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?
Get a second hand business laptop (dell latitude, lenovo thinkpad, hp elitebook), replace battery where needed, install linux yourself.
If needed you can pop by the seller with a USB drive with Ubuntu or suchlike to quickly test compatibility.
Business laptop because of decent parts and guaranteed to be self serviceable.
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.
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Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
Get a second hand business laptop (dell latitude, lenovo thinkpad, hp elitebook), replace battery where needed, install linux yourself. If needed you can pop by the seller with a USB drive with Ubuntu or suchlike to quickly test compatibility. Business laptop because of decent parts and guaranteed to be self serviceable.
As for power saving, I saw this pop by a while ago: https://medium.com/@amanusk/an-extensive-guide-to-optimizing-a-linux-laptop-for-battery-life-and-performance-27a7d853856c