You’re right about the price difference. My MacBook gave up the ghost and I’m looking for a good Windows laptop to install Linux. Do most Linux laptop users wipe Windows or dual boot? pros/cons?
In part the gaming support has improved.
I don't know if it's possible to give an answer to "most linux laptop users".
Nowadays you can find very detailed compatibility for arch on the arch wiki. There are some footguns like s3 sleep. It's better documented and many laptops will do pretty well.
Haha, kudos to you, fellow German! :)
The t480 recently got rudimentary coreboot/libreboot support (which is somewhat incomplete because of thunderbolt quirks as of today) but will hopefully be supported better in the future.
They are like 200 EUR on ebay for some 8GB RAM model where you can still replace the SODIMMs with 2x32GB ones.
Also use LUKS encryption, ecryptfs sucks and has a character limit of 122 characters per file, which happens more often than you might imagine.
Do try to get a Linux laptop first, though, otherwise you're paying the Windows tax and not sending the right signals to manufacturers. Dell have made Windows-free laptops for years. Unfortunately the last one I bought (15 years ago) did have ghastly "Windows keys", but maybe it's better now? I scratched mine off.
Why do I care about "signals" ?
You have to go where the market is at. Linux is a niche. You buy a Linux laptop you end up paying more for less hardware.
The only thing is you shouldn't buy the absolute latest hardware since Linux can lag a few months in support. Microsoft more or less gives out OEM keys. They make very little off the OS itself.
I typically dualboot. A lot of applications ( games) still don't run well on Linux. Bios updates are often handled by OEM software which only runs on Windows. You can seek out the bios files, but that's an entire thing.
Because if a manufacturer offers the choice then you want them to know how you intend to use it as this may affect how well they support it.
> You have to go where the market is at. Linux is a niche. You buy a Linux laptop you end up paying more for less hardware.
Not necessarily. Last I looked Dell sold the exact same hardware but you could choose a Linux or no OS option and save money.
How often do those Linux laptops go on sale.
If you need guaranteed Linux support buy a Thinkpad. Windows laptops go on sale pretty often, you almost never pay MSRP.