I'm looking for a good dev laptop now and looks like some kind of Dell XPS is the best choice. My requirements are basically powerful hardware, a real GPU with nvidia strongly preferred, and good Linux support. That list alone seems to mostly narrow it down to Dell or Lenovo, and between those two it's not difficult to choose Dell.
Unless the NVIDIA GPU is for Windows usage or CUDA, I would strongly recommend a AMD GPU instead. My last laptop had a NVIDIA GPU and it was a hell of issues inside Linux, that was amplified for the fact that I needed to use the NVIDIA GPU or I would get no output in its HDMI port. For sure, this was a gaming laptop and I expect a Dell XPS or Precision to use the sanest choice (connect all outputs to the iGPU instead). My Thinkpad P14s Gen 1 (new old stock) with AMD Ryzen 4750U and a Vega 7 iGPU is much better, no issues at all.
I had a Dell Precision 5530 from my previous workplace with a NVIDIA GPU (don't remember what) that was much better behaved in Linux, but in this case I just disabled the NVIDIA GPU and used the integrated Intel graphics (that really sucked). So if you are not interested to using NVIDIA GPU at all in Linux I would recommend this one, but to use it day-to-day in Linux desktop I would avoid NVIDIA GPUs.
Nvidia on Linux has its annoyances but I consider the issue overblown. On desktop, it's annoying that Nvidia drivers have a separate installation workflow and require you to regenerate the kernel module after every kernel version change, but it's far from the worst Linux issue I've dealt with. On laptops, yes, Optimus is one of the most annoying technologies I've encountered but in the past, I've been able to circumvent it by disabling the iGPU (not a good choice if you need longer battery times though) and on the latest Debian, GPU switching actually works transparently.
This year it was heating up, making noise, and battery life was crap. I though I was going to hand it down to someone who needs it more, and replaced the battery - and the issue was gone!
To this day, its quet (outside of gaming) and works well. Was there a short in the battery generating heat? who knows.
A proper implementation of S0ix requires the OS to do a lot more power management work though, so that's a whole lot for Linux to get right on various hardware configurations.
I just cringe at the thought.
there's no real difference between running debian and running kali linux.
I have Windows and Mac for work. I have another Linux notebook running Debian.
But the most confusing thing to me is that I also found Precision 3480, which looks exactly same as that Latitude 5440, is available in similar configurations and even costs roughly the same. I struggle to understand what is going on here, why is the seemingly same thing sold under two different models?
Did not notice that, the trackpoint is my number 1 requirement for a laptop. The other is the ability to completely disable the track pad via BIOS. Many do not allow that anymore, but I usually can disable it using xinput.
And of course the # 2 requirement is no Nvidia anything :) If it has both Nvidia and Intel graphics, Nvidia must be able to be disabled using BIOS.
Interesting how the two main competitors for enterprise laptop fleets made the same downgrade at the same time... At least Lenovo still provides the Trackpoint on multiple Thinkpad models.
I got a new XPS13 for work with Ubuntu pre-installed about 4 years ago and it was far from the "sweet spot".
Hibernate/sleep didn't work out of the box (although the fix was relatively straightforward), wifi was flakey (I switched to wired) on the office network but most annoying of all, I could never get a satisfactory second monitor to work without scaling issues and I tried every permutation of suggested fixes known to google.
As a macbook owner (for non-professional/non-dev stuff), I didn't appreciate the chore of having to semi-actively manage the system to preserve battery. The burden wasn't huge but it was irritating having to regularly close browsers and the like as most of the applications were clearly designed for a desktop environment.
In the end, the compromises were too much for me even as a long-time user of Linux on the desktop.
Power management at first wasn't great, but simply installing Intel PowerTOP and having it apply all its suggestions on each boot made it easily the most power-conservative laptop I've ever owned. (The OLED screen I think helps with that.)
Whereas my work MacBook Pro (2021 model maybe?) had decent power management up until macOS 12 junked up GPU switching, making typing horribly laggy unless I disabled GPU switching entirely -- but since that forced the external GPU, battery life took a nosedive.
I think the difference is that, like Apple, System76's existence depends on Linux (for Apple, OSX). In contrast, Dell is basically a Windows laptop vendor with a small Linux side business.
That holds true for all my devices. And I noticed that performance for ~90% of applications doesn't really suffer. I only run computationally intensive stuff every other day or so, and when I do I turn the setting back to "performance" (if I remember). The only exception is for some reason... Gmail. just doubles or triples the already slow time of opening the site. Which is not a dealbreaker for linux laptops. It's a dealbreaker form gmail frankly.
My last two personal laptops came with Ubuntu pre-installed - the first a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition and more recently a Ryzen-based Lenovo ThinkPad X13. I've been extremely happy with both.
It seems strange to me that, over the last 15 years, hardware makers and sellers haven't tried harder to commoditize their complements and ensure that every computer they sell is at least Linux capable and ready to go.
Time to sound like an Apple fanboi.
No. 1000 times no. Do not accept hardware like this. For your own health.
But the noise. Nope to that.
A) use the latest hardware
B) spec it down to the kernel boot parameters
C) enjoy great support
I can cheerfully recommend http://emperorlinux.com/ which has been a vendor of the finest nerd gear for a very long time. I've owned two.
Are you sure you've bought from them recently?
Try hard-resetting the dock. (Just yank the power and put it back in.)
I gave that a try as well, but in my experience it didn't improve the situation much.
After giving it some thought I suspect that it may or may not be related to Thunderbolt settings in UEFI that refer to enabling Thunderbolt support in the pre-boot environment. I'll make sure to update the post if I discover anything new regarding this.
I readily selected a ThinkPad T580. Lenovo has/had a whole line of ThinkPads which are certified for Linux, about half and half Red Hat and Ubuntu. Curiously, many of these certified machines shipped with Windows 10. I ordered from the manufacturer's website, and the really cool part was the versatile configurator which let me LEGO-together a machine exactly of my choosing, from many disparate but compatible options. It was assembled and shipped direct to me from China.
So I received my Red Hat-certified notebook, immediately deleted Windows 10 without activating it, and installed CentOS, which was crashy and buggy. I decided that a more cutting-edge approach might help, so installed Fedora, and it worked a treat! I ran Fedora until Christmas 2021, when I basically renounced Linux, since I had no more personal or professional need to run it on bare metal, and installed the OEM Windows 10.
But that T580 under Fedora was always rock-solid. All hardware fully supported, no ifs, ands or buts. No crashes or bugs or problems that would send me to Support. (One time I got ketchup in the spacebar, though.)
I don't doubt that the certified Ubuntu experience would be just as smooth, and so I have no hesitation recommending certified ThinkPads to Linux enthusiasts.
The solution is to purchase nothing but Thunderbolt cables, which are universal inasmuch as they support every subset of options. (Obviously this is not the cheapest approach, but NASA said it best: "Faster, better, cheaper — pick any two").
(My wife is an ordinary user : she expects to put the computer in and out of sleep 54 times a day and reboots once every 3 months or less if I don't check myself for kernel upgrades).
There are descriptions on the interwebs how to solder a wire to better ground the touchpad so I did that. It improved it but it still goes bad once in a while.
Apart from that, I like it.
Which dovetails into my curiousity of Linux computer makers selling hardware well matched to Linux and make sure Linux works out of the box vs using a new Windows PC. I wondered why it would make a difference and this also explains that.
Thanks for the explanation.
If anyone looks for Linux laptop, my recommendation would be Dell Latitude or Precision laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled with Intel GPU.
Not to sound like a contrarian, but how can it be a sweet spot if you write an article on making it better and doesn't even want to use the laptop?
The missing fingerprint reader is no big deal for me since I didn't plan on using that anyway.
tl;dr: I can vouch for (at least these) older Latitude models being very fun to use with Linux. I'm using Manjaro exclusively though, other Linux (or BSD) variants may or may not work as well....
