The hunt for a perfect laptop continues
66 points by Aks
66 points by Aks
if you’re a Mac fan, of course
I don’t think this is as much of a thing as it used to be. It’s more a convenient fiction that people who choose to avoid the Apple ecosystem tell themselves.
I’m not fan. In many ways I hate the company. What I am a fan of is getting stuff done without having to shave 5 yaks every day.
I’m kind of upset there’s no real competitors to Apple in the laptop market right now. That’s not good for consumers.
ThinkPads are good. The article is right that buying anything that is not Apple is a headache because product lines are a maze of twisty passages, but really, for my purposes a T14 or an X1 Carbon is always a solid choice. But having to learn this vs. the easy Apple product lines is a chore.
Yes, they are worse in some ways to a Macbook. But they are better in others.
I think HP and Dell likely are more or less the same, but I’m not familiar with their product catalog nowadays.
Yes, they are worse in some ways to a Macbook. But they are better in others.
CPU is categorically better today though. I feel “some ways other ways” framing was right back in the intel days, but for me the jump from x86 to arm felt like the jump from HDD to SSD back in the day. It really is night and day difference.
I do hope someone builds a faster&cooler laptop CPU so that I can go back on Linux though!
I meant, for instance, that I prefer Linux to macOS, and running Linux on Macs seems too much of a battle.
For ergonomics, I like the trackpoint. I’m typing this on a detachable tablet ThinkPad which from time to time bothers me, but the tablet mode comes in very handy sometimes. I believe it’s also lighter than any Macbook, and I like the keyboard much better.
I’m on an 11th gen i5 which is puny, but for my use, it’s powerful enough and the battery lasts enough.
I’m actually sad that even with Apple making a laudable effort with ARM, ARM is still not viable for stuff I need yet.
I wish Asahi turned out better, to be honest. It seems pretty clear that it’s not going to be the viable alternative to macOS on these machines that we were hoping for. It’s functional (albeit with issues; notably missing high refresh rate support, bad touch pad drivers, lack of proper sleep states) on the M1 and M2 laptops, but anything more recent (meaning laptops released in the past ~2 years) is completely unsupported from an end-user perspective without even support for drawing to the built-in display.
I had some hope that Asahi would have enough energy, and that future M-series hardware would require small enough changes, that Linux would run decently well on Apple hardware within a ~year of release. That clearly didn’t happen. Honestly, I partly blame the Linux upstreaming process; it seemed like a lot of Marcan’s energy was spent working with disinterested or hostile upstream kernel subsystem maintainers. Though some of the “blame” should probably also be put on Apple just changing more between hardware revisions than hoped.
My M1 Pro laptop is still going strong, but there’ll come a time relatively soon where I’ll want to replace it. I honestly don’t know what to do then. I’ll be tempted to get another MacBook Pro, but Linux support has come in really useful a few times. And I don’t mean just stuff you can do from Docker; I mean things like using Linux-specific APIs to use an external WiFi card for non-WiFi purposes and stuff like that.
Yes, I have conflicting perceptions.
My reptilian mind says Apple is hostile to running Linux on their machines, because they make it unnecessarily hard. I suppose that’s irrational. But at least, I don’t think they are interested in the slightest in creating a usable “open” hardware platform.
I’m told that this is not the case- and apparently, there’s many facilities in Apple hardware to run other OSes which are not really necessary, so it seems they are also doing active work to enable Asahi and others?
This might be corporate multiple personality disorder, which is quite common. But the results I see is that Asahi has a ton of talent, but they’re struggling. Of course, what I’m comparing this to is an absurd amount of resources spent on reverse engineering the PC, so Linux nowadays works pretty well on PCs.
It’s a shame, because even though I dislike Apple, they can build great hardware and I think PCs need strong competition. If Linux ran great on Macbooks, I’d be hopeful PC makers would make a stronger effort.
My best read of the situation is that Apple simply does not care.
Somehow, Apple ended up putting a non-locked on their ARM Macs. This isn’t surprising, since the x86 Macs also had a bootloader that’s not locked, but it’s not obvious, since straight-up porting iOS’s iBoot to the Mac would’ve resulted in a locked bootloader.
Maybe they did it so that their PR people could tell the public, “if you want Windows to run on your Mac, you’ve gotta talk to Microsoft. Our hardware supports booting alternative operating systems”. Maybe some people in Apple really wanted to see a future where Linux runs well on Macs. Maybe it just happened to work out that way because someone on the bootloader team just made it like that and nobody intervened. The truth is probably some combination of all three.
But beyond releasing hardware with an open bootloader, Apple seems neither hostile nor helpful. They’re not gonna release documentation on how their hardware works to aid reverse engineering efforts, but they’re also not gonna use their legal might to shut down reverse engineering efforts. They don’t seem to be making unnecessary hardware changes for the purpose of making life hard for reverse engineers, but they also don’t seem committed to any kind of backward compatibility.
I wish they would at least do the bare minimum and release some documentation for how their hardware works. But they’re not going to, because they do not care.
They don’t seem to be making unnecessary hardware changes for the purpose of making life hard for reverse engineers, but they also don’t seem committed to any kind of backward compatibility.
to be fair, that’s even the case for their supported official macOS API. anything can be deprecated and disappear from one year to another.
Yeah, that tracks pretty closely what’s in my head. However, I’m surprised by the apparent amount of work that each new MacBook entails; my perception from reading on Asahi is that each new model is a massive amount of work.
This could also be that I know nothing about building hardware, but my perception is that sometimes new PC hardware requires significant work from Linux devs, but it’s not comparable. Maybe it’s just how Apple works, but I cannot stop thinking that there might be some intentionality to it.
But the key of the problem is that this only matters because Apple creates very good hardware. If others had comparable laptops, we wouldn’t be talking about this.
I have been using MacBooks since 2007. But for me the winning feature of any non-Mac laptop is now that I can use NixOS. I use Nix on my Macs (and could use nix-darwin), but it is not really comparable to a fully declarative system, fully sandboxed builds, etc. I know it’s not for a general audience, but as a developer it’s kinda hard to go back from NixOS.
I now use a MacBook and ThinkPad side-by-side and the ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 AMD is pretty fantastic. It’s fast, all the hardware works without issues (Wifi, fingerprint reader, webcam, etc.). I loaded it up with 64GiB RAM and a 2TB SSD. Even got an additional WWAN card (though I don’t use it currently). My primary criticisms are the display (though not being super-glossy is nice) and the battery life (up to 6 hours). But for about 1400 or 1500 I have a decent workstation and a MacBook with the same amount of memory and storage space would cost ~5000 Euro (you need an M4 Max for more than 48GB RAM).
Funnily enough, I recently got a 120Hz Dell display and GNOME rendering is much smoother than macOS (where I can only see 120Hz goodness in the side-bar expand/collapse animation).
Yeah, I had a T14 with 32gb of RAM for work and I loved it too. And for me, Linux is a big selling point.
But if you have more modest needs, then the MacBooks are way more competitive. For 1200€, you get an Air with 16gb/256gb. Those are fine for most uses. I can get a T14s for 1129€ with a 512gb disk. And they actually weigh the same! But I don’t think the difference in cost is so significant. (Spain prices.) (And I think the MacBook is going to have better battery life… for me it is not critical to have a massive runtime… but it does matter than in 4-5 years the battery is going to last decently.)
(For sure, the +500€ for 32gb of RAM is a huge issue!)
About the battery: at least with the Lenovo you can replace the battery with a few screws down the line. (I know MacBooks are also not terrible when it comes to battery replacement, but IIRC it involves pulling it from the adhesives).
I agree with the rest, I would recommend most people to get a MacBook Air unless they specifically want Linux. The price of the baseline Air is extremely good and it’s a good way for people to stay out of the Windows spyware/bloatware hell, at least until Timmy discovers new opportunities for monetization (the F1 ads are a bit of a canary in the coal mine).
I don’t know.
On one hand, I don’t think Windows is so bad. I spent the last year using Windows 11, and I could work perfectly fine.
On the other, once someone revealed me how to swap ctrl/fn on Linux, I nuked it and never came back.
For me, because I enjoy tinkering with my computer, Linux is a no-brainer FOR ME. I recommend Linux, macOS, and Windows to different people. There’s so many variables, there’s no clear choice.
running Linux on Macs seems too much of a battle
As the main OS, sure, but docker is easy and performs within epsilon of native (assuming Arm64 Linux of ocurse)
Docker just adds another layer of complexity. I think OrbStack or something did a good impression of WSL2 on macOS (e.g. an integrated dev VM with shared directories, etc.).
But having to manage a separate machine. I used WSL2 for a while, so I had to manage Windows and Linux, and there’d always be small papercuts of friction (and WSL2 is very good).
In the end, I appreciate projects that are truly crossplatform, and I even make an effort to make my stuff work well on macOS and Windows… but in the end, I want to use Linux, so I stick to just using Linux.
Have you tried the latest AMD CPUs? They are still a bit behind in terms of power per unit of energy used, but they are faster overall in quite a few benchmarks, making them quite competitive.
In particular, the HX 370 is quite cheap and not too far from a M4: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m4-vs-amd_ryzen_ai_9_hx_370.
M4 is about 50% faster on their single-core test, nearly twice as fast on the multi-core test.
The HX-370 numbers look pretty close to the cheapest macbook air numbers, but that’s a very different world when it comes to power consumption - I’d expect the 370 to be thermally throttled most of the time. Local stores offer laptops with one, they look (being generous) roughly comparable to a macbook air and cost almost exactly the same.
The m4 Max has 16 cores. The HX-370, with 12 cores, is not there yet. It’s somewhere between the m4, and the m4 Pro, as you noted, in terms of raw performance.
In terms of energy use, it seems pretty much the same. For instance, the Passmark CPU Mark / Watt is 625.5 PPW for the m4 Pro and 652.2 PPW for the HX-370. I’ve seen some non-rigorous compilation benchmarks where both were impressively quick, with the HX-370 being a bit faster.
Maybe HX 370 is even better than Apple CPU, but Apple know how to do software/hardware co-design and frame.work for example not, so we have HX 370 with miserable battery life https://community.frame.work/t/battery-life-on-ai-9-hx-370-notebookcheck-review/67861, I was thinking about FW13 myself, but my M1 Max is still much better computer and I’m not sure that PC ecosystem will ever catch-up.
someone builds a faster&cooler laptop CPU
Qualcomm did.
No, they didn’t. Looking at various sources online, the M4 scores significantly higher in single core and noticably higher in mulit core than the X Elite across many benchmarks. And the X Elite’s GPU is completely outclassed by Apple’s GPUs (which is relevant as we’re comparing SoCs here, not just CPUs).
I agree with you. I prefer running Linux, and it’s a chore to shop for a laptop.
ThinkPads are nice, but they are too random. Some models have badly engineered cooling. Others are great. So if this bothers you, it’s necessary to wait for reviews.
Also, in lots of markets the price is too high compared to competition from Apple. Besides, they tend to offer bad quality screens in low end models, unless you are based in the US, where you can configure anything you want.
In EU, customer service is outsourced to a terrible UK company that is a nightmare to deal with. Framework is promising, but still a bit immature, and waiting times for purchase are long.
This is why I was specific about T series and X1 Carbon. I think there have been some misses there, but my experiences have been 100% great with those.
I’m also looking with great interest at Framework too.
I think Lenovo and the others just don’t care- they target large enterprise customers which have different ways of addressing these problems.
As I said in another thread, I’m very happy with the Legion Pro with i9 CPU. 24 cores in a laptop that beats an original 32 core ThreadRipper would have been unthinkable just five years ago.
My employer gave me an 8th gen X1 Carbon back in 2019 but it took 50% longer to do big builds (e.g. gcc) than the NUC I already had with exactly the same CPU (i7-8650U). The X1’s cooling was simply shit. Not that NUCs have great cooling, but building gcc 9 was literally 20 minutes on the NUC vs 30 minutes on the laptop.
I’ve timed my i9-13900HX laptop against a friend’s water cooled i9-14900K desktop, the difference is under 10%.
Ah, sure! Sometimes you need the extra CPU oomph. For me it’s a bit weird because I wrangle some Rust and… well, Electron apps seem to require more CPU than compiling Rust :D
There’s the P series, which apparently have the nicest CPUs and price tag, but I don’t have first-hand experience with those, so I cannot recommend them like I can with T-series and X1 Carbon.
(We also have access to some bare metal nice iron I can run slow builds on- this doesn’t work if you want to work offline for long periods of time and that kind of thing, but sometimes it’s a good option.)
In EU, customer service is outsourced to a terrible UK company that is a nightmare to deal with.
On-site support has been fine in my experience (and is something Apple doesn’t even offer), bring-in support you can go/send to any accredited service partner and they’ll handle the warranty claim for you.
On-site support might be relevant from the perspective of a large business customer buying a fleet of laptops for their employees, but I think the perspective most people here have is that of an individual trying to decide which laptop to buy.
Why would quick repair not be relevant for your individual primary computing device? I personally own enough computers nowadays that I do not go for it anymore, but in the past I certainly have, and it came in handy. And plenty people are buying machines intended for work (e.g. when they work companies that provide a stipend to buy hardware instead of providing it centrally), and then it’s obviously also important.
i want so badly for that to be true, I have an x201 and x220 that I keep around, but I’m on an M3 Air, and see no real competition from Lenovo.
The gap in performance/power usage is immense. I couldn’t go back at this point.
Sure! For efficiency, I trust no one beats them. But personally, it’s not like I miss a longer running laptop much; the laptop I’m running this on is pretty old and I think the battery’s degraded… and I’m lazy and I won’t plug it in when working from the train or when moving to a different room… and I think I’ve only needed to plug in like once or twice in 1-2 years.
Sure, the Macbooks have better processors- but what the ThinkPad offers me is still worth it to me.
Lenovo’s firmware is sometimes utterly broken. I have an L14gen2 (AMD) that previously was my main machine, and
(Also the firmware fan curve is horrendously loud and you need OS control like thinkfan to make it tolerable.)
Recently got a Dell Latitude 7455 just because that was the one X1E laptop I found a local deal for, and.. I really like Dell now?? No strange bugs, very solid firmware setup and updater, impressive serviceability (magic spring-loaded captive screws that lift the back cover up as you unscrew them to make unclipping it possible? wow!).. and yeah, a 16:10 HiDPI screen, quad speakers, nice big glass trackpad, all that.
Yeah, I’m told the L series is not bad, but I’ll stick to T and X1C.
I think the business lines of Dell and HP are roughly equivalent to the ThinkPads- I just prefer the trackpoint. I know a lot of people who also swore by the Dell XPS, but I believe it has gone downhill.
In any case, the good thing of working for a large org… if they do IT properly, they test each model they want to buy thoroughly, then order a ton of them with the good support. In a previous org, they bought some ThinkPad with a flaw- two guys from Lenovo came over and replaced whatever thing was broken from a ton of laptops in one morning. (Plus, in a large org they’ll keep spares. Although my last big org decided not to do so…)
edit: in case someone is running IT… for me, the icing on the cake is to let employees keep their laptop when it comes to renewal. At least in Spain some paperwork needs to be done, but I’m told it’s fairly painless once you know the deal. You tend to get a much nicer laptop than you’d otherwise buy, and the company can even save some costs.
T and X1C series are nice, but some have had cooling issues. X1C won’t come with AMD CPUs, whose current generation runs cooler, because of a deal with Intel. But current X/T/E can be ordered with AMD chips and they are quite silent and pleasant to use. In particular, the new X13 G6 AMD with 370 CPUs looks awesome.
The Lenovo lineup has way too many models. If they made it smaller, they could be diligent about firmware releases and bugfixes. They could also slowly tweak everything to perfection, including fan hardware and fan curves. It’s very frustrating.
I still don’t feel I can trust Lenovo after they decided it was a good idea to ship all their laptops with a rootkit which completely breaks SSL for the purpose of bombarding their customers with ads. Terrible, terrible company full of terrible, terrible people, as far as I’m concerned. Utterly unforgivable.
I just separate business and consumer line laptops. Really, all consumer non-Apple laptops ship crapware. Lenovo shipped the worst that we know of.
I also have strong opinions against Apple, but at this point, people who need a laptop need to buy something, and everything is horrible.
I can’t view it that way. It’s one company; Lenovo. That company has clealy indicated that they’re not to be trusted at all.
Other laptop manufacturer’s decisions to ship scams like free Norton and McCafee trials also impacts my opinion of them, I don’t view anyone in the space as very trustworthy; Superfish is by far the worst. Norton just nags you and tries to scare you into paying for a useless service. Superfish let hackers steal all your passwords and login tokens by breaking SSL.
Well, I can see where you are coming from and I could argue, but in the end I know my opinions are irrational, so it’s cool.
I want to have a personal computer, and I know I can find reasons to not buy any model in the market, so I like trackpoints and Linux :) (Although right now for personal use I’m relying more on cheap Chinese mini PCs, which have their own set of issues that I must ignore to be able to use a computer.)
vs. the easy Apple product lines is a chore.
there’s a price difference of thousands of dollars (particularly when used.) I don’t see how a quick google search (everyone recommends Thinkpads) is a chore compared to spending days of income more on an Apple device.)
Is that still true? I know macbooks used to be super overpriced, but the current ones look more reasonable.
A current gen macbook air is $1000, and I think the nearest comparable thinkpads are T14 Gen 6 ($1200+), or an X1 Carbon Gen 13 (from $1800+).
Am I missing some really good-value thinkpad lineup or other model? Like, the laptops on my radar are the Framework 13 and Thinkpad X1 series, and the configurations I’d prefer for each of those are more expensive than how I’d configure a macbook.
If only the Asahi Linux project were more stable, I’d be buying macbooks to get good hardware for cheaper…
Both the Framework and the X1 Carbon let you replace the battery, so neither is going to expire on you according to a schedule of carefully planned obsolescence. They both have a CPU fan, so you don’t have to upgrade to a more expensive model for active cooling. They’ve got more ports so no dongles to buy and carry around. The X1 Carbon is also lighter than the MacBook Air, and it has the most comfortable keyboard I have seen on a laptop.
You don’t have to convince me that the X1 Carbon is a good laptop, I’m overall happy with mine, but financially it’s still not competitive with a macbook in my personal experience.
I know it’s just an anecdote, but my current X1 Nano (gen 2) cost around $2000 new, plus $1400 for repairs by lenovo (out of warranty repairs get expensive), for $3400 total. It only has two usb-c ports (1 for power, 1 for my yubikey, meaning I need dongles for regular use). The performance, cpu, and battery life is all worse than what I would have got with a macbook air bought at the same time for $1300. My friends with macbooks have had lower total costs than I have with each of my last 3 thinkpads, so it’s n=3 on my own anecdotal experience here.
Anyways, my experience is that macbooks and thinkpads generally get replaced every 5-7 years regardless (electron apps and websites start to feel slow otherwise), so hdd/battery replacements don’t make that big a difference. How long are you keeping your thinkpads that replacing batteries matters to you?
I do love how light my nano is, and linux works great so it obviously beats any macbook, even if it’s more expensive.
The thinkpads have e.g. 32gb of ram, tb hard drive, bigger screen etc. while the macbook is 400 more for 32gb of ram and 200 more for 1tb of hard drive space etc.
But used, a 5th gen t14 is already only $800 and you can just swap whatever hard drives you want etc.
Personally, I have a 8 year old dell precision (similar ~$400 used atm) upgraded with 128gb of ram, 4tb ssd etc. I’ve not felt cpu limited in almost 20 years and actually disable cores for 30 hour battery life on linux.
What Dell Precision do you have that gets 128G of RAM?
I had a Dell Precision 5520 (same vintage, released 2017 - so 8 years ago now) with the top spec Xeon E3-1505Mv6 with 32G DDR4; I was told that I could upgrade to 64G but no further - and that was a costly upgrade even until last year when I finally gave the machine away.
Oh, yeah, used there’s a big difference.
And yes, Apple gouges you for expansion. The thing is, I keep big data outside my workstations, so I think I’ve rarely used more than 200gb of disk. And I do fine without 32gb of RAM. Once you compare with a nice laptop, Apple is roughly on par on price- esp. if you want something light.
I have mixed feelings wrt. to second-hand laptops. My last personal laptop was second hand, but I could examine it well before buying, etc. It was stunning value, even though it was above market price (an X1C gen 3 for 500€, about 5 years ago). But I feel it’s a bit rolling the dice. But yes, if I wanted to buy something second hand, I would 101% pick a ThinkPad over a Macbook.
The hardware market seems to be broken in general with zero margins everywhere except when pushing stuff onto gamers which is one of the few significant demographics that spends money on this stuff for more intrinsic reasons.
Like a normal mouse is 10EUR but for a gamer mouse you can ask over 100EUR.
A normal mouse is 10, a gamer mouse is 100… but the mouse that lasts and fits is usually about 30-40.
(I’m weird and I know it: I really like Elecoms.)
i normally avoid any computer part with rgb LEDs
except the mouse. presumably the HSV rainbow is critical to its function, because every mouse without it feels bad
surface pro machines with snapdragon / hexagon processors are very nice too…
i would love to see a thinkpad X series with this combo… the last x13s was a pretty big let-down, had a lot of high hopes for it
How is their Linux support? Can you already just install Fedora Kinoite to it and it will just work? I’m definitely interested.
Not “just install” yet, it is a bit more involved depending on the distro and the machine:
Ubuntu 25.04 on the best-supported laptops (T14s, XPS 13 9345, Yoga Slim 7x…) is currently the most OOTB, “just install”, normal-user-accessible way to run Linux on Snapdragon laptops… unfortunately for those of us who dislike Ubuntu :D
So pretty much unusable for people who just want a machine which works without too much fiddling. Got it
Linux user since 1995. Shaved yaks with MacBooks a few years in the early 2000’s, but went back to Linux around 20 years ago. To be honest, I want to stay here the rest of my life, and I’m not going to take the job offer of you force me to use Mac.
We are different, you know. Different yaks to shave.
You really have to go looking for yaks to shave. Kudos on that.
You get it that we have different yaks, mine are all from Apple being a commercial entity and kind of against everything I value with computers and requiring me of going out of my way of getting an enjoyable experience of their products. And I also get it why you would prefer that.
You could argue it is different, but I feel like I can even make windows (up to 10) behave more like I want it, not as Apple wants.
Depends on what you’re doing, I’m very happy with my framework laptop. I’ve also been using Linux since 2005, and have yet to shave a yak.
I’ve also been using Linux since 2005, and have yet to shave a yak.
I envy you. I’ve been using Linux since 1995, and I’ve lost count of the number of yaks I’ve shaved.
Some of the more memorable yaks:
fetchmail (IIRC)[ skipping a decade of similar anecodes]
I’m leaving a lot out, but I’m envious if you have yet to go on this kind of mission. Even after all of them, I quite like Linux, but I’d be lying if I said it was always a productive choice for me, even if I think it’s often better on balance.
I mean, in the year 2025 if you use fairly common hardware with good support, install a user friendly distro that isn’t Slackware with a shipped desktop environment as good as KDE, and aren’t trying to interoperate with vendor-specific proprietary applications, I’ve found yak shaving is generally something that people seek out (and isn’t unique to Linux). My Fedora KDE system has been shaving free for a few years, all from purposely trying to keep things simple
To be clear… I’m not disputing whether you can have a shaving free setup. In 2002, I got asked to move to a new city with the person I’d just married. She was (and isn’t) technical at all. I installed Red Hat Linux (not enterprise!!) 8 on a laptop for her, and she was able to use it to keep in touch with her family, listen to music, browse the news, buy airline tickets, update her resume and find a job without shaving any yaks at all. I may have shaved 3 or 4 to keep her in that state…
I am saying that to get the things I’ve needed to done, there have been a fair few yaks I’ve needed to shave, and I’ll also admit that there have been times I’ve seen a colleague about to shave a yak where I’ve said “I can shave that better than you, and you can do this thing better than me, so let’s engage in some mutual aid.”
I am a little astonished that the person I was replying to managed to completely avoid it since 2005/
Yeah I am also surprised, but my personal experience is more like: 2h of linux yak shaving brings me 2 months of peace, whereas Windows is just a trash fire (that still works best for some things) and on the mac everything is kinda ok but not great. So saving those 2h brings me 2 months of “oh well it sort of works” just that I had to spend another 2h of research to find I can’t fix it.
AMD is allegedly “fairly common hardware with good support”, yet if you install a “user friendly distro” and have recent (i.e released within the past ~year) AMD graphics hardware you’re gonna have to make your own linux-firmware packages and mesa packages etc. Maybe you’ll have to compile your own kernel as well. At least that was my experience using the latest (at the time) Ubuntu version and buying an AMD gpu half a year after release.
Hardware support just doesn’t make its way into mainstream distros in a timely fashion, even when the hardware vendor works closely with upstream to get day 1 support into MESA and Linux. I think I’d have had to return the GPU if I wasn’t literally a professional developer whose main responsibilities include sorting out Linux driver shit on weird hardware.
I’m sure you had to deal with that using Ubuntu but I use AMD and Fedora and this hasn’t been my experience at all. It just worked.
Might be. I switched to Fedora not that long after, not mainly due to my AMD GPU experience but because I’ve just had the feeling that Canonical doesn’t care as much about the desktop anymore, and they just let pretty bad bugs stay for way longer than I’m comfortable with. And while I don’t hate snaps in principle, its integration with GNOME Software was a buggy mess for waaaay too long, and to my knowledge it still is. And I’m not a fan of them taking away my ability to control software updates on my own system.
So we’ll see if the driver/firmware situation is better on Fedora, the next time I get some piece of AMD hardware shortly after release.
But I don’t really understand how it would be different. Doesn’t AMD begin upstreaming drivers for new products when they get launched? Won’t there still be a few months from launch until the drivers have made their way into proper kernel releases and then into Fedora?
All major vendors (on desktop/server, embedded/mobile is a different world) submit drivers and related work before launches, and if there actually is some last minute patchset needed, pulling that in is part of the “service” distros can provide. So if you buy stuff at launch you 100% need a distro that is keeping up and not one that keeps you on older versions, but then it’s not a big problem, or at most weeks, not months.
E.g. this year I ordered an AMD GPU on launch day of the RDNA4 models, and 2 weeks or so later (when I got around to completing the PC) it just worked. The kernel and mesa versions needed had all been released before launch. But that was on Bazzite (a Fedora Silverblue spin optimized for gaming), its entirely possible Ubuntu or another Debian based distro wouldn’t have had everything in place yet, because supporting the cutting edge is not prioritized.
most of my (non server) linux experience is installing it with a live USB and having no network drivers or some other critical thing. on my old thinkpad, there were no properly functioning fan drivers for my model, so it sounded like a drone trying to take off
i’m also very happy with my framework. but i got bit by the gen1 bios battery issue. to be expected with a gen1 product, and i’ve had no issues since
And the non-Mac notebooks were even worse before Macs took off. I remember batteries lasting less than 2 minutes (no joke, like failing to fully boot into Windows at a TSA checkpoint when they asked me to power it up) and crappy plastic shells. Now, you find decent aluminum bodies and decent battery life, despite still coming with Windows installed.
For me, I don’t think I’ll ever go back from going fanless. My M2 MBA is always quiet, passive cooling is good enough for my use cases, and fewer moving parts is a peace of mind. I also don’t sacrifice performance, it’s snappy and never feels sluggish. And there are no other brands making fanless laptops. That’s why I don’t see a realistic path forward away from Apple, not anytime soon.
OTOH i use my Debian system when I want something that just works and I use my Mac because sometimes I must and it always involves lots of shaving.
There’s no one true answer. The world is too complex for that
a macbook is a safe default in ${CURRENT_YEAR}. and the hardware is obviously better, with the newer ones
i’m finding the framework is low bs, now that they’re past gen1 growing pains, but windows is getting worse at an alarming rate. might put steamOS on it soon so that i have a different kind of yak to shave
i think the only year in recent memory that the macbook was bad was the ~2019 one with the awful keyboard
I didn’t “shop” for a laptop…. I just set a budget ($400) and kept my eyes open for one that felt ok. Of course, I’d reject bad things, but if it was good enough, I’d do it. A local doctor’s office was closing and selling everything. Among the things for sale was a cute 13” HP Probook. The keyboard wasn’t horrible (though a key did break after just two years, I was able to replace it), the size and weight were fine for carrying, they accepted my $400 for it. I’m pretty happy with it.
Of course, I do most my work on my desktop computer (which I bought over ten years ago and it still works as well now as it did then), so the laptop doesn’t have to do it all… but that helps simplify things too.
Sometimes, if you’re worried about too much choice, the best thing to do is to just stop worrying about it and take what comes your way.
almost every computer is a miracle compared to the ones I was using thirty years ago. With regards to laptops, the main thing I’d wish for is a model that works without batteries to avoid wearing them out unnecessarily. Or perhaps a model that uses commodity cells. The MNT Reform (Next) is a step in the right direction.
This is similar to my approach. I’ve been using used/refurbished HP EliteBooks for several years now. They’re solid and worlds better than my first laptop from 20 years ago, and it’s amazing the specs you can get for under $300 on eBay or ShopGoodwill.
There are lots of things I don’t like about HP EliteBooks, but in the used market, if you specifically don’t want a ThinkPad, they are value for money. I have recommended them to people.
I’m one of those Mac fans :p.
I’ve always been a Mac guy, right from the 128k but especially the Mac II and the Quadra 700 and PowerBook 100 whenever it makes the slightest bit of sense – except that Apple has largely abandoned me with its more powerful models, which are aimed at video editors and the like. For a simple programming like me the choice in desktop machines is either the Mac Mini, which has often lagged behind in power and number of cores (though the new M4 Minis look great, and I’m typing this on a 2020 M1 Mac Mini which I feel no need to replace) or the iMac which I don’t like because you’re forced to buy a new very expensive screen every time you upgrade anything.
From 2009 until 2016 I actually built a series of Hackintoshes, with the CPU that I wanted, which by some cosmic coincidence Apple always put into an iMac (costing two or three times as much) 6 or 9 months after I built my Hackintosh. That happened to me with i7-860, i7-4790K, i7-6700K. Then my next machine was a Threadripper 2990wx which I just left with Linux. (I’ve always had some kind of Linux machine at the same time).
Getting back to laptops, I used a “Late 2011” i7 17” MacBook Pro for many years. I really didn’t like any of the replacements. I didn’t like the touchbar machines. They stopped making 17”. They finally came back to 16” but they are sooo expensive.
I finally decided I needed a new machine and settled on a 2023 Lenovo Legion Pro 5i with i9-13900HX CPU, 16” 2560x1600 screen, and the lowest end 4060 CPU.
I’m very happy with it.
It’s stupid fast, with 24 cores and 32 threads it beats the 2019 20 kg 32 core 64 thread Threadripper on absolutely everything. Its heavy, but at 2.5kg its 0.5kg lighter than the MacBook Pro was.
It doesn’t get the 8 hours battery life the blog poster is looking for, but with Windows 11 it was getting 6 hours with light editing/browsing use and with Ubuntu it’s 5 hours which is plenty. Nowhere near the battery life of a Mac, of course, but it cost me $1500 and the closest comparable M4 16” Mac with 16 cores and similar RAM and disk is $3999. I guess at the time I got it the Apple was M2 (which is definitely slower) but the price would not have been lower.
I’ve used that Lenovo as an actual laptop for up to two months at a time while travelling, but when I’m at home (like now) it sits with the lid closed and I ssh (mostly) or nomachine in from the M1 Mini with a nice (non Apple) 32” 4k screen and Microsoft wireless keyboard & mouse set.
My next laptop will probably be RISC-V running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, once performance catches up to the 2020s, which could well be sometime next year with the Tenstorrent Ascalon CPU (Jim Keller and other ex-Apple CPU designers). There are several other possibilities that may or may not pan out – TT seems like the most certain early bet.
I stopped looking for perfect, there is always another thing one can want. Framework is close enough, had an intel one but honestly intel suspend on Linux is a pain, since I switched to AMD I’ve had nothing but smooth sailing. It can probably run some games but having something portable and have GPU performance is not really requirements that mix for me.
I’ve had several nvidia optimus laptops and I’ve replaced that with moonshine/sunlight to VM.
Framework 13 is close enough to perfect for me. Perfection is for desktops, where you have space to actually mix-and-match pieces to suit your body and workflow.
I’ve got one and it’s great, particularly the screen (love the aspect ratio), but sometimes I look at the 4 modules and think, you could have also put in a fixed USB-C for charging and maybe an SD card reader and still had room for 4 modular bays.
sometimes I look at the 4 modules and think, you could have also put in a fixed USB-C for charging.
Broken USB-C ports used for charging are one of the most common reasons for laptop repairs. Moving that well-known failure point to a module that can be replaced was a good idea.
In my case, sometimes I look at the 4 modules and think, you could have made the modules a few millimeters wider so that they would fit two USB-C/USB-A receptacles and still had room for 4 modular bays.
I hadn’t thought about that before, but you’re right, it feels kinda silly to have your USB-C charging port be an optional component. There’s not that much empty space available in the thing, but I wonder if they ran out of USB port buses on their mobo chipset before they ran out of free space?
Ironically the aspect ratio is one thing I don’t love. I thought I would, but whatever personal convenience is provided by a slightly taller screen is spoiled by just not having every screen in my life have the same aspect ratio.
I was thinking about a Framework when I was shopping for a laptop earlier this year.
I ended up going with an HP business laptop that Microcenter had for about $300 (refurbished). The battery isn’t that great, but is still functional. I’m glad to have three type-A USB ports, and built-in Ethernet.
I don’t have much expectations with gaming (it has an Intel integrated GPU), but I tend to use Steam Remote Play these days, which saves on power draw vs. running a game locally.
The most notable is Apple, which offers two product lines and five total models. The differences between them are 100% comprehensible. No matter what Apple laptop you choose, it has a world-class touchpad, great speakers, an at least good keyboard with a sensible layout, a nice high DPI screen, great performance, and mind-blowing battery life. There are no bad models (if you’re a Mac fan, of course).
It’s worth noting that even this fails the author’s final criterion:
Replaceable disk
That’s the thing I like least about them, too. I’ve made peace with fixed RAM, because I see some benefit from having it on the package. But I’d happily take a mm or two of extra thickness to have a socketed disk in my M1 MBP about now, or a spare socket to add some extra space; The frequency with which I need to clean it up to recover disk space is aggravating. I’ve added a low profile SD card to it, to offload some of the things that take up a lot of space but don’t need high speed access (photos, music, downloads) but just having the internal space would be nicer.
My perfect computer is pretty much desktop PC. I have laptop for those rare cases where I travel, and it doesn’t need to be that good. As long as it compiles KDE stuff in speedy enough manner and doesn’t weigh like a truck, I’m happy.
Desktop PC is nicer experience otherwise, due to their modularity. My ship of Theseus of a PC has been around about 8 years now.
I used to be stingy with laptops and as a result each of them had some little annoying flaw. Then I splurged on Dell XPS 13 and have been a happy user for a decade now. I began to lack some computational power, so recently I had a look into new XPS models. The Dell web shop is terrible and I can feel for the article’s author.
Good news. It turns out that Dell is in the process of revamping their entire product line-up. There will be no more confusing and overlapping brands like XPS, Vostro, Inspiron, Latitude. Instead, just three core brands (base, pro, pro max) each coming in three tiers (base, plus, premium), plus Alienware for gamers. XPS didn’t make it to the new line-up yet.
Don’t sell any bad models that have crappy screens
Thing is, I’m willing to bet most of their revenue comes from selling these cheap models. It might only be a thing in my country but most people I know, even slightly tech-savvy people fall for buying these laptops with 720p screens, they don’t even notice/care that the resolution has such poor quality. They just see that there’s a good deal and don’t pay any attention to the screen specs only RAM and CPU.
Having a crappy screen was so normal for me most of my life. When I used my first Full HD screen, my first impression was “Why is everything so small?”.
The classical laptop brands are like … other kinds of legacy companies.
You’re missing out by not looking at Huawei, Honor and so on.
I’ll just wait till Apple designates M1 laptops as “obsolete” in a few years, and pick one up for cheap(er) and put Linux on it.
Razer is up there too, with one product line and three models, and all of them mostly get the basics right.
Razer has terrible customer support. I bought their most expensive mouse and the dongle died in less than a year. There’s nowhere you can find or buy a replacement. I was even in Singapore for a work trip (where Razer is based) and their flagship store didn’t have a dongle for their own flagship model. Since it had been over a year, customer support’s suggestion was just to buy a new mouse.
If it helps anyone in their laptop search, the market for 14 inch gaming laptops has gotten more competitive in recent years. Companies seem more inclined these days to round out the whole experience for casual use and have moved away from purely gamer-y use cases. A lot of them are in the conversation for best premium windows laptops.
I had good luck with the original Samsung Galaxy Book Pro (not 360) a few years ago. Samsung’s laptop lineup is a bit slept on imo, although I’m likely to upgrade to a framework next regardless.
Given that the article is primarily focused on the shopping experience, I’m surprised it didn’t touch on the Microsoft Surface line. From that point of view, it’s pretty much the Apple equivalent in the PC world.
And the Surface Laptops are pretty nice. I used to have the 3 for work and ended up loving the 4:3 display form factor, and overall the laptop felt well-made. Then I bought a Go 2 and ran Linux on it for a while, which worked quite well too (although that one was massively underpowered).
My recent purchase, a EUROCOM Blitz Ultra 2 laptop, is giving me trouble with its Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200 card on Arch Linux. The iwlwifi driver might be the culprit, causing issues on both kernel 6.12.37-1 and 6.15.6.arch1-1. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=306935 I haven’t experienced any such freezes when running Ubuntu 24.04 with kernel 6.11.0-29-generic.
This has brought back bad memories of a Broadcom Wi-Fi issue I had when I installed Linux on my first laptop back in 2008. It’s a bit disappointing to be dealing with system freeze (rather than just an unusable card) in 2025.
The keyboard LED was constantly on, which I resolved by installing Tuxedo drivers.
I primarily use my laptop with an external monitor and keyboard, so the built-in display and touchpad aren’t a concern for me. In addition, I don’t know enough about electronics to say.