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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

Can you share where you find hardware like this?

Look for a ThinkPad T480, I recently bought and upgraded one - much to HN's rage: https://maxrozen.com/replacing-my-macbook-m1-with-thinkpad-t...

It's interesting you had problems with the AX200 chip, I bought one for my X13 specifically because it has good kernel drivers.

On Ubuntu, there's a "hardware enablement kernel" package, linux-generic-hwe-22.04, that's just the kernel from the latest Ubuntu back-ported to the LTS version. I find it tends to fix most issues with newer hardware. Maybe PopOS has something similar?

Anyways, I found the MIMO in wifi 6 was better enough that I even upgraded another old laptop I have with an AX210 I found for $14.

Apparently with the T480, the AX200 isn't great, but I just bought an AX210 this week and it worked without configuring anything

That AX200 bootup problem occurs on dual-boot Windows/Linux systems. The solution is to turn off Windows "Fast Startup" so that Windows does not leave the AX200 in a "locked" state between reboots.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Wireless/Unstable-AX200-conne...

Also, the latest Intel iwlwifi firmare is slowly evolving to address crummy AX200 speed issues that Windows does not suffer. On one of my laptops the AX200 is all over the place speedwise, but running wavemon shows it stabilize in the 600 range of rx and tx after awhile. Here's hoping for progress with that firmware on Linux.

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linu...

I got my thinkpads as leasing returns from ebay. They are 200-300 EUR/USD and that kind of hardware that is made for businesses, not consumers.

At the moment I have two computers in my apartment. They are identical Microsoft Surface Pro 3 machines. I got one from ebay for $150 and the other from Amazon for (I don’t remember) less than $200. The SP3 runs linux very well, especially using the surface-pro kernel. My good experience may be partially due to the fact that I don’t use a “desktop”, but use the dwm window manager. It has a 216 dpi screen with good image characteristics. Everything (touch screen, bluetooth, cameras, etc.) works.

I like having two identical machines because I keep them cloned continuously using my wifi network. If one dies I can just switch to the other with no data loss or interruption. I haven’t had to do this yet; the hardware seems reliable.

I like this type of machine because it’s a tablet with the power of a modest laptop. I can pop in in a backpack for travel, take it to the couch to read on, or use it like a laptop with a bluetooth keyboard. Having the keyboard separate from the screen is better for ergonomics; I much prefer these to laptops.

I have one problem, and it’s pretty annoying: I can’t seem to use video conferencing sites without problems. Zoom, jitsi, they all overload the system and my microphone stops working after a short time. I kept a Windows partition on one of the SP3s and boot into it just for Zoom meetings. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m eager to solve this.

How's support for these machines under the mainline kernel these days? Why are we still relying on downstream kernel forks even for this old hardware? Shouldn't support be completely upstreamed by now?

The mainline kernel works but I think the linux-surface kernel (https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface -- I misnamed it in my previous comment) should be used. I accidentally booted one of the SP3s with the mainline kernel and saw some WiFi driver problems, though I can’t say I’ve tested this extensively.

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