I bought a Microsoft Surface Book 2 when I wasn’t converted yet. BUT: now it kind of rules. There is a custom Linux Kernel for Surface devices, everything except the camera works now. That means especially: attach and detach the screen from the Keyboard and use the pen with all it’s features.
I wouldn’t buy a surface device now, because I don’t want to support Microsoft. But if you find a Book 2 for cheap, this would be a possible solution to your search.
zsh … it is totally awesome, I saw a lot of crazy autocomplete stuff by people using it. I stick to bash mostly because it is simply installed everywhere and good enough for my needs. (With some help like autojump for bash.)
Check for the ssh env vars. For example, I use PS1=“${SSH_CONNECTION:+u@h:}W$” to hide the hostname when not on SSH, you could do something similar with the control codes for color.
Had a 100X, back then with 2GB RAM. Worked OOTB with Linux w/o trouble, all hardware supported. Good times. Later, starting your browser maxed out the RAM so not a viable option anymore.
Nowadays I can happily recommend a HP Stream 11". Works perfectly with Fedora 39, good battery life. (Obviously you don’t want to use such a machine for more than casual work/internet surfing. But as a cheap/solid travel netbook, it is perfect. Typing this message on it.)
IMO, Honestly, at this point you probably arent going to miss much.
Youve presumably booted from an external device and installed an OS. I assume the time amd date are right.
Only question really is are you using efi or mbr boot method. If efi, you are probably fine and future proofed unless you want secure boot (windows) you may face an issue then. Thats not to say you will, just you might.
I assume you could open it up and reset bios by shorting a couple of pins or pulling the CMOS battery. Google the ThinkPad model number and “bios reset”.
Note that if safeboot is enabled this could lock you out of the OS, but given that you were able to wipe the OS without accessing BIOS anyway, it makes me think it’s not.
Do with that information what you will, good luck.
The password will be stored in EEPROM in newer laptops. Removing the battery will not clear the password and could make things even worse since you won’t be able to change any settings that get reset.
The best thing would be to return it and find a different one that’s not locked.
You can either try to contact the seller and ask for the password or just erase the UEFI settings by shorting some jumper or something. There should be instructions how to do that for your specific model.
I have almost nothing to complain about Fedora, but more so about the dependancy hell i face while trying to build any of the software i require. I want something like NixOS but without the learning curve of learning config file syntax.
Imagine, you’re in a large company and buying (or more likely, leasing) several thousands laptops each year. This is corporate world, you need to minimize expense, downtime and failing that, someone to blame.
You need to have a supplier with sales, 24/7 support and logistics in your country. Who has stock available at all times is able to replace any broken piece of equipment in less than a business day. Even if you keep a small inventory at hand, this inventory needs to be replaced quickly.
Trust me, corpos never buy from small vendors. They always go to the big brands.
I was doing a similar breakdown back when I bought my System76. The difference was upgradability. If I ever thought I might need more RAM I’d have to buy that up front on the MacBook air, putting its price over 1,700 off the shelf for the max ram. System76 cost close to the base MacBook air model, but I can add RAM and upgrades at my choosing, find the best price, and install them myself when I need them. That was worth it for me.
The issue is that the M1 (M2 and M3) chips are way more efficient than X86 chips and they gets really good battery life compared to standard PC hardware. So I can hate on the software, the price, the lack of expand-ability, and so much more but I can’t get that efficiency anywhere else.
System76 doesn’t have some massively efficient ARM chip and system to separate them from any other windows laptop maker I just put linux on. You buy System76 because you like System76. I can live with that and I am very willing to spend more for less in places I feel matter.
I’m looking for a new laptop and really don’t know much about hardware these days (been running my old 2015 toshiba sattellite lol, I usually just have hand-me-downs), but I’m looking at getting something that doesn’t make me sacrifice my firstborn to an eldritch being to change the goddamn battery. So far I have sys76 and framework on the list, are there any other manufacturers I should also look at? And any reasons I should or should not get a laptop from any of these companies (like this one above, which is a point for framework)?
I was looking at getting a laptop from System76 but the shipping to Europe is insane. I’ve heard some good things about Tuxedo Computers. I don’t have personal experience with any of them so can’t comment on that
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Do you actually want to switch distros? Or just interested in what’s out there?
If Fedora 39 didn’t satisfy you, then what exactly is bothering you?
What is it that you seek from your distro? Being out of the way? Freedom? Polish? Blank slate? Security? Privacy? Ease-of-use? Up-to-date? Big repos? etc
I have distro-hopped before so i don’t mind switching
I need a distro which is package-agnostic since i use a lot of old ooen source academic software and they alternate between being only supported on RHEL or Ubuntu
Fedora 39 is great except when i need to build the above mentioned software from source and i spend 2 hrs failing to match the dependencies from Ubuntu
Also want to improvey laptop’s battery life, but i think i can’t get it much better than in Fedora
I need a distro which is package-agnostic since i use a lot of old ooen source academic software and they alternate between being only supported on RHEL or Ubuntu
Perhaps you should look into container solutions like e.g. Distrobox. You can basically install/run any package; just ensure usage of the correct container environment.
Fedora 39 is great except when i need to build the above mentioned software from source and i spend 2 hrs failing to match the dependencies from Ubuntu
If you’re otherwise content with Fedora, then perhaps consider installing the aforementioned Distrobox; which happens to be found within Fedora’s repos and thus one sudo dnf install distrobox away from being installed on your machine.
Also want to improvey laptop’s battery life, but i think i can’t get it much better than in Fedora
I’d argue that Fedora is not best for battery life, though. Minimalist distros tend to be a lot better at this. Installing auto-cpufreq in Fedora Silverblue on my AMD-powered laptop did come with significant improvements, so perhaps you could prolong your battery life by utilizing it or similar programs; think of TLP, thermald etc to name a few.
I looked into distrobox and checks all the boxes but there is the issue of my lack of storage space(currently only 130 GB left out of 240)
It can definitely fill up space if you’re not careful. Just ensure that only the minimal amount of containers and their respective images are on the system.
I would assume one container each for Ubuntu and Arch should suffice for most people. Sure; this will likely take up to 10 GB of extra storage in total (eventually), but foregoing this solution means that you’d likely have to settle for Arch (because of the AUR) or something like Gentoo (because no other distro does compiling and building from source like Gentoo does).
If you feel particularly adventurous, you could also consider Nix and/or NixOS; though you’d have to ensure that said packages are available as a nixpkg. Nix can also be installed on Fedora; consider Determinate Systems’ installer for that*.
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