Looking for laptop recommendations
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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.
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I fifth it. I want a framework.
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I thirden this
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I agree, however if the price is making your nervous try a Factory Seconds Framework. We noticed no issues with on our end and it’s cheaper.
Sure you get a 11th gen Intel, but the performance is still good enough for indi games and more than enough for surfing the web
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And since it's modular you can always upgrade!
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I am looking into the slimbook creative one. Maybe those guys have a laptop that suits you
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I just got a new MacBook pro. I last bought a laptop at the beginning of 2017, a MacBook pro then too. 8 years per lap top.
