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Comment by darkwater | Hacker News Reader

> I still see MacOS as the best choice for my desktop/laptop uses (browser and SSH)

If it' just "this", Linux is perfectly capable and IMO even superior.

I use linux on the desktop, but I still run a MacBook for my laptop.

Nobody else offers the same combination of battery life to performance/weight, build quality, keyboard, trackpad, and screen. Of course it's not perfect for everbody and you might have different priorities but I think the MacBook gets most of them right for most people.

Some come close on a few of those points but if you want official linux support your choice is very limited. Perhaps that doesn't matter to you but I don't want to even think about if updating my daily driver is going to result in a broken webcam or flaky wifi or bad power management.

I'm holding out hope for the new snapdragon based laptops. They seem pretty close!

Even when expanding scope to include laptops that run Linux well despite not officially supporting it, the selection available still have major issues, whether they be with build quality, screen panel quality, battery life, standby time, sleep/wake, overall lack of fit and finish (e.g. unthoughtfully placed ports) or some combination thereof.

It seems like a near impossibility for other manufacturers to not phone some of those things in. There’s always a catch.

The x1 carbons running Linux are better than the Mac in every aspect except performance for the battery life, but personally I don't want to use my laptop for that long at once anyway, so w/e.

>> Nobody else offers the same combination of battery life to performance/weight, build quality, keyboard, trackpad, and screen.

Exactly this. And also a decent sound. I would definitely want to have a linux laptop again as OSX s*cks in many ways but Macbooks with M chips are still far superior so I keep monitoring the situation and waiting...

It is not a problem to find a laptop with high specs but then battery su*ks, it's made of creaking plastic, has a plastic clickpad hard to click, bad key travel and response or audio sounds like a 5y old cheap smartphone. This is something I am not willing to spend money on and torture myself at the same time.

Yep I should have written "mostly browser/SSH". But then occasionally I have to print something or run a (customer-provided) VPN client or open some corporate Excel file, etc. And there's the convenience factor of keeping my current setup. But should the MacOS thing become untenable for some reason, yep next step would be a Lenovo/System76 laptop known to work with Linux (including audio/bluetooth/wifi after resuming from sleep!) or even a Chromebook...

P.S. I've ran Linux/X (plus VMWare VMs with Windows) on my desktop machine with few complaints since the '90s and it was always the laptops that had issues, causing me to switch back to Windows after a couple of weeks of trial & frustration in the 2000s. I got Windows pretty performant & usable though, even attended Mark Russinovich'es Windows Internals class in London back in 2006 or so :-)

Laptop issues have dropped markedly in the last 3~4 years; especially battery life on AMDs in the last 6~12 months, the kernel perf / scheduling changes have been pretty good.

Just a cheap Chromebook would probably be even better IME - nothing to worry about, it is really very much just a keyboard and screen and gets out of the way.

Less can be said about your typical Linux experience in in the 2020s where you will still inexplicably find yourself having to mess around trying to get Bluetooth/audio/webcam/sleep working reliabily.

Does anyone remember NDISwrapper? You took Windows drivers for your laptop WiFi device or whatnot and the wrapper allowed to load them into Linux kernel (still didn’t work for me reliably though, not surprised). Even when I was young and had lots of free time, it seemed insane to have to deal with this.

Which Linux laptop do you recommend?

Try a Lenovo (thinkpad or ideapad), or a System76, or Tuxedo. Those are generally the most Linux friendly devices.

It should be noted that the build quality of the ThinkPad are much higher than the IdeaPad. I have both and the IdeaPad is more or less on par with other cheap consumer laptops.

For sure, but they are also much cheaper

>It should be noted that the build quality of the ThinkPad are much higher than the IdeaPad.

And still, they've fallen so low in recent years I don't see it being drastically better nowadays. Had a T495 for a while. Worst laptop I've had in a decade.

Thinkpad P14s series with AMD, they make sure it is fully supported on Linux. I would take the just arrived gen 5 AMD because of the new Zen5 cores. Same perf than with Zen4, but much lower power consumption.

I have a P14s Gen4 AMD that works like a dream with Linux

Huawei mate book 14 (2024) the grey one (800 bucks) or the green (1200). The mate book pro is superb too but to expensive.

You'll love the OLED screen and it's ratio 3:2! What a beautiful thing.

For the described usage pretty much any laptop would work, even a Chromebook.

Dell XPS are quite nice on the high end developer category of laptops

If you're looking for an occasional laptop, I bought a Lenovo V14 ADA for the few times I travel; got it brand new for less than $275. 1080p screen, 8GB RAM, 4 threads, good Mesa support. Perfect for travel / now and again usage. It can even play some games on low graphics.

EDIT: I should note, this is the AMD variant of the V14

I just checked Lenovo's more recent offerings in the US; the IdeaPad 1 15" AMD Abyss Blue.

Not sure if the build quality is as good as the EU SMB market laptops (which are generally really good value with good build quality, for me a perfect compromise between price and build quality, steel internal framework with solid plastic case, not sexy but definitely robust).

This IdeaPad1 looks like it has the same specs as the EU model (V14 G4 AMN). Just check if the build is solid enough. The IdeaPad1 can be bought at Best Buy.

I have an oldish Lenovo Thinkpad T470 which is bulker but it's very good nonetheless and a Dell XPS (4 years old, and the battery sadly is the weak point since I used it 95% of the time connected to an outlet and never cared for battery health)

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