Ask HN: A good Linux laptop below 1000€ | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: A good Linux laptop below 1000€

39 pointscsunbird76 comments

Hello HN,

I have recently got rid of my Macbook pro and I am looking for a replacement. I thought, HN is the best place to ask, as there are many people here use linux laptops as their daily drivers.

I am looking for a good linux laptop for development purposes, with proper support from the manufacturer (e.g. officially supported).

The ideal price would be less than 1000€, but it is flexible.

Let me know of your suggestions, and thank you in advance!

Edit: My definition of good: A good CPU and good battery life. The integrated graphics card should be just fine, as long as it can drive a 4k screen.

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New old stock Thinkpad T480's ;) Should be around 600-700

Though it seems they might be harder to find these days.

This also looks more then decent: https://outlet.bluelink.nl/product/20HJS0XA07?path=NOTEBOOK/

Very interesting. I will definitely check it out.

Note that the P51 is a mobile workstation, not a "laptop". I have a P50 which is the same hardware platform from the previous year; powerful stuff - but not something you want to have in your bag to commute with. Also the battery life is not that great (it is a "full power" processor, not a mobile one), so even the "in meetings for most of the day" use case is not appropriate; it uses a brick power supply that you don't want to carry around either. The T4__(s) and X are great laptops - (Except for couple of X1s that were too ambitious footprint-wise or which tried too hard to implement "edgy but bad" features (touchbar)).

Thanks for the heads up. I was wondering about the Quadro as well, since I know that NVIDIA and Linux do not play nicely at all.

I think the answer is likely, "it depends." I too have a P50, and mostly leave it with the integrated Intel graphics. The Nvidia is needed for HDMI output though.

In any case, I do fire that up when needed, with its own X session.

Battery is quite variable, but can be decent, depending on what you're doing. I use i3wm on mine, and powertop will show configuration settings that are non-optimal, as well as power-hog applications.

I use the Nvidia card on my P50 with Linux (Mint) and the results are... OK. The biggest problem is that when it resumes from suspend, about 50% of the time it forgets that there are external monitors connected. Sometimes it forgets both (falling back to the laptop panel), sometimes it forgets one or the other. Sometimes it enables both, but forgets to apply the rotation, so the positioning is all weird. I have to re-enable and re-position both external monitors, and then move all my windows around to where they're supposed to be.

T440s - love it. Apart from a few problems. It won't shutdown properly but restarts every time. And if I leave it unplugged and the battery dies, I have to open the back and disconnect/reconnect both batteries to power it on again. Also the touchpad is a pain - can't use the trackpoint because there are no buttons at the top of the trackpad, to click you have to press the trackpad down far too much. Still, even with these problems it's a handsome machine and surprisingly capable of running intensive programs (Blender, Adobe Animate, Krita)

They aren't too great if your job is compiling all day, otherwise I mostly agree.

Seconded, it's a good machine and everything works well with linux.

I have a T480 and it's great. I run Pop!_OS on it and have no complaints. The fingerprint reader was the only thing that didn't work out of the box, but that can be fixed too.

Got a even cheaper E495 (Ryzen3!) for EUR 450, and upgraded to 16GB RAM. Much better than my old desktop i5 PC. 1TB HD, better than a 256GB SSD imho

Thinkpad T480S is not as good as it seems. It has throttling issues with linux. Besides that, the trackpad starts to flaking after some usage. I totally not recommend this laptop.

The thinkpads. Their product lineup is super confusing. The r/thinkpad wiki is very helpful... https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/wiki/intro

Also look for promo codes there. Never buy a thinkpad at MSRP, you can usually get them heavily discounted through various promotions (but still add on first party warranty and on site support if you need).

Their hardware quality isn't always the best but their support is good. Last time my screen hinge broke (a early foldable tablet thinkpad) and someone came out the next day to my house in a rural area and fixed it on the spot while I watched.

They're proper business / dev machines with a legacy going back to the IBM days.

Dell Latitude line is a close imitator/competitor also worth considering.

Razer gets you a lot of power but with tradeoffs in heat management and noise. If you don't need a GPU there isn't a good reason to choose them IMO. They are like MacBook wannabes but tailored for gamers.

I'd personally stay away from consumer laptops if I were you.

If I had to pick one, it would be the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

Stay away from the X1 Extreme lineup though. Mine is terrible and I would stay away from the entire segment.

Can you share more details?

Mine is fine after some tweaking. Main problem is heat and battery life. Esp with the higher resolution displays it can get quite toasty and has 3 hours of usable battery. If you don’t need the GPU get the carbon.

The touchpad is essentially busted. I get about 1s of lag before the cursor starts moving on every touch. I was hoping that improvements to libinput would resolve this but I'm starting to think it's hopeless.

The dGPU is useless with Fedora, my preferred distribution. (nvidia something or other) This isn't Lenovo's fault per se, but an AMD GPU would have Just Worked. The integrated Intel graphics are simply not performant enough to drive the 4K display.

Battery life is abysmal. I get less than 2 hours on a full charge.

The screen arrived with an obvious defect and Lenovo ignored my complaints about it.

The SSD's performance is worse than the one I have in my X1 Carbon, which is older. I find this bizarre and frustrating.

He is using Linux. The problem is not with the machine.

My opinion on laptops and Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656645

> He is using Linux. The problem is not with the machine.

I get it, I got so frustrated with Linux on laptops* -- one literally set my kitchen table on fire and melted the glass when the fan drivers didn't work -- but, to be fair, this thread IS "A good Linux laptop below 1000 euro".

I don't think there is going to be a perfect Linux on a laptop experience anywhere. The manufacturer-supported Linux variants might be better (dunno, never tried), or a Chromebook, but short of that it's mostly shared components by a few OEMs anyhow.

*Recently bought a Mac, reluctantly, after 30 years of Windows on the desktop and decades of Linux on the server. It's a godsend not having to deal with WSL/Multipass/Docker/Lando etc. just to do some quick dev work AND never having to worry about drivers. The UI is fine, if a bit keyboard-unfriendly compared to Linux and Windows. I don't like Apple as an evil monopolist company, but macOS is admittedly pretty darned nice.

The touchpad doesn't work properly on windows either, and the CPU draws a lot of wattage no matter what OS you use. I would bet on most people having a similar experience between the X1 Extreme and the X1 Carbon, but sure, maybe the design has improved too.

The fact of the matter is that the X1 Extreme suffers the same disease as many other Intel ultrabooks. It doesn't have sufficient heat dissipation for the processor, or battery capacity to service its power hunger. And it comes with synaptics touch pad.

To the contrary, do not judge an extremely successful great line of laptops based on the experience of a single person.

I can't wait for the X1 Extreme Gen 4 later this year and I am set to buy one at Black Friday if it comes at a reasonable price. I would even get the P1G4 if the RTX 3070 version can be had for anything even remotely reasonable but I have a bad suspicion it won't be. (4lbs 16" screen 16:10 resolution, two M.2 drives.)

Have you used one of the other ones with Linux?

Oh you are one of those.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656645

Stop disparaging ThinkPads just because you are a Linux user.

That's what the thread is about. My recommendations are specifically about linux laptops, and why the X1 Extreme was a bad Linux laptop.

Was. Yours, specifically. You didn't even specify a generation. Sigh. These threads. There's always someone.

My only peeve with X1 Carbon is the 16 GB RAM limit. Otherwise it's a perfect Linux laptop (for me).

Gen 9 can now come with 32 GB, at least in the UK.

It costs around 2000 euros last time I checked.

Got a Thinkpad X1 Carbon today, thank you for the suggestion. I love it!

TongFang makes several laptops with AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics that work well with Linux for well under uiur budget. The PF4NU1F is supposed to be a good one.

https://laptopwithlinux.com/tongfang-pf5nu1g-amd-ryzen-is-no... sells a version under $800 USD.

There are many other companies selling rebranded TongFangs with various configurations and prices; spend some time finding a good one.

An even better option is to buy used/refurbished. Used ThinkPads are a solid bet. See if you can find someone selling laptops nearby, in your area; you'll be able to hold/inspect/use/open it before you buy.

If you're not using Windows/macOS then avoid Nvidia. Handling their driver issues is a nightmare. With Intel and AMD, you basically never have to think about drivers.

For good official support, Lenovo officially supports upstream Fedora on some of its laptops. System76 and Slimbook are other good options for "official Linux support", but System76 can be pricey. TongFang laptops have a community of Linux users to help, but you won't get much "official" support.

For a very low-budget ARM laptop, the Pinebook Pro is a great option with lots of community support. Don't expect to play 1080p video on it without a few framedrops, though.

One of the biggest battery hogs is video decoding/encoding. If you plan on watching online video, your device should ideally support good hardware-accelerated VP9 decoding. AV1 might also be popular in a few years. That would mean that Braswell-and-older Intel chips are out.

That laptopwithlinux-thing is an interesting site (for European customers). But how did you discover the TongFang option there? All it shows are the Clevos. TongFang only by search. How did you know?

I just looked up "tongfang ryzen" in a generic search engine since I knew they had some affordable options. I think I learned about the laptops via Tuxedo Computers; someone on IRC later told me that those Tuxedo models were re-branded Tongfangs.

Ah thanks. I clicked there because Tongfang rang a bell from reading about similar stuff maybe one to two years ago. Then c went upwards/home there and have been puzzled.

Anyway. I wonder why they don't advertise them like their offerings for Clevo.

I’m not sure why people aren’t recommending the Dell Developer Edition laptops.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...

Fantastic machines we easy access to everything inside.

Yes the XPS 13 has been one of my best work laptops. Feel like it's in close competition with Macbook pro in most metrics. Might be slightly over budget though.

Because of stuff like this: https://f5n.org/blog/2021/dell-latitude-5130/

And I've heard the same stories from people with XPS. Same widespread coil whine, probably the same weird docking stations.

I guess it depends on the model. I ended up getting a precision.

Yes, I can hear the fan when it's working hard. I have experienced the need to occasionally plug monitors back in after resume as well.

Outside of that though, none of the other issues that writeup mentions.

I’ve got a Tuxedo laptop for four months now, which is a really nice piece of hardware.

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en#

Both software support and hardware quality are very good. Bonus points for having a Tux key instead of a Windows key ;-) . Maybe they’ve got something in your range?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294417

Among friends the most popular options look to be Dell XPS 13 and on sale it can get close to that price point, and the Thinkpad T4xx models, which are good cheaper options refurbished.

System76 makes nice gear and I've heard good things about the Galaga Pro, but hardly any of their models are currently available.

I've been looking into this too. I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on an older MacBook Pro and apart from the occasional kernel update sending CPU use through the roof, the experience has been good. But it looks like a less appealing option on the newer models with the touchbar sadly. I wish Apple would include regular hardware function keys as well as the touchbar. It would make the touchbar 10x more useful on macos also.

According to leaks/rumours, the Touch Bar will be dropped in the next generation MacBook Pros, due this year.

Unfortunately System76 gear are rare in Europe, I was not able to find any second hand or new online.

I have seen the recommendation of X1, I can second that, with addition of x280.

The serviceability is great, Google “thinkpad x280 hardware service manual” gives excellent doc, from the vendor ! (In fairness the same true for most thinkpads I think).

I got a used X280 - very happy running Ubuntu on it. But the exact model I got had a bit bleak LCD screen and 8GB ram - via AliExpress I first upgraded the screen to bright IPS FHD screen (replacement part cost ~60 euro, half an hour and no tools needed to replace);

Then I got brave and got a 16GB RAM motherboard (vs the 8GB that it had). Was about 400 euro, and also relatively easy, though required a bit of gentle disassembly.

And then I wondered “rather than throwing away the old parts, how hard would it be to get all the missing bits and build yet another x280 laptop from scratch ?” - I grabbed the hardware manual and went shopping… I think the overall list turned out about 250-300 euro. Still awaiting for some bits, but based on my motherboard replacement experience the assembly shouldn’t be a big deal of a project.

If you are looking to buy new IdeaPads have reasonable build quality beyond the basic specs. You can always add a bit more RAM if need be.

That might be a good idea. I do not care about the graphic card, the integrated one should just do fine. A good battery life and a good CPU are all I need.

I got an IdeaPad back in 2014, and the keyboard was horrible. It wouldn't register keys if you don't push them right in the middle. Returned it and got an x1 instead. I'd avoid anything except X/T/W/P from Lenovo.

If you go for a thinkpad, I advise going for a model that still uses the dual battery system. Some models I can think of: t480, x270, p51s, p52s. Since you'll be running Linux, you'll need all the battery power you can get and having dual batteries make hotswapping possible. Also avoid getting models that have an nvidia dedicated gpu if possible.

I suggest you consider the warranty as well.

My Razer laptop works fine with Linux, but their warranty specifically states it holds for OS it came installed with. Multiple people reported Razer support demanding payment once they discover they had duel-booted Linux.

So either buy a laptop with Linux pre-installed, or be prepared to be "on your own".

I think their claim that installing Linux would void hardware warranty would be illegal in the EU. That seems insane to me.

I got an Asus ZenBook UX305 that cost ca. €850 in 2016. 8GB RAM, Intel Core m3, 13-ish inch 1080p display.

It runs openSuse Tumbleweed, and I am very happy with it. Bluetooth is a tiny bit flaky sometimes, and the backlight for the keyboard doesn't work on Linux, but otherwise it works well. Battery life is not quite extremely good, but I've gotten six hours out of it, having done no special tuning to optimize for that.

The touch pad is a wee bit too large for my taste, I sometimes touch it by accident with my palm when typing, but it can be disabled/enabled easily and has not been a serious problem.

It has no builtin Ethernet, but a USB-to-Ethernet adapter was included.

A counterpoint to those suggesting thinkpads, specifically the pxx range. I have a p50 thinkpad -- It's a wonderful laptop, but as a linux machine, it's not great, yet. For one, I have a M2000 graphics card, which sometimes doesn't play nice with external monitors. I also have a 4k screen, which linux is NOT optimized for. My GRUB menu is microscopic, and I just haven't gotten around to fixing it. Ubuntu seems to handle this all OK, but it is by no means flawless. I also generally have terrible battery life, even with TLP and a bunch of hackery to disable the 2nd GPU.

Another vote for second-hand / refurbished Thinkpads, specifically Tx/Xx/Wx/Px series.

X-1 Carbons are good but avoid the touchbar (think it was gen 2), you want physical Fn keys.

I have an X-1 Carbon and a W520, W520 has a gorgeous keyboard, X-1s have chiclet keyboard which isn't as good as old school Thinkpads but still a step up from most laptops.

Thinkpads all good for Linux in terms of hardware. Probably avoid dedicated graphics cards on older models because they're not worth the hassle.

Just watch the screen resolutions and make sure there's no BIOS password problems when trawling eBay.

This is not a recommendation because they haven't shipped yet but I am looking forward to getting one of these - https://frame.work/

Hey everyone, OP here. Just bought a X1 Gen 5, per your suggestions, and it is awesome. Thank you!

I’m currently happy with a T14 Gen1 Ryzen with 8 cores. I don’t care about “proper support” though, and I don’t think you should either.

What I do is buy a laptop from Best Buy or anywhere I can physically return it.

Get 2 usb drives , one to create windows installation media, and one to install Ubuntu. Then ether Ubuntu works or not. Normally it does, but generally a slightly older laptop will work better as more Linux support is available. Intel is miles better here

Thinkpad X1 Yoga - You can get an older one, like a 3rd/4th gen for well under $1,000 and they work great with Linux. I have a 3rd gen on Arch. It is a touchscreen with stylus and fully folds to tent and tablet modes too.

Get a refurbished thinkpad x1 carbon. Great hardware, good ubuntu support out of the box.

Second this a 3-4 year old x1 carbon laptop will still be a great and affordable but.

Makes sense. My employer actually issues Thinkpads to employees, maybe I can ask for a second hand one that they have decommissioned.

This. Year and half ago I bought myself X1 Carbon gen3 (model from 2017) and it had amazing 2K screen, fingerprint reader, 4G modem (even GPS works after flashing firmware). All works on Linux and cost me just $600. I recently gave it to my sis as gift, but it looked just like new when I bought it and still looks the same.

Of course Lenovo ruined Thinkpad for me a little, but still their x220i that I bought 10 years ago still running even after being tortured constatly and dropped so many times. So yeah best laptops for the price.

I think 3rd gen is 2015.

Yeah you're right. It's has i7-5600U so it's 2015. Regardless I used this machine happily for webdev and light Java development.

The only reason that I gifted it away is because M1 Macbook was simply way superior than anything I ever seen before. Otherwise I would still use that X1 for my daily needs.

I've also used a (2014) x1 carbon with Linux for a long time and can recommend that series. Just not the 2014 one, as it has a crappy touch bar instead of hardware F-keys. But the Linux support is great. I've often thought about upgrading, because of the non-standard keyboard layout, but the performance is still great so I can't really justify upgrading it yet. I bought it for around 1k euro back in 2014, so I think you'll probably find a later generation for less.

It's a great laptop, the only drawback is the fact that the memory is soldered on the Mainboard along with the CPU, so if it breaks or you want to upgrade, you'll be out of luck. My memory did fail after 2 years and 10 months, but I still had 2 months warranty with on-site replacement, which was great. I think they lowered it to 2 years now, and no on-site support, so keep that in mind. It's a real trade-off.

I agree. I did exactly this just last week. I got a refurb gen 8 (2020 model) from Lenovo for about $950 after tax (16GB, i5, 1080p). It looks brand new, not a single sign of use. I set it up with Ubuntu 21.04 yesterday and everything worked right out of the box. Much better experience than with the Dell 5530 I had previously.

Weight is 2.4lbs, 0.4 less than the Macbook Air. Some other people are recommending the T4xx series. My impression is those are a better deal if you don't care about the weight.

I use a Dell Precision 5530 daily with Ubuntu 20.04, works great with no problems. I believe Ubuntu is officially supported by Dell, and it does get the occasional firmware upgrade.

Switched from a MBA to a Lenovo Thinkpad X395. No ragrets. I specifically sought out an AMD Ryzen chip, which affected my final model choice. I knew I was going thinkpad though.

Consider a used thinkpad. I recently picked up a pre-owned Thinkpad X1 gen 6 for 600. 16G RAM and modern enough CPU. Its wonderful and works well with Fedora.

Thinkpads have always been good. I even have a T480s upgraded to a 4K screen (not my work) that works fine.

Thinkpad T480S is not as good as it seems. It has throttling issues with linux. Besides that, the trackpad starts to flaking after some usage. I totally not recommend this laptop.

For some definition of "good" and if you would add some 80 USD more over 1000€... recent year LG Gram - https://www.amazon.com/LG-Gram-Thin-Light-Laptop/dp/B07MNDYX... .

Razer Blade Stealth 13 works well with recent flavors of Ubuntu.

r/linuxhardware has a lot of recs.

[deleted comment, not helpful]

I think they mean to drive an external 4k.

Yes, that is the case.

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