I had bought an MSI laptop from Costco. Even though I was happy with the performance and with CachyOS I had to return it. Lucky for me that Costco has such a generous return window, 90 days. My main issues were that it lacked adequate cooling for the X7 358H, had no UEFI support from MSI on their website, and the build quality was atrocious.
I was looking at the System76 Lemur Pro, but I can’t seem to find any reviews on the newer models. Build quality and performance is really important to me as my daily driver for the last several years has been a MBP14 with an M1 Pro.
I’m not buying anything from Frame.Work as I’ve had two issues with them already which prompted me to cancel both orders, once for the desktop and once for the 13 Pro. Their customer service is lacking in my humble opinion.
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I recently got a refurbished Thinkpad x13 for 500 CAD, and it’s great with cachy OS on it.
System 76 is a boutique laptop company. I bought two laptops from them and both needed service and repair several times.
So to be clear, you aren’t recommending them.
I’ve been using Thinkpads since the late nineties… I’ve only ever had Thinkpads. I’m using my latest as a Steam Deck (Steam OS, AMD throughout) as I’m still using the X260 as a daily driver though I reaaally wish I had maxed out the RAM while it was possible. The old one runs KDE Neon.
The old ones are better than the new ones but the new ones you can charge with USB-C.
I was looking at the System76 Lemur Pro, but I can’t seem to find any reviews on the newer models. Build quality and performance is really important to me as my daily driver for the last several years has been a MBP14 with an M1 Pro.
i’ve had a galago pro and the build quality on system76 seems to be better than average, but well below the competition at their price points – they are all clevo/tongfeng rebadges.
however the build quality on the ultra high end models does mirror the build quality and this probably matters to you since you’re considering framework, which also has a high price point.
system76 makes sense if you’re doing for the support as well as the capabilities like the ones you’re looking for (coreboot mattered for me back then) and my experience was overall positive w them; but i learned recently that their support made things so easy for me that it made my linux skills get antiquated.
Sounds like you should buy another mac.
You want build quality and performance and code, game and use llms. That’s a mac use case. If the games you want run on it.
I can’t give any firsthand recs at the moment, but I’ve had my eye on the ASUS Zenbook A16.
I’m a weirdo who likes ARM Linux, and this is the first non-Apple ARM SoC that has a decent memory bandwidth for LLMs. Not exactly blazing, but should be usable.
I recently grabbed a Framework 13 on eBay that “needed to be plugged in to boot and probably needed to have the mb replaced” for $500. Got it, replaced the CMOS battery and laughed all the way to the bank ;)
They is such a nice laptop for that$
It was a gamble, but I had already wanted one that I could slowly upgrade and figured at worst it would be still slightly cheaper than new.
all this talk about buying laptops…you guys can afford laptops right now?
Refurbished and Used can become quite affordable
If you aren’t running anything more than Minecraft for games you can get old Dell Latitudes for next to nothing. The downfall is that SSDs are $$$ now.
The Latitude 7400 (Non 2-in-one version) is genuinely an amazing laptop if you underclock the CPU a bit so it doesn’t sound like a jet engine. I run Debian on it and the thing gets 12 hours of battery life, and does everything I need. Build quality is pretty good too. I got it for like 200$ refurbished.
Something with an amd 395 ai max + maybe
I have a Asus flow z13 and very much enjoy it, but the form factor is not for everyone
I had feeling I knew what you meant before looking it up. I guess I can appreciate trying to do something different in a laptop, but the detachable keyboard and kickstand just seem like too many moving parts to me.
Like when they added a screen that pops out above the keyboard or the laptop where the top half pivots lower than the base when it’s open to angle for airflow. But I’m also the dummy still trying to use a laptop in my lap.
T480 and upgrade ram, storage and wireless nic.
that’s a downgrade from m1 pro
I was also skeptical with newer ThinkPads, but at the end I accepted the risk and bought one last year: T14s Gen 6, the one with AMD CPU. It is perfect IMO except for one small issue that affected me in the first few months and got resolved with a firmware update: battery drain during sleep was significant. It lost around 15-20% charge overnight. After the updates it loses at most 5% in the same duration.
And yeah it can update its firmware on Linux, just like Windows. Pretty rare thing to see. It has official support for Ubuntu and Fedora. I myself tried Arch and it works perfectly as well.
What are you looking for? What are your requirements? I mean, gaming? Programming (if “yes”, do your projects require lots of running services/containers?)? Which country are you in?
In Europe, I like using PCSpecialist a lot. They offer thorough customization of the hardware, and their prices are good (they start low, and it gets even lower because they allow you cutting Windows out of the bill). In the US I’ve bought a ThinkPenguin and was happy with it. I didn’t really like my custom-configured Toshiba back in the day. It had weak cooling and was thus very noisy, and it wasn’t done well, deteriorated with time a bit too much.
ThinkPenguin hardware is extremely outdated. Would definitely consider PCSpecialist if it was an option.
Pick one at refurbed.de or .nl - dead easy to find any type of hardware at a good price.
There’s a reason Linux on a Thinkpad is a meme.
You haven’t said much concrete about your requirements, use case, or budget, so I don’t have a recommendation much beyond whatever Thinkpad meets your requirements. The “serious” models in the T, P, and X series tend to be preferable to the others.
I love mine!
Woah I have the same laptop stand arm at work
The model is important! I had gotten an E series Ryzen gen 1 years ago and the Linux support on it was atrocious! I swore to never buy a Thinkpad again.
I’m surprised to read that; I would have expected substandard build quality, not problems with Linux.
The laptop BIOS did see updates and now works fine running Cachy, but for over a year it was terible. A whole list of cryptic kerner boot arguments would make it boot, but then touchpad and keyboard issues would remain, and if it ever went to sleep it would hard lock again, not ideal on a laptop. I personally didn’t contact support, but on the official forum there was a thread with a tonne of comments about how support would say Linux is not officially supported on this model and people giving up and returning it. I couldn’t because I ordered from overseas, specifically because I heard Thinkpads worked great with Linux. Needless to say I was royally disappointed. At least it works now, and works better than with Windows.
I guess then I would add to my advice that people should do a quick check to see whether others are having good results with a given model before purchase. I thought we were past that with Thinkpads.
Where do you check?
Any of the following are likely to work:
- Web search for “[model name] linux” and see if there are any results describing actual experience. A handful mentioning using it with none mentioning compatibility issues is usually good to go.
- Check forums for existing threads. Good options include https://forum.thinkpads.com/ and r/thinkpad. Less populous possibilities are !linux@lemmy.ml and !linux@lemmy.world.
- Make your own post on any of those places and ask about the model and distro you’re interested in.
- Use an LLM-based tool, but check its sources to make sure they say what the LLM claims they say and the author shows signs of knowing what they’re talking about. LLMs are bullshit machines.
There’s definitely differences between models, but the best Linux experience I’ve ever had is on my e14 gen5 with fedora. That thing is flawless. If you don’t mind the plastic chassis.
Bro the E485 was bomb for linux. My job at the time purchased a dozen of them for infosec dev, we had gentoo built and deployable for them in about a day. Shit I still have one in the basement acting as a cluster head 😂
Are there versions of the keyboard where the function key isn’t in the bottom left corner? Ctrl should be there imo.
Ctrl should be on the key that says “CapsLock”, and for me, it is.
You can swap Ctrl and Fn in the BIOS.
Linux on an old T480 is a meme. I’m not sure about the quality of newer models.
I bought a new T series Thinkpad last year. As long as you’re not using it as a hammer or a jack stand, it will hold up pretty well. Supports Linux well. Good build quality.
If you do need that level of build quality I would look at the Panasonic Toughbooks. Just don’t drop one one the floor. It may break. The floor, not the laptop. The laptop will be fine.
I don’t need crazy build quality, I just need it to not be shit so it’ll last me a few years.
never get L or E series, only get T/P/X series
panasonic letsnote (not the toughbook) is actually also quite decent. but it’s hard to get unless you’re in japan
I dunno about ThinkPads but I got a Yoga Flex Pro from Craigslist and it’s crazy nice…
X13 here, I can’t recommend it enough.
Same here, I got a Gen 1 X13 for 120€, it’s not powerful by any means but perfect for running Linux and browsing, coding, writing and so on.
My newer model can kernel panic as well as any model!
I had a T470 previously, and the mechanical build quality and materials of the P14s III are superior.
Can confirm, the P14s feels great
Use your MacBook and install Asahi on it ?
that was the first thing I looked into, but Asahi is very much still in alpha and barely hanging on. If I could install properly supported linux on a MBP I would be all over that. I would not mind paying the Apple tax if I could get the performance, build quality, and battery life without using macOS.
I’ve been daily driving my Asahibook for over a year (as in “I’ve not booted MacOS except one time for demonstrating something”). Other than DP-over-USBC not working, it’s as been as stable as any other computer I’ve used. Even the DP stuff is working on test branch, and I did try it, and it worked almost flawlessly.
I second that, I’ve been running an M2 for almost a year as my main (and only) PC. Standby battery life is not great and DP over USB C would be nice, but there’s an HDMI port.
OP, if you already have the hardware, I would at least give it a try. Linux on Apple hardware is a great combo IMO.
I’m willing to give it a shot, but have you gotten Steam to run on it without issues?
I don’t game on my laptop, can’t help you there!
