Looking for laptop recommendations
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I third this vote. Owner of a Framework 16. Amazing machines.
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I'd suggest you go with companies that offer Linux laptops, e.g. System76, Tuxedo, Framework, and a couple more. Failing that, get a Thinkpad of 1-2 years ago. Failing that, get a DELL from 5 years ago (before the new intel webcams). Just make sure the screen has enough resolution, and you get 16 GB of RAM. Anything else (e.g. cpu, gpu) is enough for Linux to work adequately. Just give it RAM.
I wouldn't suggest you buy a random new laptop, because even if they might "mostly" work, there will be parts that probably don't, e.g. the fan controls, the webcams etc. Linux can't support the latest and greatest, unless the manufacturer made sure of it.
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What about a lenovo yoga? Reportly good with linux.
I just got a T480 thinkpad from craigslist for 120$. Frickin stellar machine for the money. Its not the fastest, but fine for light dev. Or will be once I put 32G of ram in it. With 16 I sometimes experience slowdowns due to swap. Luckily memory isn't soldered in on this model.
No touchscreen though, and I wouldn't get one even if it was available. Paid extra for that in my old precision 5520, and almost never used it. If it doesn't fold completely then its not useful IMO.
Speaking of which, my dell precision 5520 was a good machine, but had chassis problems. Hinge fell apart after screws fell out, and as a result the power connector broke, as did a replacement power connector. Dell battery swelled up making the touchpad unusable, so did a replacement dell battery. No-name lower capacity battery ok. Keyboard wore out and keys cracked, replaced but now becoming unreliable again. Screen and motherboard are still good, but unfortunately its become unusable. Some of these problems are to be expected in a 7 year old heavily used laptop, but I haven't seen this same degree of decay in thinkpads.
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You should be in a good place with a laptop with integrated intel/amd graphics, and an Intel wifi card. Graphics and wifi are the most common pain points when it comes to linux so you can narrow down and research from there. I've had good luck with Dell and Lenovo.
There are some linux friendly OEMs too like framework, tuxedo, and ststem76 that are worth taking a look.
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Framework for sure. Built for Linux and upgradeable.
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Fourth it. Got a framework 13 running fedora and its great.
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Framework was too expensive for me so I went with Minisforum V3
It's a nice bang for the buck and most of the stuff works for me on arch.
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Though if you're good with using Ubuntu then new ThinkPads and Dells and some others generally work well as you get the enablement patches before they've rippled through to the mainline kennel. However you still often have a happier time waiting for others to iron out the kinks, not to mention better hardware prices by getting clear out deals for outgoing generations.
After years of ThinkPads I joined a company that gave me a Dell Inspiron and I am unimpressed in various minor ways. Crap keyboard is the big one.
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I just got a Thinkpad P14s Gen 5 with ryzen 7 8840HS/Radeon 780M, 32GB of ram and 1TB nvme ssd. I haven't even installed the os yet(tried live boot Mint, but I'm going with custom Arch Hyprland setup). I choose it for linux use, because all (enterprise?) Lenovo laptops have linux support, afaik. I was close to going with framework but it's a bit pricy for me personally.
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I got an ASUS Zenbook about a year ago for about $1,500: model UX3404VC-BB99T. But it looks like it's no longer available:
It has pretty decent specs. Intel gen 13 Core i9, nice looking touchscreen, 32GB of RAM, etc., and it all works out of the box with Ubuntu and now Fedora. It did have some issues with plain Debian, but that's fairly common with Debian and newer hardware.
Although that particular laptop is not around anymore, there might be some other Zenbooks as I have found they tend to be Linux-friendly in general. And ASUS gets a lot of hate for whatever reason, but I've always found them to be good for the price.
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Seconding this, build quality is meh but my experience with Inspirons is that they’re pretty repairable and work very well out of the box with touchscreens, fingerprint sensors, and accelerometers.
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Wow. Just looked it up.. What an nice machine!
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As much as I hate 'the other site', I recommend checking out /r/laptopdeals daily until you see something that fits your needs and budget.
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I second this.
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Minisforum V3
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Beside fingerprint not working, you can't go wrong with any simi-old and modern Lenovo laptops
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I am surprised that Thinkpad isn't the top recommendation. It is pricey, but built to last even after multiple hardware upgradations.
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I've had a good time with my Thinkpad E16 Gen 1 over the past few months (definitely lower spec than your machine - pretty much all of them have only an iGPU). A lot of them are still upgradable - I upgraded mine from 8GB of RAM to 24GB, and the thing had dual drive bays, so I just left the stock 256GB Windows drive and put in a 2TB alongside it for Linux stuff.
As long as you have a recent kernel, hardware support is decent, so long as you avoid the models with Realtek (my E16 does have Realtek, but I managed to smooth out issues).
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Another vote for Framework from me. I was one of the early pre-orders of the 16 with the eGPU and, while it took a couple cycles to iron out early adopter issues in the first few months, everything has since been solid. I started out with Ubuntu 22.04, then 24.04 and now Fedora 41 and am happy with my purchase and looking forward to an upgradable future.
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Don't sleep on switching to nvme.
