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.
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 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.
I have a Framework laptop and just installed Ubuntu on it the other day, it works great. Ubuntu and Fedora are officially supported by Framework and there’s a bunch of other distros that are confirmed tested. I have the 13" but the 16" just came out with a dedicated GPU, that’s probably the one to get if you’re going to game on it
I’ve been rocking a first gen X1 Yoga (6th gen intel) for like 5-6 years, three or so of those years I’ve been using Pop!_OS and its been pretty good. I suspect that a 6th gen intel may be a little lacking for your uses, just to say that most ThinkPads will be good.
Rocking E15 Gen2 with AMD CPU for about 3 years now, can’t complain besides the fucking fingerprint reader having proprietary drivers (thus not working on Linux).
So, the E model line is a nice work laptop with basically no GPU performance whatsoever.
No no no no. I love the pinebook pro. But please don’t suggest it to anyone as a newbie hardware choice trying to get anything done. There are so many little quirks on hardware this slow and moreso having to deal with arm repos and all of the incompatible software/workarounds.
A few examples.
If you want to watch YouTube you basically have one browser option. Chromium. Additionally if you want to watch any drm content then you need to install a docker container that runs chromium that has drm enabled.
App images and flatpak software repos are nowhere near complete which can be not great for someone who is just trying to get some work done. Really not great when some devs are exclusively distributing via flatpak.
No virtualization. It just doesn’t have the capability. Sure there are docker containers but that isn’t exactly virtualization.
I love my pinebook. It’s a great machine for just have a very cheap low spec thin client with a decent keyboard and screen but I would never ever recommend it to a newbie.
Tuxedo Computers can get you a very good dev laptop for ~1500€ (64GB RAM, AMD/Intel CPU, NVIDIA/AMD graphics card). If you will be working in AI, I imagine you’ll need CUDA (?) aka NVIDIA.
If you don’t go for anything on linuxpreloaded (which I wouldn’t recommend), it’s good to check whether what you’re buying has linux hardware support by checking the Linux Hardware DB. Even if you don’t look, it’ll probably work, but better safe than sorry if you’re going to dump 1/3 or 1/2 of your months salary into something (depending on where you are).
For a distro, I dunno what level you are, but Distro Chooser can help you out with making a choice. My recommendations:
linux beginner
Linux mint. nice desktop environment, looks like a mashup between windows and mac, still missing advanced options, but quite customisable. comes with suitable standard software and cloud integrations (you can connect to a bunch of clouds), relatively up to date
Ubuntu is well-known, some proprietary companies even consider it “the linux” and only make linux versions for it. It’s quite stable. However, it isn’t my first recommendation anymore as they are going down a proprietary route. I’m not sure if they have ads yet, but wouldn’t surprise me if they started.
desktop environment
This is the desktop suite, a bundle of packages that work well together on any distro, with its own look and feel. There are basically 3 camps:
windows look n feel
KDE: is the most known, is very customisable, has an abundant amount of themes, icon sets, login screens, fonts, and a well-sized userbase. They prefix many app names with “K”. Ubuntu even has a distro version called “Kubuntu” with KDE on it
Cinnamon: main user is Linux Mint
LXDE and XFCE: look closer to windows 95 and windows XP, consume minimal resources. configuration is through the interface, advanced configuration through files
mac look n feel
Gnome: they are well known and source of flame wars (gnome vs KDE). windows don’t have title bars, things are very rounded, not very configurable, heavily mac inspired
tiling window managers
these aren’t desktop environments, but sit more in the middle, they manage windows. best to watch a video about tiling window managers. they are very geeky and perfect if you love using nothing but your keyboard
Avoid Lenovo. At least, I have not had great experiences with the ThinkPad T14s AMD, both gen 1 and gen 2.
Gen 2 came with an Aetheros (sp?) bt/wifi card that would never wake up after suspend, had to get an Intel replacement, thankfully the bad one wasn’t soldered in and I could replace it.
Trackpad has glitches that had to be mitigated in the kernel - mitigated well enough that it doesn’t bother me but it’s still silly
And both gen 1 and 2 still cannot reliably wake from suspend, and experience unreasonably high battery drain while suspended
Then again that could be a problem with all modern laptops…
I’m a fan of the old IBM ThinkPads. Not sure about the recent ones.
I’ve had huge problems with one of Lenovo’s Legion laptops. Awful support too, they did everything they could to not have to fix it. It took a licensed third party to finally take us seriously and fix the dang thing.
So I wouldn’t recommend Lenovo unless the only alternative was Dell.
I’ve run Linux on the T410, T520, P50, P51, X1g2, X1g5, X1 Yoga, and p16s, all when those laptops were new. Sometimes the wifi was hard to configure, or the fingerprint scanner didn’t work, or the wwan card wasn’t supported, or the power states where fucky and drained the battery, but that was in it’s way all part of the fun.
It’s definitely gotten easier over time to run Linux on new hardware and I’ll pick a Thinkpad for the job every time. I use a modern Thinkpad with linux for work every day.
If you’re looking for something that can handle AAA games, I’ve had a great experience with my Dell G5. Linux Mint had everything working out of the box, including the dedicated Nvidia GPU (though I agree with others, AMD is easier in Linux).
My laptop also has the advantage of allowing you to do weight training every time you move it, so there’s that to consider.
I see a lot of Framework recommendations, and I had the 12th gen Framework for around a year running Fedora. I faced a bunch of excessive power use issues, and had to add some kernel flags just to get maybe 4 hours of battery life. The device is notoriously repairable, but the one thing that conked out on me was actually the mainboard, which was like the price of a new device. Support spent two weeks trying to find out if it was anything else before sending me a replacement mainboard.
My friend recently got a Zenbook 14 OLED with the same processor. The entire device was $200 cheaper lightly used than the Frameworks mainboard alone, and the only issue is the speakers don’t work. That being said, he gets almost double my battery life, and a 90hz OLED screen on top of it all. Plus more ports; even with Framework’s modular add-in cards I don’t feel it is as flexible a system as having >4 useful ports.
My time with the Framework was great, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Getting something secondhand is an environmentally conscious option, and you can get great stuff secondhand.
I have a framework. The smaller one. I think they have two now. One of the older CPUs. Got it now than a year ago and it’s been solid. Disclaimer: I don’t run Linux on it, so IDK what that’s like at the moment.
I’ve used most makes and models of laptops and desktops at some point for some duration… The hazards of being in IT… I can’t recommend anything from Microsoft. Simply too hard to do anything with when anything goes wrong and you’re entirely at the mercy of MS for everything. I personally don’t like Lenovo, I’ve had a few Lenovo’s that have their PCIe slots locked to only accept specific device I.D.s in the firmware. I had to flash a hacked firmware to upgrade the wifi in one. It was an unpleasant experience. It did eventually work, but it was not fun. I also don’t care for their keyboard layouts. That’s been improved recently from what I’ve heard, I’m still equally not a fan of their systems.
I’ve had the most experience with HP and Dell, and for the most part they’re very similar. Anything from their business lines will perform quite well though graphics may only be whatever comes integrated with the CPU.
I always push towards business systems because from what I’ve seen, they’re more robust and usually don’t break nearly as fast.
I’d think about getting an eGPU for gaming since no matter how powerful the system or it’s GPU is, it will be massively outdated long before the system fails or becomes inoperable from age. With an eGPU external enclosure, you can upgrade any time you like to a desktop card for much cheaper than replacing the system. Most eGPU enclosures can also act as docking stations, providing power and even network and other things along with the graphics connection.
That’s a lot of hardware talk though. I’m not going to tell you what to pick, I’m just making the best recommendations I can given the information available to me.
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