I use an asus rog g15 from 2021. It actually has pretty great linux support with asus-ctl but I can’t recommend it in good concience for professional purposes, it is decked out with rgb also asus has a pretty bad reputation of customer support.
If you’re pursuing a MSc, your effort should be spent on the study itself, not on tinkering (e.g. I saw some recommended a Framework laptop). So my wholehearted recommendation is a Thinkpad + Fedora for maximum usability, stability, and durability. Thinkpad speakers are usually bad though. And Thinkpad is not particularly good for gaming, either.
What tinkering do you think a framework laptop requires? Even the diy option is basically just install RAM, put case together. It’s an hour of work max if you’re being REALLY meticulous
I just want a modern AMD apu laptop with coreboot, slotted ram and multiple nvme slots, but like everything these days it would seem I’m asking for too much.
My modded t440p goes with me everywhere until then. I have that IIRC core2 dell(?) armored laptop running fully blobless too but it’s just a server backing up my 2fa emergency keys and such things. It was a fun little side project building and flashing coreboot but the hardware is a bit dated these days. The t440p is good for anything other than gaming or 4k movies at least.
I bought a lenovo p14s AMD 2 years ago without OS, 32GB RAM and M.2 SSD, very happy with Arch, BTW. Coreboot would be nice, but it doesn’t seem feasible yet…
my current dell one has an amd cpu, slotted ram (no soldered on crap) and nvme + sata (with space for a drive); too bad the build quality and the touchpad sucks
my old lenovo one also had replacable slotted cpus (with Pentium 2020m pre-installed). The lid also just slid off (like on a rail), with only one screw needing removal, no flimsy plastic clips. I broke plastic part of the hinge on that one by just flipping it over, oh well.
Lots of good Rocco’s, but if you need to balance price and still get a high end machine, Lenovo Carbon. Runs fantastic out of the box, including S3/etc.
Thinkpads (p14s are a good example) are really great with everything except probably gaming. Having a good GPU usually just comes at the cost of battery life.
Fedora or Nobara for OS
If you reaaaaaally want gaming, you could look at external GPU via thunderbolt or USB 4
If you want something even lighter, Samsung makes some decent laptops with insane battery life and really thin metal casing. Only issue is they’re usually expensive and don’t drop in price like Thinkpads sometimes do.
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