Best Linux Laptops (2013)
After searching using hnsearch I saw it had been a while since this topic had been explored.
note: It does not necessarily have to come preinstalled with a linux distro.
Also. http://www.thinkwiki.org/ is a very good resource for running Linux on Thinkpads (though everything worked so perfectly with my T420 and Wheezy I actually never needed it!).
Using the fingerprint reader requires adding a ppa and installing a package:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_integrated_finge...
I use a Thinkpad T430 with Debian unstable. All hardware works as intended. I purchased mine with the Intel wireless, and that requires a non-free firmware blob. Optimus works, but if there are issues it can be disabled in the BIOS.
Apart from that the webcam works and audio output as well and we're all pretty happy. (Ubuntu, Debian wheezy, Arch, OpenBSD)
I replaced the HDD with an SSD, added RAM, and replaced the DVD drive with an extra bay battery. If you gave me a pile of cash to spend on hardware, the only thing I'd do is trade out for a bigger SSD.
It works OK with Linux (sound is problematic, and it's not good under Windows, either, despite...or maybe because of, wearing a "beats by Dre" logo). But, the quality is simply awful. It has a high end laptop price tag, and all the right features, but it's falling apart after barely a year of light use and has had problems from almost day one.
Problems I've had:
Dead pixels. New ones have sprung up just in the past couple months. I think it has 7 now (in two clusters).
Heat. Damned thing runs hot enough to literally burn my legs. It has "Cool Sense", which allows you to choose between "Slow enough to where you have to take coffee breaks between opening or closing new tabs." and "Oh gods, why am I on fire?" So, I disabled Cool Sense. It made the computer vastly slower than the one it replaced (and the one before that one).
Keyboard is truly awful. I'm a great typist, but this keyboard slows me down, and misses strokes if they aren't really firm. Also, if you type really fast, it'll sometimes randomly insert the number "6". Why 6? I don't know. It's just this thing it does.
The faux metal coating began discoloring within a couple of weeks or purchase. I'm an obsessive hand washer, and I've never had this problem with any other lappy. This one just sucks at looking good. I've never put stickers on a laptop before, because I like a shiny new looking laptop...this laptop looked like crap so quickly, that I put stickers all over it to cover the crappiness.
Fans makes a horrible racket for a few minutes when returning from sleep or booting. I have no pets, and I don't smoke, so my house is not very dusty or plagued by particulates. I've opened it up to try to clean it and blown it out with compressed air, but no apparent dust was present. The fans are just crappy and noisy.
The headphone jacks are janky. I can mostly only get one channel out of them. I use this laptop for movie screenings (my audiovisual company does outdoor screenings on a pretty large scale; sometimes for 1000+ people), and had to buy a new USB audio interface to get reliable sound output. The USB interface is a minor expense in a $25,000 setup, but it's a nuisance to not have a decent audio output on a high end laptop that claims to be good for audio. Also, the Dre Beats filter is awful; I recommend disabling it on any device that has it.
The trackpad (a fancy multitouch thing) has been really...umm...touchy. For most of it's life with me. It's gotten solid under Linux (or I've gotten used to it, when others use my machine they are startled by the jumpiness of the touchpad; I've mostly acclimated to treating it with kid gloves). Under Windows it is still really bad. Typing on the keyboard can make the pointer jump and trigger a click, so focus can shift without warning while typing. I've never been able to adjust this away, and it is infuriating and makes working under Windows on this machine a serious burden.
It has begun to die. Every few days the caps lock light will flash ominously, which, according to the documentation means it needs to be serviced. I haven't figured out what, specifically, is wrong with it, but since it's my primary computer, I'm loathe to be without it. Sometimes it goes away after sleeping or rebooting, sometimes it stays on for days. Again, I've had it for a little over a year. Every other lappy I've owned has lasted 4 years or more. This laptop is a sad story.
Maybe I got a lemon. I wish I'd taken it back during the return period, but I needed a machine to work on...so, it ended up staying with me. I won't make the mistake of buying another HP.
As for Linux compatibility, it's actually really good, except for sound (only one set of speakers works, so it is really quiet under Linux, and since head phone jacks are janky, I can't really even use headphones effectively). It's got a lot of Intel components with Open Source drivers. The ATI drivers, both Open Source and proprietary work OK, though I prefer the seamless experience of the Intel drivers.
I wouldn't recommend buying a Macbook just to run Linux on it, but if you have one (which actually works properly) and want to run Linux, realize that you can have a great experience without buying a new machine.
A while ago I had a lot of problems installing Linux on my machine, but Fedora 20 installed without problems for me.
deliberation: https://plus.google.com/106336989542410513415/posts/avV5eL1P...
follow-up: https://plus.google.com/u/0/106336989542410513415/posts/PR4e...
debian wiki: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Thinkpad/X230/whe...
A couple weeks ago I upgraded to a Fujitsu Lifebook u904, for the 14" QHD (3200x1800) display. I was surprised at how very well it works with Linux, given how little information I could find about compatibility.
debian wiki: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Fujitsu/LifebookU...
Gnome hasn't got their act together yet around high-resolution displays so font configuration is a bit wonky but that's not a hardware incompatibility deal-breaker. Even the touch-screen works.
- Thinkpad X1 Carbon (works perfectly - ubuntu 12.10) - Thinkpad T540p (works perfectly - ubuntu 13.10) - HP Envy 15 (terrible - ubuntu 12.04)
All worked out of the box - except for the HP.
My two cents - get the X1 Carbon on lenovo outlet ($1K for 8GB ram, i7, etc.)
Everything worked on it - webcam - suspend, resume - wireless - sound - UEFI settings (for dual boot)
I run Ubuntu 12.04 on a 6 year old E6410 and everything works - including suspend/resume, smart card reader, bluetooth, etc. I also have a second hard drive and am able to boot off either using UEFI. I'm also able to connect my HDTV using a displayport-HDMI adapter and watch movies. Wifi works out of the box, but even if it didnt, you could swap out the mini-pcie card for a few bucks.
And unbelievably upgradable - couple of days back I replaced my keyboard, while the laptop is still running, in under 2 minutes. A couple of days before that I replaced my laptop fan - bought easily off ebay because of the latitude platform's popularity.
Dell's after sales support is legendary - in India, it is called CompleteCover and covers next business day onsite replacement and accidental damage warranty.
I'm typing now on a u6430 running ubuntu 13.04, and it runs great.
Three challenges:
1) On a busy wifi, I have some challenges with connection drops, but I haven't determined if that's a driver issue, or a chip issue. The connection drops are mostly after several minutes of idle network connections. (Now that I think about it, its probably driver, since rmmod/modprobe the wireless modules fixes things)
2) The thumbprint reader doesn't work out of the box, but honestly, I'd rather type a password.
3) When I try to use a usb3 'docking station', it works. However I find that I need to rmmod the usb3 module, and then modprobe it again to get it back to life after ~10 undock/redock operations. After about ~20-30 undock/redocks I find I need to reboot.
So you don't have to obtain the Dell drivers separately? They are included in ubuntu 12 onward?
One difference between the dev and std editions is the wifi chipset - 6235 in std, 6230 in dev (and some reports of the AR9462 in others). The wifi was practically unusable for me until I manually disabled power-saving on the wifi interface.
Also had a couple of instances where the machine has dropped into a coma (even on full battery). Usually after rebooting or suspending. Quite scary when it happens, since the long-hold power button trick doesn't always revive it. It usually comes back to life later but I wish I knew what was causing this.
Also have to run the battery all the way down to 0% (the point at which the HW forces a shutdown) and charge back up to 100% every couple of months else the calibration goes wonky.
Lovely machine though.
Had issues with wifi initially but found workaround after a while. I have to say, this box runs extremely well, I never ever have problems but then again I don't use a webcam or many other external devices. Mainly internet browsing, Virtualbox, shell, etc.
In their quest to become MBP replicas, ThinkPads lost their distinguishing features. Now that I've resigned myself to carrying a mechanical keyboard at all times (HHKB), I no longer choose a laptop based on one. I am now exploring alternative laptops after being a loyal ThinkPad customer for 7 years.
Note: I got this laptop in late November. If you look online, you'll find a lot of problems people had with distros featuring older kernels. Rest assured, 3.12 enables all features right out of the box.
Carbon fiber only seems flimsy when you've never had a notebook made of it before. It does have a little flex in the screen, but not much. The flex isn't a bad thing, mind you. I've had several carbon fiber laptops and the flex helps them bounce when they're dropped and can help prevent damage if something stupid happens like someone reclining their airline seat into your screen in just the wrong way.
The other benefit is that the laptop is seriously light. The 13" Air feels pretty heavy in comparison.
System 76 sells rebranded Clevos. The best Clevo laptops are mediocre, the worst are unusable. The Ultrapro falls into the latter category. Quite a few models of Clevo laptops have keyboards that randomly drop keystrokes. The Galago keyboard is by all accounts particularly horrible. More than one reviewer listed this as the sole reason for returning the machine. The company "fixed" the issue by sending out new keyboards with metal strips attached to the back of them. This did absolutely nothing to address the fact that the keyboards don't work.
Because they don't actually make their own systems, there is little that System 76 can do to change the fact that some of their systems are defective. System 76 by all accounts has pretty decent support, but when all they can do is continue to send you more defective parts and / or defective replacement systems, it doesn't really mean a whole hell of a lot.
After repeatedly trying to fix these issues, one of their favorite sayings is "most of our customers like our keyboards."
Another great quote from a System 76 rep is that the Galago Ultrapro's touchpad is hands-down better than a Macbook's. Which I found particularly amusing because some of the reviews of this machine specifically mention that the touchpad doesn't work correctly.
The other downside of Clevo laptops is that the company absolutely sucks at making motherboards. They are inefficient, and it ends up contributing to the Galago's poor battery life. This is a machine that should probably get at least 6-8 hours, yet it only gets 3.5-4.
I really love the idea of a vendor dedicated to selling Linux machines, but until System 76 pulls off a miracle and convinces Clevo to stop making defective keyboards, people should stop giving them their money.
If it weren't for the defective keyboard and the terrible battery life, my comment would be completely different and it would probably be getting typed on a Galago Ultrapro. Instead, I have a T430 that I snagged off of Lenovo's outlet with 8GB Ram, an i5, and a 256GB SSD for less than $500. Its the best computer I've ever owned.
For comparison I used Linux (Gentoo & Ubuntu) for years on a Lenovo T61p and didn't realize how well I had it. For work I use a rMBP (not by choice). Both blow the Galago Ultra Pro out of the water.
The single redeeming quality of the Galago Ultra Pro is the horsepower of i7-4750HQ combined with mSATA + 2.5" SSD. I do alot of big builds for embedded devices and the space and horsepower help alot. Unfortunately, everything else is "meh" and the battery life and touchpad are down right disappointing.
And System76 does little to support Linux as far as I can tell. The Intel Wireless 7620 had firmware problems System76 up until several weeks ago they weren't even aware of[1], just to gauge their QA process. And what power user machines don't fully support UEFI[2] these days?
I've had the machine for less then a month and seriously considering sending it back. :(
[1] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2194000 [2] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2191909
Mine has Intel WiFi, which I think is recommended.
Though I am confused between Y510p and MBP I love the freedom linux give and don't want to sacrifice it :(
How's the Wifi running on Y510p? Have you tried installing Arch linux?
My only regret is that I paid for Windows.
10 inch screen, looks like a netbook, 2GB memory, celeron - sounds useless for development work, but after replacing the disk with a cheap 60GB kingston ssd i can run virtualbox and have a workable vm, so it's surprisingly capable.
my x220 died and i am happy using this until the x240 with a better screen is released next quarter (i bought it as a clunker for travel).
My laptop HP Pavillion dv4 performs out of box with major linux variants. No issues!
I run debian x64 on it without any problem.
Crouton is fine if you need a full fledged Linux. Using a 32GB SDHC card for extra file space.