From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Tuxedo computers could be a good fit I think? It's like system76, but from Germany. You can pick from a few OS including an Ubuntu fork they made ( tuxedo os ). You can tweak the laptop yourself ( different you/CPUs/disk sizes/... ) to fit your use case.
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com
Personally I've never bought there, but a friend of mine has and he's happy with his purchase.
Note: I do not work for them, or am affiliated with them in any way.
What da bot doin
Looks like my account was marked ( unintentionally ) as bot in my settings. That should be resolved now. I found and updated the setting
I would favour an AMD Ryzen 7000 based laptop. Much better battery life than Intel and better graphics performance.
Lenovo ThinkPad T and P series are excellent build quality.
Asus Zenbooks or Expertbooks with OLED screens are also excellent. Displays are on par, or superior to Macbooks. Excellent colour accuracy.
Make sure you get something with at least 16GB of Ram, or 32GB if available.
While I agree with the recommendations (I have a ThinkPad P14S Gen4 now) I wouldn't say the battery life is great - especially if OP wants to do video editing and such. Otherwise it's an amazing laptop (now that it's actually supported by the kernel). I still suspect the Intel variant would be better for battery life though.
With that being said for anything this intensive you'll need a charger with any laptop because it will simply not be able to keep working for 8+ hours with this kind of software. In fact get a docking station and a second screen too unless you plan to be on the go all of the time; the productivity increase from getting a second screen is insane.
Oh and be prepared to lose a lot of the fancy stuff with Linux - sure you get an amazing screen but no HDR. You don't get the sound improvements from the official Lenovo drivers for Windows, etc. Oh and you should keep the Windows partition (just shrink it to a minimum) - makes it much easier to keep the bios up to date.
Just get a thinkpad.
Any T or P series with the minimum specs you're lokkung for. Tons on eBay.
As someone who frequents the laptop market, I'll throw in my two-cents.
If you're looking for value, don't compromise on performance, buy refurbished.
While I'm certain it is definitely different from country to country, a refurbished laptop typically has more life to give in them.
I'd recommend business laptops, such as the Dell Latitudes or the Lenovo Thinkpads, but an M1 MacBook Air provides an absolutely shocking amount of performance for the price.
Checking sites like eBay or the pages of hardware resellers rather than big box stores is definitely where I'd go.
I will not compromise on the performance. I will definitively look to the refurbished units. The biggest issue we have here, it's we are a small country and our own keyboard layout (the keyboard isn't a real issue).
Thanks for the help.
True, M1 and even M2 macs have superb battery life. Fedora Asahi remix will still be pretty hacky though and have more problems. But a lot works now, it has opengl support, a FOSS rust driver for the GPU and more.
I know you don't game but a dedicated GPU will be a godsend for video editing. Depending on the budget I would get a used gaming laptop like an Omen or a legion 5
Edit: worst case wait a year for parts and laptops to be really cheap haha.
+1 for Lenovo Legion/HP Omen.
In this order, IMO.
The downside of a dedicated GPU is that your battery life is going to be bad. Intel Iris graphics have come a long way and are likely fine for this kind of thing.
My two cents; if you want to use Linux on it, then do yourself a favor and pick a laptop from a Linux-first vendor. So the likes of NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo and others found on the link over here come to mind. Besides that, it's important that the device in question either has a dedicated GPU (or at least supports eGPUs). Furthermore, choose a device with relatively high battery capacity; they go up to ~99 Wh, so pick something that's at least relatively close to that number.
Please don't; tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule, and the hardware is "fine" at best. I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn't bleeding edge.
tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.
Yup, clearly. /s
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule
Wow, that's a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.
the hardware is “fine” at best
Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple's finest go beyond "fine".
I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Hmm..., very interesting! I'm totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.
I don't deny this. However, none of Dell's laptops with decent Linux support have an AMD CPU (or one of Intel's latest Meteor Lake CPUs). Thus, at least in terms of battery life, it's not desirable; with battery life being something that OP has explicitly mentioned. As for Lenovo, the Thinkpad-line (the one generally recommended for its Linux-support) with AMD CPUs starts at a very high price. At which point, the "fine" hardware from the Linux-first vendor not only starts to be attractive but highly desirable by comparison.
Yup, clearly. /s
That seemed nice until....
WTF? 400€ to change the keyboard language?
So what happens is that changing the keyboard language comes together with the CPU upgrade from Intel® Core® i3-1315U to Intel® Core® i7-1360P. That's what you pay for*. I agree with you that they might have done a better job at conveying what's happening. For whatever it's worth, I didn't immediately notice this myself. Therefore I tried to contact them in hopes of resolving the issue. They responded very quickly (like within a couple of minutes) and explained what was going on. Props to them for that!
Good on them for explaining. But at that price, why even propose the option? That's a 40% price increase just to get your keyboard layout where it's free everywhere else.
That’s a 40% price increase just to get your keyboard layout and a CPU upgrade
Fixed that for you*.
I had a 10th gen S76 Lemur. The hardware was a mixed bag. Chassis was nice and light (compared to Apple), but enameled so the edges eventually chipped. Keyboard/trackpad were average. Speakers were awful... Battery life was excellent like usually got around 20 hours on a charge (and often more with a little effort!). I also had a number of hardware failures and dealing with their support was pretty terrible... Broken control key out of the box, Wifi died twice, second time they replaced the motherboard (and that took like... 9 weeks), then it completely died a year later when it was finally out of warranty. A real mixed bag of Pop OS being nice, and having great software/firmware support, but also multiple hardware failures coupled with terrible warranty support.
I highly recommend avoiding this rhetoric because you will end up paying more for inferior hardware.
You are not actually "doing yourself a favor."
Ultimately, any discussion on this would boil down to cost vs convenience. As OP hasn't explicitly stated anything on this regard, it seems unproductive to delve into this further. However, strictly speaking, I have to agree with you that the Linux-first vendors are (in almost all cases) more expensive. Thank you for pointing that out for OP.
In case you're as bored as I am 😅.
Let's start with stating some facts from OP:
Therefore, I assumed that OP wasn't cost-limited by any means (they didn't state it anyways).
Anyhow, allow me to illustrate how much OP might have to "pay more" for "inferior hardware":
it's easy to recommend a ThinkPad for Linux, and something in the T or P series laptops might suit you. video editing is a potential difficulty though, as that feels a little more workstation-grade than the rest, and you'll probably want to go big on RAM (32GB would be best) and be sure to get at least an intel i7. I've not had great luck with battery life on AMD (shame because everything else is great) but perhaps others have tips for doing better.
you could also go for the ThinkPad yoga models (make sure they're still ThinkPad though! they also sell a different model line just called "yoga") if you wanted a tablet/convertible for graphics work.
anyway look at the T14, P14s, or P16 if you want something bigger. whatever the latest generation of those models is.
Lenovo build quality has been shit lately. My IT dept is constantly returning Thinkpads for various issues.
The state agency bureau I provide IT support for has had 10% (8 out of 80) of their new ThinkPads returned for warranty work, with several more showing signs of developing the same problem. The USB-C charging/data port broke on all of them.
I work in a computer repair shop and we rarely see any Thinkpads of any age.
Far from shit. And they have among the best warranty options in the biz
I constantly check out dell refurbished for deals on workstations. Pretty good Linux compatibility in my experience, workstation hardware, and they have 50% deals all the dang time. The precision line of workstations looks like it would meet your needs.
I'm still convinced the Dell Refurbished website isn't real. Like why do they even bother selling crappy Celeron and Pentium systems when this website exists?
Too many choices to help narrow it down for you. But you need to keep your own workflow in mind when picking out your CPU and GPU, for the software compatibility.
I use Davinci Resolve for my video editing, one of the few Professional NLE officially supported on Linux. Intel's iGPU is incompatible with the software at this time. There are hacks and unofficial patches which are pointed out on the arch wiki, but the work required isn't easy.
If you are using Adobe software you might need more power so you can run Windows in a VM, or has up-gradable storage so you can comfortably dual boot.
Good Battery is an cross x86 issue. While Intel and AMD are now trying to compete with Apple Silicon in terms of power and battery life. Stand by battery drain is still an issue. Google "Windows Modern Standby" if you want to get informed. If I remember correctly the laptop needs to have S3 Sleep enabled on it, and it's usually not specified on a spec sheet.
Another battery saving tool is a CPU limiter like Slimbook Battery. My Laptop has a terrible fan curve and I need to throttle the CPU back, else the machine overheats. But it's also good for the battery life too.
Software support is down to the Package Manager. Flatpak is your friend for most of this, but if you wanna dive into the deep end, so is the AUR if you installed Arch.
USB-C Charging is down to the laptop manufacturer. Here is a good infographic on the ones you need to look for. Intel Laptops are a safe bet.
My actual laptop is a Librem 14 by Purism and it is amazing!! I would recomend also checking https://system76.com/laptops , https://es.starlabs.systems/ and https://minifree.org/ These all come with linux, are made with coreboot or libreboot installed and are privacy and security oriented.
Dell XPS or Latitude or Precision, ThinkPad P or X, Framework, LG Gram, System76 and other linux-focused manufacturers, Asus Vivobook
if you want really really good battery life, a good laptop for that seems to be the T480 (8th gen intel).
It's relatively cheap used and if you get the 24wh internal and 72wh external batteries you can get 96wh in total
starlabs maybe?
Where do you live and what's your budget?
Budget isn't a real issue with 2.5k. I can go a little higher.
Does it have to be a laptop? You'll get better hardware and performance on a desktop plus a better screen and seating position.
True, but the focus on battery life suggests mobility is a must.
They could dock the laptop for a desktop experience at home, including a dedicated keyboard, mouse and screens, with a good desk and seating arrangement. A USB C equipped device would be the way to go for this.
But absolutely agree for price, desktop only is better value.
Desktop also performs better than laptop with "same" spec cpu, gpu, etc
Desktops are not replacements for a laptop. I have a portable power efficient laptop for school and around the home. Laptops way more flexible.
It as to be a laptop. I'm mostly in my new activity, working outside my home. I'm using mostly trains as we can go everywhere with them. It also allows working while going somewhere.
