I’ve had laptops with linux before, but linux was never the original laptop OS and modifying the configuration was always necessary. It used to be fun to hack and modify an OS on an old laptop but I guess if I’m going to spend 600 or 700 bucks (or more!) I’d rather not have to worry about modifications.

One of my worries is that in the past I’ve experienced bad or terrible changes to battery life/performance after installing linux. I’m guessing that that won’t be the case with a linux native laptop? Any experience… (dell, system76,…)? I remember trying to fix this in various ways that the internet had suggested but it never came out as I wanted.

My other worry is the keyboard and shortcuts. I’ve been using a mac at work which in my experience has a fairly different keyboard short cuts, is that still the case? (is this distro dependent?) I remember always having to modify cut and paste for terminals to match the browser’s cut and paste short cuts in ubuntu. This always seemed silly. Again not sure if I want to do this if I’m shelling out a significant amount of money.

Any advice or stories about going from a mac-unix-ish setup to a pure linux setup?

Should I stop trying and stick with macs?

  • @dijit
    5•4 years ago

    All things with a grain of salt; because linux support on laptops is often as good as you make it.

    I can say what has worked for me though.

    I have had thinkpads (t400, x200, x201, x201s) and they all worked flawlessly with linux.

    I currently own a Dell Precision 5520; and it works flawlessly too. But I primarily use the intel graphics chip and force the nvidia one off for better battery life.

    The Dell Latitude series are astonishingly good at supporting linux.

    Obviously anything by System76 is going to work, but build quality is meh.

    I guess we should just talk about devices which might not work so well rather than what does work well because linux really does support /most/ things.

    So, what is Linux bad at:

    1. Proprietary/special touch screens. I have a GPD P2 Max, and I need a special kernel patch for touch screen

    2. Mixing DPI’s. So if you have a 4k laptop screen and a 1080p external monitor it’s going to look weird. (probably)

    3. Nvidia. Yeah, it works, but it’s battery hungry, optimus (dynamically switching from intel/nvidia) is a pain, the driver might break randomly, just avoid it if you can.

    4. “Atheros” wifi- should work, doesn’t work well. So look for Intel wifi where you can.

    5. Prorietary fingerprint readers. You wont know this until you get it probably.

    6. Windows Hello/IR camera.- The camera will work, but it will not support facial recognition as you expect.

    7. Networking over thunderbolt. You probably don’t do this, but I did under macos to link my macbook pro to my mac pro- anyway, doesn’t really work.