better because they only have close source drivers. Compare it with catalyst, and they are pretty much the same (except you will not get dual monitor easily with Nividia)
    • appleflaxen 15y ago
      I have ATI cards in all my linux machines. They work /ok/, but it really seems like ATI only gives lipservice to being linux-friendly. After making promises for over a year about how big there commitment is, the improvement has been disappointing.
  • pmjordan 15y ago
• bergie 15y ago
  MacBook Air (I have an early 2011 11" with Ubuntu and GNOME3) works pretty well, though sometimes I have issues connecting to WiFi access points that work fine on my other Linux devices. Some notes about the setup: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/11-macbook_air-the_best_computer_i-ve_ever_had/ http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/11-macbook_air-the_best_computer_i...
  • MattSkeptic 15y ago
    How much battery life do you get with that setup?
    • bergie 15y ago
      Used to be 3-4 hours, now after a year slightly worse.
  • cnmn 15y ago
    How about the touchpad? Because on a Macbook Pro + Ubuntu, the touchpad is sucks.
  • gcb 15y ago
    He mention price. Didn't he? No matter how much you downvote me, it still will cost 3x more than another model for the informed consumer. I know because all notebooks i have costs at least 1/3 of the apple equivalent.
    • masklinn 15y ago
      > He mention price. Didn't he? He also mentioned ultrabooks. Last time I checked, all ultrabooks are in the Air's price range (give or take 10%, and not necessarily in the Air's disfavour). > I know because all notebooks i have costs at least 1/3 of the apple equivalent. It might just be that none of your notebooks are in the same category.
      • gcb 15y ago
        Ok just read wikipedia to know that ultrabook is a Intel trademark. And that it's not a beefed up netbook as i assumed. So none of the 3 i have are ultrabooks. And neither is the apple stuff according to wikipedia, so off you go downvoting all apple suggestions here on the same base.
• k_bx 15y ago
  Since this is a notebook-thread, I would be interested in 15" thin and beauty notebooks for linux. They are not ultrabooks because of 15" screen, but I really can't stand <15". Thank you.
  • nyc640 15y ago
    http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP900X4B-A02US http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP900X4B-A02US
• spindritf 15y ago
  I'm not aware of any fully supported ultrabook. Something always seems to be unsupported or not fully supported but usually inessential, like a fingerprint scanner, or an accelerometer. A friend of mine is using a Zenbook but it takes some serious efforts to get it to run properly https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook It's also a matter of what you consider an ultrabook. I have a Dell V131. It's a laptop IMHO but it has a 13.3" screen, weighs 1.8kg, gets 6hrs of battery life (with wifi on a 6 cell battery) and works under Ubuntu 12.04 OOTB (except for the fingerprint scanner :)
  • balac 15y ago
    I'm using a zenbook and with the 3.2 kernal (included in ubuntu 12.04beta) almost everything is working great. There is a small change that is needed to enable suspend, but otherwise everything works out of the box with no extra drivers needed (including wifi, two finger right click, camera, 3d graphics, etc.).
    • asdfpoiu 15y ago
      Can you tell us how the battery life is?
      • balac 15y ago
        Under linux (normal web browsing, coding, etc.) I get around 5 1/2 hours. With windows that goes up to around 7 hours. I think much of the windows battery saving comes from the very low power mode it switches into automatically when you unplug the laptop. This mode can be a little annoying though as it powers down the cpu and you can't do basic stuff like watching a high quality video smoothly, etc. As far as I can tell under Linux the power saving mode is much more conservative.
  • wickedchicken 15y ago
    The touchpad on the Zenbook is absurdly bad, nearly unusable. I was hoping they would stick with the Elantech found on the Eees (these are rather well supported) but instead it's a 'Sentelic.'
• jurre 15y ago
  Not sure if this is helpful but I was looking for the same thing about six months ago and ended up buying a macbook air, decided to give OSX a chance and stuck with it. As far as I'm aware most of the things are compatible but trackpad support isn't quite there yet.
  • ansgri 15y ago
    How do you deal with absence of PgUp/PgDn and Home/End? I've honestly tried for 2 weeks to get comfortable with MacBook, but feel that the keyboard is simply bad.
    • cscheid 15y ago
      M-v, C-v, C-a, C-e?
    • zimbatm 15y ago
      Me too until I found that Fn+Up/Down,Left/Right do what you want. Also Fn+Backspace to delete.
      • moe 15y ago
        That's a poor substitute. These tiny arrows are hard enough to hit on their own. Chording doesn't make it better, especially since often you need Shift-PGUP, Shift-Home etc.
      • jurre 15y ago
        Fn+backspace to delete is a new trick for me! Thanks a million!
      • lamnk 15y ago
        Tip: You can use KeyRemap4Macbook [1] to map the stupid eject button on MBP to delete. And if you use vim, you can map Escape to Delete and vice versa. Very useful. [1] http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/ http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/
    • moe 15y ago
• batista 15y ago
  This, guy, Linus Torwalds, uses a MacBook Air for Linux. He even says on his Google+ page that he couldn't find anything better, and that even Lenovo stuff is crap. Just sayin'.
  • keltex 15y ago
    "Torvalds" Do you have a link?
    • phunehehe 15y ago
      Here you go https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCYpi5 https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCY...
  • ciupicri 15y ago
    The MacBook Air was for his kids: "if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses)...". P.S. Out of curiosity, could someone explain me why I'm being downvoted?
    • batista 15y ago
      No, it's one he uses. He talked about it several times. Here's a photo of his desktop: http://micro.dentarg.net/post/18516355410/linus-torvalds-has-a-macbook-air http://micro.dentarg.net/post/18516355410/linus-torvalds-has... And here's a quote of his in his G+ blog: "Point me to a better laptop. Trust me, I tried. They don't exist. It's sad. They are all big and clunky." (Someone suggesting Lenovo) "no, Lenovo doesn't. I have the Lenovo X1. It's bigger, plasticky, and has worse battery life." (As for above, probably he has one for his kids too or his kids also use his --or he just mentioned it in the example above to refer to a usability issue for the "common user"). In the past he also had a G5 (Linux) as his desktop machine, and an iBook with OS X for writing his autobiography.
• rbanffy 15y ago
  Considering the price ultrabooks are being sold for, I'd suggest a Macbook Air. From their spec sheet, they should be well supported and they are exceedingly well built and the screen is the best 13" out there. I must admit, however, I'm not convinced by this ultrabook "trend". It looks a lot like PC makers got tired to compete in price in the netbook range and wanted to beef up the hardware a little and increase their margins. For that, however, they had to invent a new category.
• kijin 15y ago
  Beware of touchpads with multi-touch and integrated buttons (a.k.a. "clickpads"). A lot of laptops nowadays seem to have these MacBook-esque touchpads, and especially ultrabooks since they're often trying to mimic Apple products. But driver support for PC clickpads in Linux is hit and miss. Often you'll find it very frustrating to perform right clicks and drag-and-drop operations. Cutting-edge distros like Ubuntu 12.04 finally include rudimentary support for clickpads, but my experience in a non-ultrabook clickpad-enabled laptop was far from ideal even with the 12.04 beta.
  • gtani 15y ago
    I haven't gotten Ralink RTS390 wifi adapter to work, either (Ubuntu, HP laptop) tho I only spent 45 minutes on it and got busy with other stuff
  • tdoggette 15y ago
    I could never own a laptop without 3 hardware buttons, ideally set up like a thinkpad: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nVGyx975u38/SkzCHnkMbAI/AAAAAAAAGgo/UY8y_368acw/s400/lenovo+thinkpad+t400s+trackpad+touchpad.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nVGyx975u38/SkzCHnkMbAI/AAAAAAAAGg...
    • HackR 15y ago
      You realize Macbook touchpads are buttons right? They have left click and right click with button action. It's just as intuitive as having 2 separate buttons, and even more so because of how customizable it is.
      • glesica 15y ago
        Not quite the same. For example, what happens when you run out of room on a drag-and-drop operation? You're holding down the whole track pad so you have two options: add a second hand to hold the button, which can make the cursor do weird things, or start over giving yourself more room. With a hardware button this isn't an issue. That said, the Apple track pads are incredibly high-quality and I generally like them. I do miss the hardware buttons from time to time, though.
• eof 15y ago
  Not an ultra; but I was looking for something similar, I think to what you were looking for. Small, but still useable, light, fast, good build quality and hopefully cheap. I did a alot of research and watched slickdeals.com regularly for deals and ended up with an Asus 1215b with an E-350 processor. It comes with 2gb of ram, but I put another 4gb stick (22$) to bring it to 6; and replaced the hard drive with an ssd ($100). all in all I have about 450 bucks into it and it's great. Everything works in linux; but graphic drivers aren't quite upto snuff. With windows 720p played fine; on linux it is sometimes jumpy; even with hardware acceleration. It has no optical drive (a feature for me). It also has usb 3.0 which was a must-have for me. Main downside is that the touchpad has a flaw and you have to fix it yourself. If you are going to put in an SSD anyway (and you should/have to) you will beable to fix it while you are doing that. Otherwise its like a 5-10 minute fix depending on how comfortable you are taking apart laptops. The other big downside is that replacing the hard drive voids the warranty (or at least, you have to break through a sticker that says if tthis sticker is broken the warranty is void). But all in all I am super happy with this laptop. The function keys work, the wireless is solid; with an SSD it boots up in seconds; everything is lightning fast. Only a dual 1.6 ghz so if you are doing lots of heavy compiling it isn't probably not for you. I have not done much gaming on it; I have played a little bit of heroes of newerth on ultra low settings and it was playable.
  • RexRollman 15y ago
    What is the touchpad flaw?
    • eof 15y ago
      From the users stand point; it just gets jumpy; and your input doesn't match the output. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ak20j48w1A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ak20j48w1A If you have ever used a non-laser tracking mouse on a wood surface you have a good idea of what its like. What appears to be happening is that there is a short from the output of the touchpad to the motherboard. Removing the little piece of foil that appears to be 'grounding' the trackpad from the screw 100% fixed it (for me).
  • keenerd 15y ago
• tribaal 15y ago
  I use a Toshiba z830, and it works brilliantly under Ubuntu, I can assume it does as well with other Linux distributions.
  • mbq 15y ago
    I have r830 with Arch, so a less-ultra but quite similar stuff -- everything works, after some tuning it can eat only 7.5-8W during normal activity (with Compiz).
    • tribaal 15y ago
      Nice, what kind of tuning did you do? I hover around 9W, which is already really good... A link to share for your tweaks, sir?
• jk 15y ago
  Slightly off-topic - a laptop and not an ultra book. I use Toshiba satellite C640-X4012. Fedora runs smooth. It has Intel core i5-2430M @ 2.4GHz and 4GB ram. It has only 2 USB ports - the only drawback I have felt.
• nottinhill 15y ago
  It doesn't matter what Computer you throw against Linux - it will just work (with tinkering of course). My prefered setup years ago was Gentoo on a MacBook (the black , plastic ones fom the 90ies). Today I would recommend a MacBook for its display. You can then wipe the disk or swap them, as I did with my work notebook from Lenovo (x201) - running FC16. I heard Mint and Ubuntu is great too.
  • ansgri 15y ago
    Just work = without tinkering.
  • glogla 15y ago
    Yes, finding notebooks with good screens is very hard nowadays, and Apple is one of the few that's still shipping them. While I don't like their business practices, my next notebook is still probably going to be MacBook. I seem to remember some bug with macbook touchpad handling in linux, something that made the cursor jump around when the touchpad is switching from one finger to two finger mode and back, and it made two finger scrolling impossible. Anyone knows if that was fixed?
• chimeracoder 15y ago
  I honestly don't understand the driver issues - I've installed Linux on a number of different machines, and I've never had any driver issues myself (certainly not when using a preconfigured DE). That said, I don't think the MacBook Air is the only (or even the best) solution for an Ultrabook. I've heard good things about Lenovo's series, and while it's not an Ultrabook, my HP Envy has always run Arch Linux splendidly - I couldn't be happier with it.
• jdost 15y ago
  I use a Macbook Air (Mid 2011) and run Arch Linux on it. Works fine, only thing that doesn't work is the Thunderbolt port. I picked the Air because the model was on its second year and had a history of people having Linux run on it. The touchpad works fine with xf86-input-mtrack, which lets you customize some of the finer details on the trackpad. ... Just my two cents.
• FreeKill 15y ago
  I bought an Asus Zenbook. It works pretty well, I installed Ubuntu on it using these instructions https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook There were some manual configurations, as you can see, but for the most part everything works fine...
• btipling 15y ago
  The various warnings about drivers, touchpad and wifi in these answers is almost amusing if not a little depressing. Remember the promise of the Linux Desktop? I remember giving ubuntu a good try in 2006, but after nightmares with xorg configs, flash, audio drivers and a clipboard that couldn't copy and paste across different applications I eventually switched to mac. It doesn't look like things have changed much in the last five years.
  • icebraining 15y ago
    If you're willing to restrict yourself to a couple of models like you have to with the Mac, then you can get a laptop that comes with Linux, like those from System76[1]. The only reason you have warning is because people want to use Linux on machines not supported by the manufacturer, but guess what: the same thing would happen with OS X. [1]: https://www.system76.com/ https://www.system76.com/
    • rbanffy 15y ago
      I just got myself a Dell v131. Very happy with it. Small, slim and fast enough, with easy access to expansion. Not a Macbook, of course, and not an ultrabook, but half the price.
  • Periodic 15y ago
    With both my desktop and my wife's, I can't remember the last time we had a major hardware incompatibility with Linux. Both were built piecemeal. Since Ubuntu added their restricted drivers installer, I haven't had a problem with many hardware issues. Wireless cards, video drivers, it's all been there. There has just been one thing I haven't been able to get working quite right and had to compile my own driver for, and that's a Logitech G13. It's different enough that generic drivers don't work, and rare enough and complicated enough that no one else had submitted drivers before.
  • glesica 15y ago
    We're talking about Ultrabooks here. Which is a "new" form factor with, probably, weird hardware to get the size/weight down. You can't install OS X on a Thinkpad, either, the hardware wasn't meant for it. So yes, as long as OEMs don't provide Linux drivers, you won't be able to install Linux on any random device without worrying about hardware issues (and I'm not trying to say that they should provide Linux drivers, no value judgement going on here). However, if you use hardware that is fully supported, the Linux experience is trouble-free. Just like the OS X experience is trouble-free if you use a fully supported device (a Mac).
• JAlexoid 15y ago
  In general, ThinkPads are the way. Business line Dells also are quite well supported. (This has to do with the user community for those machines. And that community keeps their software running well) I am as well looking for a Ultrabook, but I decided to wait for the ThinkPad T430s.
• alFReD-NSH 15y ago
  I have a dell Inspiron N4010(intel cor i3, 4GB ram), with Ubuntu 11.10. Was using Ubuntu on it since 10.10. Works like a charm, just sometimes the wireless(broadcom b43xx) doesn't work, which will work again by just turning off and on. It was shipped with windows at first. But it even works smoother under Ubuntu. Though I don't suggest you to buy Dell. I can see a fan problem with most Dell laptops that I've see and also cheap hardware.
• whalesalad 15y ago
  One thing that has always killed me in regards to non-Apple laptops is the touchpad. Everyone does it wrong. By this I mean that they're small and not very sensitive, the attempts to integrate scrolling are janky. Anyone care to comment on the current status of that? A lot of people dislike Apple but the subtle things like this are what keep me here. It's so simple to scroll and click and right click with just light and simple taps. Is it primarily a software issue? OSS hasn't caught up?
  • buster 15y ago
    Nott sure what you mean, could it be that you are just too accustomed to the apple touchpad? I can scroll and move the pointer just fine on mine.
    • HackR 15y ago
      You wouldn't know until you've used the touchpad on an Macbook. Give it a try for 1 week. Guarantee you won't be able to go back.
      • gcb 15y ago
        Had to use one for months, went running to the better sensitiveness of my eeepc from Asus (model 1000, when they had quality parts) and the think pads clitmouse (i use touchpad there only for scrolling, all the area is a scroll wheel) i think you are mostly comparing apple drivers to windows drivers. The question is clearly about Linux. Where there's no such thing as bad scrolling implementation
      • ansgri 15y ago
        Tried to switch to Apple hardware, actually. Got a lot of hate towards them. Sensitivity is good, but precision is awful. Mouse has strange dynamic, leading to irrepeatable behaviour. I'm genuinely surprised that Apple turned me away by having lots of small details done WRONG.
      • yaksok 15y ago
        Been using a MacBook Pro for over a year; this will be the first and last Mac I intend to use for either work or personal activities. I miss the Thinkpad TrackPoint every time I'm forced to use the trackpad on the Mac (or any other laptop, for that matter). Whenever I'm using the MBP trackpad, I feel that it's meant for people who don't stay near home row because the wrist motion of displacing my wrist/hand is incredibly wasteful. In the case of my Thinkpad, though, I can much more easily transition from clicking around to typing something up.
• zmanian 15y ago
  I've been fairly satisfied running Ubuntu on my Zenbook. Everything doesn't work out of the box but the wiki has fairly detailed instructions on resolving most issues. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook
• m0nastic 15y ago
  Dan Bernstein recently posted a page on getting Ubuntu working with a current-gen MacBook Air: http://cr.yp.to/hardware/air.html http://cr.yp.to/hardware/air.html Some of that information might be useful.
• sparticvs 15y ago
  I picked up a Acer Ultra-book. Fedora supports the entire thing short of the multitouch on the touchpad...
• andrix 15y ago
  I own an HP dm4 (http://goo.gl/uCRa http://goo.gl/uCRa) running Ubuntu 11.10, it's not an ultrabook, but everything run out of the box and all working (except fingerprint device - which I don't care a bit about it). HP in my case has been always a choice, their products work excellent with linux and just right out of the box. I recommend you also, that you make sure that everything is Intel (including the wifi card) because previoulsy I had another HP laptop with Atheros wifi that was unusable!
• _mayo 15y ago
  I'm not sure if it helps but I head the HP Folio 13 support Ubuntu well out of the box.
• brains20 15y ago
  I got a Thinkpad x301 (if you can get one) using Arch Linux and newest KDE. I am completely in love. Everything works lovely and fast with its 128GB SSD except for the fingerprint reader (haven't bothered to check if I can get it to work). It has modest battery life but you can replace the DVD drive with an extra one. Amazingly light, perfect wifi and a light that illuminates your keyboard from the top. I can do light gaming (age of empires 2, or America's Army 2.5) with integrated intel. KDE just flies. I set circular scrolling and high sensitivity in touchpad, that way I can scroll without ever lifting the finger and work faster than with a mouse.
• lordlarm 15y ago
  I see a lot of comments here recommending a Macbook Air and I wanted to inform you, just so you are perfectly aware, that this computer does not even have an ethernet input. Perhaps not a game changer, but it gives a picture of what kind of features Apple has scraped away in order to reduce it's size. Personally I would choose a Thinkpad, were I you.
  • jjcm 15y ago
    Ethernet is an interesting feature when it comes to ultra-portables. It's curious that we've come to a point where the rj45 port is actually thicker than the body of some computers (the air included). If you absolutely need it, there are some USB->rj45 adapters out there. I have both a thinkpad netbook and a macbook air. I've found that 98% of the time, I'll grab the macbook air. Runs windows and linux just fine, and the hardware feels a lot more solid.
    • excuse-me 15y ago
      So no chance of a Token Ring making a comeback on Thinkpads then?
  • pudquick 15y ago
    In addition, most non-OS X operating systems boot on Intel Macs using their EFI BIOS emulation layer, which doesn't quite give you the native hardware control that booting straight EFI does. I work with enterprise deployed Macs and I'll tell you that most Linux distributions, when booting Macs via EFI BIOS emulation, do not properly control CPU and GPU power and tend to run them at full tilt. Apple's Bootcamp drivers for Windows address this issue but Apple hasn't released equivalent drivers for Linux. The end result is that, if you intend to use Linux multiple hours a day, nonstop, on a device as space-constricted as an Air, with CPU and GPU running full tilt - yes I know when running in BIOS mode a Mac's fans stay permanently at max speed - you are going to COOK that little unit. I've seen it more times than I care for. I'd -really- suggest looking at a different machine if this is your use model.
    • count 15y ago
• ootachi 15y ago
  I like the Lenovo U300s a lot. You need a tweak to make suspend work (search for "suspend ubuntu lenovo u300s" and look at the bug report). Also, the amount of totally-off-topic non-Apple-product bashing in this thread is making me incredibly sad at what HN has come to.
• jetsnoc 15y ago
  I've been interested in purchasing a Macbook air for some time. The hard edge of my Macbook Pro is really uncomfortable and it looks like the Air may have this same comfort flaw. Does it?
  • fendrak 15y ago
    I don't think it's as bad. I use a Pro at work, and have used friends' Airs at times. Since the Air is much thinner, I don't recall the hard edge being a problem. As always, best to just walk into a store and try it out!
    • msutherl 15y ago
      My experience is that the 11" is unusable and the 13" is fine. Definitely something to test in the store!
  • ambiate 15y ago
    Borrow a dremel. Tape down a cloth to cover the keys, ports, fan exhaust, and the monitor. Go along the edge with a grinding tool on low speed. Go along it again with a sanding tool. Finally, buff it. (All cheap parts in the default kit). Wear a mask. Also, the amount of grinding necessary to get a smooth edge is not much at all. This is a quick job, and leaves the same grey color. Finally, there are covers that remove the hard edge.
    • nkurz 15y ago
      Wow, that's tempting! Have you done this? Any downsides to speak of? How deep did you go? This seems like a great mod.
      • ambiate 15y ago
        I followed the steps mentioned at http://dustwell.com/macbook-pro-sharp-edge.html http://dustwell.com/macbook-pro-sharp-edge.html I basically just gauged it by eye. Light, slow, take your time.
• edtechdev 15y ago
  It's not an ultrabook, but the dell 14z is only 4 lbs and thinner than any laptop I've owned before. I got it for around $400. It was the only black friday sale laptop that had an i5 but not a dual graphics card (such as nvidia optimus, which you can get working in linux, but sometimes is a pain). Everything worked flawlessly with ubuntu, and when I dual boot to windows, plenty of games work fine, too, including the new microsoft flight simulator.
• chadillac 15y ago
  not technically an Ultra book but I've been a huge fan of the Thinkpad X series for sometime. Currently have an X220, works great, the X1 is also nice and some of the Ideapads are more "consumer grade" but would fit nicely into the "Ultra Book" territory. With Thinkpads you never really (or I haven't ever) run into issues with *nix due to the amount of love they seem to garnish from the tech community in general. Between the cozy keyboard and the overall durability of the Thinkpad line I keep coming back to them year after year.
  • hbien 15y ago
    I'll second this. I'm currently using the X220 with Gentoo and it works perfectly except for the trackpad (which shakes the cursor in some areas). I have to use the keyboard mouse pointer. I was also concerned about price and managed to get mine used on Craigslist.
• lucian1900 15y ago
  I have a 13" Thinkpad Edge E325 and it's great. I use Ubuntu on it and everything works, 7h battery life. Cost me £350.
• kamechan 15y ago
  See if you can find a special on a thinkpad x220 if you don't want to go the air route. Unlike the air, you can max it out at 8GB of RAM and it comes with full voltage processors rather than ULV processors like in the MBA. I was running gentoo on my x220 (have since gone to a T420 on mostly for the higher resolution screen) and getting 11 hours battery from the 9-cell. Also would recommend the IPS option, though they've had some quality control issues with those screens. I had problems with mine and Lenovo replaced it, no questions asked. One of the best screens I have seen on a laptop. For the wireless, I found the intel 6205 to work best with gentoo. The hardware on the thinkpads is generally really Linux friendly. It's worth noting that there's an impending ivy bridge refresh. I'm thinking an x230 might come out in the next few months.
  • SamReidHughes 15y ago
    Speaking of X230, it's worth noting that you might be able to get 1600x900 in the next version. Other laptops are offering higher resolutions, including 1080p in 11-12" in one ASUS ultrabook, and there's at least one 12.1" 1600x900 panel floating around. So that's another reason to wait.
    • kamechan 15y ago
      Exactly what I'm hoping for, actually. X220 was perfect, except 1366x768 a bit harder for me to be productive on. For most programming I do it's fine as I use vim and don't need a lot of real estate...but for large projects for which I use eclipse, it was a bit painful. Also on the way is the T430U, the 14" ultraportable version of the T420. Might be nice too. Would take a 1600x900 x230 over it any day though.
  • akkartik 15y ago
    I've been running a T420s with LMDE for 4 months now, and the one issue that's been bugging me is battery life. Boot up the windows partition: 6.5 hours. Linux partition: 1.5 hours.
  • replax 15y ago
    Actually, you can even stick 16GB ram into the x220. i agree that it is a great notebook, esp. with the ips screen! if only the resolution was a tad higher :)