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Comment by adamddev1 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately laptop driver support is often rough. I used an XPS 9343 (one marketed as supporting Ubuntu) but I faced issues with popping speaker sounds and mobile data tethering sucking GBs of data for some crazy reason.

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Thats why I changed to thinkpads. They seen to use less weird hardware with no support. But I had to do some concessions. I don`t use notebooks with discrete gpus, since NVIDIA optimus have shit support.

Thinkpads have ACPI bugs that transfer to Windows too, it's amazing.

I've been using Lenovo's Legion devices instead. They don't run this horribly bloated BIOS, they run the much less critically acclaimed Insyde BIOS, but guess what, it just works. I've not had an unexpected wake-crash in years (aside from nvidia drivers with the mux switch on, but just use amdgpu instead). Desktop grade processors, weight comparable to a T420. Definitely not a device to use on the go, but very capable if you just need to carry a computer to the office.

I think the new Framework laptops might be better than Thinkpads now.

I'd use one in a heartbeat if they had a trackpoint.

I have been using the HP Elitebooks provided by my company and works well with Ubuntu. No complaints. I even upgraded my RAM to 64 GB.

Is amatter of time before someone provide a keyboard with one.

And also impossible to buy in Brazil. So for a while,, I will still have to relly on thinkpads.

At least with some ThinkPad with discrete GPUs they put a BIOS option for toggling whether to use integrated graphics, discrete graphics or both which means you can avoid Optimus if you want. I've had other laptops without such an option and then you have to deal with Optimus or some other workaround. It's not perfect though because often video outputs will be routed through one card or the other so if you want to use the Displayport out you have to use discrete graphics.

I'm on a Lenovo Yoga 5 Slim now. Cheap for the specs, needed some tweaking to get suspend working, otherwise works like a charm out-of-the-box.

My everyday beater is a Thinkpad x250. Small, ligth, not exactly top of the line, but works for most aplications. Only thing I suffer is running Android studio in it.

For some reason I've never really had any issues with any of the many many laptops I've used over the years. Various HP laptops in the past, mostly, and DEC laptops back in the 20th century. Lately a private NEC laptop (all parts Intel, everything worked out of the box), and my work laptop is currently a Fujitsu Lifebook. No problems with anything. It Just Works.

Dell XPS have great drivers support in kernel, but I actually found the vanilla Mate DE experience to be a downgrade from Ubuntu 18 to 20, I needed to do an unusual amount of tinkering. I am convinced this will always be the case for Linux DEs unless some company starts to sell support packages for properly tested configuration combinations.

Buy hardware for the software you want to use for your comfort and security.

It can't be an afterthought.

Same goes for phones. Buy the right phone, don't be upset you can't load GrapheneOS on your cheap Samsung handset.

Right, that's why it was disappointing that a laptop so clearly marketed as supporting Ubuntu (XPS 9343) didn't even have decent sound support.

For the remote data thing -- I ran into this a few years ago on Fedora when I was spending a lot of time away from the house, and buying 5 GB at a time for wireless data. I eventually had to write a script to sound an alarm when data usage started increasing, and caught the culprit program in the act. Was one of the background Yum / DNF update processes. Ended up killing Packagekit, and problem went away.

Had a similar experience with a Dell preshipped with Ubuntu. Also wouldn't go to sleep when I got it, was crazy. Eventually started working maybe after bios update but was pretty frustrating

Have an XPS 13 9310 running Ubuntu 20.04 and it runs flawlessly. Things like sleep were a little rough when it was first released, but updates by Dell since have made it rock solid.

No popping sounds in headphones/speakers from the realtek driver?

Nope, none.

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