Hi everyone!
I need to buy a new laptop to replace my 12 years old laptop. I didn’t look after hardware for a while for some personal reasons.
I will buy something new. My needs are:
- photo editing
- video editing
- vector graphics editing/creation
- good battery life (I don’t want to worry about)
- web navigating, docs, spreadsheets
- USB-C charging would be nice
I don’t game, and Framework isn’t available where I live.
I would be happy to have some recommendation on what is a good hardware for this use and good brand.
Thanks!
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*.
Oh right, I misread your first comment sorry.
Can we discontinue the /s please. Its just cringe and adds nothing. (Minor pet peeve)
Hmm…, I think with the level of literacy (or just plain text skimping) we find on the internet, anything that helps in conveying the message is a clear win; especially if merely the use of just two characters enables one to achieve this.
Could you elaborate on what you dislike about it? I’m just genuinely curious*.
The /s is cheap, lazy and sometimes rude. I’ve never seen it add anything and at worst it can be a insult to someone’s intelligence.
Hmm…, so if I understand you correctly; using /s is lazy, so I should either not try to convey sarcasm in written text or make it more clear that it’s sarcasm without saying that it’s sarcasm? Perhaps a better question would be: how would you formulate that one sentence? Once again, I’m genuinely curious and I’m thankful that you took the effort to type that down.
I disagree. I have a System76 laptop and I love it and there support team. I could care less that it is a Clevo. It also comes with system76 boot which allows you to weaken Intel ME.
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.
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 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.
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.
Gaming is not important if you do video editing. Hardware doesnt need to be very powerful if you dont do 4K or something, which tbh is not needed.
I would say look for a Clevo NV41 laptop as they are supported with Coreboot by 3mdeb, Novacustom, System76, Nitrokey etc. But flashing coreboot requires some knowledge and a hardware programmer.
I cant recommend other brands really. Thinkpads are just a name, good Linux support but their support is nonexistent if you dont pay, and the software updates are not long.
You may want AMD graphics, but I have had bad experience with amd mobile CPUs.
You will want to use
- tlp
- system76-scheduler (or this power management thing)
- autocpufreq
Either one of these.
As a Distro I highly recommend ublue.it they are supporting many models with custom setups like Razer etc, but also main (intel, amd, no extras) or nvidia (proprietary drivers).
Especially if you go with an NVIDIA card, which has advantages, I recommend the system76 tool for switching between internal GPU and dedicated one. And I also recommend only ublue’s *-nvidia images, as you can rollback if an update with the drivers breaks something.
Where do you live and what’s your budget?
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
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.
good battery life (I don’t want to worry about)
Define good battery life.
I’m fine with several hours of use. 6 hours would be great. The second point is to no worry about having no battery when I take out of my backpack. The second point is also depending on the OS. With all I read and people, I would look for 94Wh at least.
Have no idea if they’re any good but since you ppstwd this in Linux maybe one from the people that do PopOS:
I would not recommend them. I bought a Galago Pro in 2020, and it’s been a huge disappointment. Pop!_OS was very buggy, and their support was not helpful. I ultimately installed Ubuntu, and it’s now significantly more stable, but I’m left asking the question “why did I pay a premium for a clevo, when I’m not getting anything out of the custom software or support?”
Even with Ubuntu, it’s not a good laptop. The speakers are worse than my phone, a fully charged battery will die completely in less than a day when the laptop is suspended, it runs unbelievably hot. As a developer who depends on this machine for daily work, it’s been intensely frustrating.
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.
Just get a thinkpad.
