This is because I honestly cannot find a laptop with the combination of 64+ GB RAM, a non-NDIVIA GPU (edit: to clarify, this is because of NVIDIA's notoriously bad compatibility with Linux), and other premium hardware aspects like its market-leading trackpad at this time - and I doubt that will change anytime soon.
I live with the debilitating T2 kernel panic hardware bug every week. There's also a very bad graphics bug that I and many others are facing. (Not sure if that one can be avoided by simply using Linux.)
I just want to do away with this T2 chip, and whatever it does to get in the way of an otherwise great Intel-based computing experience. The CPU can handle all my encryption just fine...
Thank you to your team for what you're doing. I assume Apple will constantly patch T2 jailbreaks with future macOS system updates (as that's how firmware is updated), and play a long-term cat and mouse game.
Only 14”, and perhaps less performant, but here is this one: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/.
You can also buy any newer Thinkpad (my recommendation). They are also available with AMD CPUs.
It's pretty easy to buy Linux laptops these days.
It's only MBP NVIDIA GPU in Linux (older model) that I have extensive experience on so far, and it's been terrible with nouveau.
I'd rather just have/use Intel GPU over them as well, I am not a laptop gamer to need anything NVIDIA offers in exchange for the pain in maintenance using out of tree modules to me.
Depending on which distro you use NVIDIA grapics can be quite painless. Using Pop!_OS, I just had to download the correct iso from their downloads page.
I believe most other distros have NVIDIA's drivers in their non FL/OSS repos as well.
Optimus graphics will even work with the most current drivers.
I can switch to built in Intel video for better battery but it requires a reboot. I see this as a stopgap. My home machine has an amd video.
I only need the NVIDIA graphics every so often on my laptop though, so it's fine for me.
On desktop I've had no issues.
In my experience they're largely OK. There are some rough edges - you'll struggle to get Steam and CUDA working at the same time, for example - but no showstopping problems.
I certainly don't have a debilitating kernel panic every week :)
All this is on top of the fact that they still don't support Wayland and you have to reboot to switch between the igpu and the nvidia gpu.
Last time I looked, it was perfectly possible to install them directly, without support by the distro. Yes, it's more work.
> Nvidia gpus require proprietary drivers
There's an open source driver, nouveau, but of course it's behind the newest hardware.
Yes, you can install them and they will break with every single update and you need to re-install them. And you will encounter bugs that no-one has any idea why they are there and no-one will help you with.
>There's an open source driver, nouveau, but of course it's behind the newest hardware.
It's not just behind, it's actively sabotaged by nvidia by locking basic hardware functions behind closed firmware that it encrypted.
Yes but to GP’s stated requirements, the trackpad feels like trying to push a marble around in peanut butter.
One of these years we'll get a comparable AMD laptop. Fingers crossed.
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...