Let's talk about hardware

Bluefin
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My Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro14 Gen6 is on its way out, with both of the USB C ports now only working intermittently. This after a shamefully pathetic lifespan of around two and a half years; I got it in October of 2022.

I’m honestly really disappointed by this machine; it was expensive and the quality leaves much to be desired. Some problems I experienced, roughly in the order of their occurrence:

  1. The chassis feels very flimsy and just generally kind of shoddy; there’s lots of deck flex accompanied by some squeaking around the joints when you pick the machine up by one corner. The squeaking was subtly irritating, and I eventually smeared a tiny bit of wd-40 into the crack in the squeaky area with a needle, which stopped the squeaking.
  2. The magnets that keep the machine closed weren’t quite glued in, or the display bezel is just that flimsy: not long after getting it, the display bezel started to peel away every time you opened the laptop because the magnet on the left side wasn’t glued in. I had to superglue the magnet back into place.
  3. The battery died almost exactly a year after I got the machine, right after the warranty expired (11 days after it expired). I ordered a replacement for something like 75 euros and installed it myself.
  4. Now, for the past three or four months, the USB C ports have been slowly but steadily giving up the ghost. This machine also has a barrel charger, but I prefer not needing to carry that thing around with me because the USB C charger is so much more compact and convenient.

Now for the things I like about this machine:

  1. You can have them engrave the keyboard any way you like; I chose to replace their ultra-dorky Tux the Penguin super key logo with just the word “SUPER”
  2. You can get it without any logo on the lid
  3. The screen bezel also doesn’t have any logo
  4. It’s very lightweight
  5. The machine itself performs well, especially when plugged in with the barrel charger
  6. The display is very sharp and bright

Despite these pros, the disappointing chassis / quality control has crossed this company off of my list of options for the future. The price was WAY too high for what you’re really getting here. If possible, I intend to extend the life of this machine one more time by replacing the modular USB controller on one side, but this machine is still unfortunately already on its last legs.

I have an M3 Macbook Pro 14" that I never use because of how inexplicably and intentionally crippled MacOS feels compared to Linux, but I occasionally take it out and marvel at how pretty and sleek and quiet it is. I realize that it’s basically a pipe dream to think that I will ever have a machine this nice capable of running Linux without a long list of caveats and gotchas, but now that I’ve seen how nice I could have it, it’s very difficult not to be envious.

I’m not in any rush to get a new machine, and my timeline is anywhere from this fall to sometime next spring, but I still look around occasionally, which leads me to this post which is just a long-winded fishing expedition.

I can hear you all already firing up your “Just get a Framework” response; it’s probably the best and most future-proof.

However, if there were other options, what would they be (14" ultrabook style, no dedicated GPU)?

Thinkpad T14?
Starbook Mk VII?
Dell Pro 14 or Latitude 3450? (They don’t seem to let you deselect the windows license on the Pro 14)
HP Dev One? (used, from ebay I guess)

What machine are you using? How do you like it? Would you buy it again?

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Framework 13 is my current daily driver. Has been relly fantastic linux machine.

Previously have had few thinkpads which are also great and the biggest mistake asus rog zephyrus 14. Few macboooks with Apple Silicon

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Have you tried Asahi Linux on your MBP?

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I haven’t tried it yet; I haven’t really put any effort into learning about it, beyond googling about the state of M3 support every couple of months. It seems that M3 support is a long way off, since the status hasn’t moved past “it’s coming” in the around 9 months that I’ve had the macbook.

On top of this, I’m not really interested in putting Linux on it, if I’m trading off “mostly broken software” on MacOS for “mostly broken hardware” on Asahi. :confused:

I’m kind of torn between trying to sell the MBP or waiting around for M3 Asahi… :person_shrugging:

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Yeah, just did some research and came back to post that M3+ isn’t supported.

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I run that on my M2 Pro macbook. But its still missing crucial stuff that i need like usb4/DP alt mode etc so it wasnt that usefull. Although things did run pretty smooth with it but it also was missing sleep support etc so battery life wtc was kind of bad.

Decided to sell it in the end and at the same time framewoek became available to order in my country so bought that

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If I were buying a laptop, System76 would be at the top of my list. Plus, they have a 30 day return period if things don’t work out.
Edit: scratch that, but still had a good experience with the t-shirt. I suppose they gave up on their Virgo in-house laptop.
—-

The only experience I’ve had with them was buying a t-shirt, and their customer support for quite good.

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Yeah, I read about the founder’s resignation and now have reservations about recommending it. It seems to be a Sisyphean task, at best, and in every dimension.

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I’ve had a work Thinkpad P14s that I loved.

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Dont want to take anything from marcan or his contributions but they do have a great team still and have made lot of progress in the last few months.

Its just so much work as they have to pretty much reverse engineer eevrything so it wilkl take lot of years to get it to “fully” functional state.

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I’m wary of getting another one of these rebranded clevo machines… This one for instance is almost exactly the same chassis as my Tuxedo. I’d be worried that I would run into similar issues and at the price point System76 machines start at, I’m not too tempted to bite.

This is one of the main reasons why I mentioned the Starbook; these aren’t rebranded clevos, but I’ve seen mixed reviews about their quality control and customer support.

That said, the latest option with the intel n200 is very intriguing to me: the low-power processor seems to promise better battery life, while the high-res panel would even be an upgrade to the one in my Tuxedo. I think I remember seeing something about this processor only supporting single-channel RAM though, meaning that I would probably want to get the 32GB version right off the bat. So many choices…

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I use a maxed-out T14 Gen 5 at work, and it’s quite fast. Great build quality too. One papercut is the depth of the display bezel though; it collects lint and dust, and I’ve yet to find a good way of cleaning the screen that doesn’t just make that worse.

I’ll take a look at the P14s; maybe I can find one in a store somewhere that I can actually touch to help decide.

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I’ve always had similar thoughts with the original poster. Used Linux for years on different PC’s, then started working with Mac’s. Literally every company that I work for gives a brand new Mac nowadays and I hate using them. So I bought a System76 Lemur Pro (lemp10) in 2021. I live in Turkey and it was really a hassle to bring that machine to Turkey. (did with freight forwarding) Right around a year after, the battery expanded and weared out. Things were easier back then; I ordered a replacement battery from Germany and the laptop still has that battery. I think the battery is flawed though. It drains literally in 10 minutes after 60%. Now it’s impossible to order a replacement battery into Turkey due to various reasons.

So I decided to buy my first thinkpad: X1 Carbon Gen 12. Lenovo has good support in Turkey. It’s easier to find replacement batteries etc. It’s a really portable, lightweight and quite machine. Compared to Lemur Pro, it’s way better in terms of build quality.

It came with Windows 11, fans were spinning really fast despite I didn’t have a single window open. Installed bluefin, now it’s silent as dead. Almost everything works fine but unfortunetely there are some drawbacks:

  • The camera doesn’t work. Never expected this and it distrupts my daily use a lot. Really hoping for a fix for this one. (this is my biggest issue – I read about this on Arch Wiki but thought that it’d get fixed with a recent Fedora kernel – unfortunetely it’s not the case :pensive_face:)
  • Usually I use a 4k external monitor. The laptop has a 3k screen. So I have to use scaling factor of 125%. The problem is, I have to restart apps like Telegram, Slack and Obsidian because they have window rendering issues when I switch between monitors. Not sure whether this is a wayland issue.

Other than that:

  • Fingerprint sensor works fine, especially useful for things like sudo, 1Password etc.
  • This is my first computer with a touch screen - i sometimes use it and it really works like a tablet (especialy while reading stuff inside the browser)
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Semi related but since we’re talking anyway! We’ve just cleaned up a bunch of tech debt. Now we can finally finish the akmods repo - it’s reorg is almost complete, this let’s us enable more hardware.

System76 akmod is ready just not in the images yet, and tuxedo has a PR from folks which we would add. Was thinking of prioritizing enabling hardware for OEMs that support Linux. Framework is our default “halo” experience since they support us with hardware, but more OEMs never hurts of course!

However we would need some criteria for things. It would need to pass the team’s technical requirements on quality. Probably stuff like at least one person who is maintaining the akmod should have the hardware and a commitment.

Then we’d list those first in places wrt. support expectations. Lenovo we would just link to that Fedora page because they’ve been long established. Any other vendors that use an akmod for enablement? (No promises on any of this, but it would be cool to know anyway) Thoughts?

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Related: Linux VMs on macOS 26. A sort of MSL, Mac subsystem for Linux.

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I’ll list the hardware I use:

  • Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro X (14ARH7) - daily relaxed driver. No complaints whatsoever - signal video calls work great, Google Meet video quality was kinda grey but generally good. It was running Windows where I used WSL a bunch up until I recently replaced it with Aurora. Not great for intensive applications despite the Nvidia GPU.
  • Thinkpad T480 - bit of a junker as it was released 2018 - use to test stuff with, but it can actually do relaxed browsing and it’s what I’m using right now running Universal Blue Aurora. Two batteries - one is hot swappable - so I loaded a bigger one bought on Amazon. Historically touchpad was terrible on Linux so I tended to keep Windows on it unless I was testing a distro. But when I loaded Aurora on it a few weeks back, the touchpad was fine - maybe libinput quirks were figured out, or the kernel is better.
  • Framework Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series) - I was very disappointed with the touchpad experience when I loaded Linux (forgot which distro) on this a while back. It’s currently running Windows and I’m not using it too much, but plan to install Aurora on it soon. Finger crossed the touchpad is good with Aurora.
  • Kubuntu KFocus Ir14 GEN 2 - most recent purchase last month. I see this as my goto for the long-run, especially for intensive programming, as they do actual quality assurance on the hardware + KDE desktop. I haven’t spent a ton of time using it yet. Not sure if I’ll replace the Kubuntu which they test and warrant with Aurora.
  • Dell Latitude 9440 14" - bought it more for a family member to use a “PC” instead of a Macbook - touchpad was unusable on Aurora so I put Windows back on it. One reason I bought it is that I was curious about the feel of Dell’s “haptic” touchpad, but haven’t really been able to understand the difference.

Work is mostly Windows / Mac so it’s handy for me to have hardware running that (the Dell above + an old Macbook Pro) for ease of reference personally.

I like the idea of using old cheap hardware like my Thinkpad T480 for simple downtime tasks and whatnot, but every so often I do notice the lag so may not run it into the ground.

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I’m frugal. For a decade or so I shop for a laptop that is at or slightly above the $700 price point. The last time my laptop died unexpectedly, I ran down to my local Best Buy and found my current laptop on sale (President’s Day sale).

It is an Acer Nitro 5. It was about $750. The last laptop I bought 5 years or so prior was a Lenovo Yoga 920 2-in-1 - about $1250 as I recall. Bottom line I am not really loyal to any brand anymore - just shop price-performance.

Now, keep in mind I do not play games - ever. I am a developer. And a hobbyist mathematician. Those are my preferred forms of entertainment in retirement.

But the machine does what I need it to do.

And it surprises me how much I like this machine. At first, the 2-1/2 hr battery life bothered me a lot. As well as the 230W power brick. But I do enjoy the Nvidia GPU and other features the thing has - like full size arrow and page-up/page-down/home/end keys.

And it is a solid beast. Not great for travelling in a backpack; but I would never fear damaging it if I do.

Would I buy it again? To be honest, probably not. That is not how I shop for new machines. I’ll start the buying decision over again at the time when I need to replace it.

I am intrigued with the Framework line myself. But have been watching closely for others to share their experience over time. To be honest, they just don’t look like they are built to last even though parts (like CPU, motherboard, keyboard) are easily swapped. I do expect them to improve their manufacturing over time, however.

I’ll continue to be watching …

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I’m using a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 14IAU7, I’ve been using it since like early 2022 and it’s been treating me really nice. The battery is still really good after all these years, Bluefin (and secureblue) on it has been smooth. I have the core i3 12th gen model and it came with 8 GB of RAM, I was using 8 GB until 2 months ago when i finally upgraded it to 16 GB.

Honestly, my biggest complaints would be that it’s made entirely out of plastic, it’s strong plastic, but also if you have a 10 years old, you might wanna be careful of them scratching it because the cover is very easy to scratch.

Overall I would buy it again. I did get mine on a double discount, but I would genuinely pay full price for it back then.
(oh and the fingerprint reader doesn’t work under Linux)

Might not fit your needs if you value USB-C charging though it unfortunately doesn’t have that despite the USB-C port supporting things like display output. The laptop display is also 1080p IPS which is fine for me but if you want a higher res sharper display, this might not be it.

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There are good reasons why so many Linux users are ThinkPad fans. One of the biggest, of course, is compatibility, as ThinkPads are famous for everything working out of the box with Linux.[1] Other reasons include reliability, durability, and having the best keyboards on the market. I never really considered myself a ThinkPad “fan”, but I keep buying them and I keep having great experiences with them. I have Linux on four of them right now, because even after upgrading to newer/faster hardware the old ones are still really usable and useful.

I currently have Aurora[2] on three: a ThinkPad P1 gen 6 with an Nvidia 4090, a ThinkPad X1 Extreme gen 2 with an Nvidia 1650, and an X1 Yoga. I have a 12 year old W530 running Linux Mint that I intend to switch over to uCore at some point.

My P1 is still pretty new, and is so beefy that I expect it to last another 5 years minimum, but I know the next one will almost certainly be another ThinkPad. Although I may get a desktop at some point before then.

Sidenote

The X1 Yoga is my wife’s old laptop, which I only replaced because she’s a Windows user and I made the mistake of buying it with only 8GB of RAM (not upgradeable). Over the years, Windows bloat got worse and worse to the point that it was terrible to use because of all the swapping (she’s an academic and always has lots of Word and PowerPoint files open, and of course browser tabs). I made another mistake by replacing it with a Samsung Book3 Pro and the trackpad stopped working almost immediately, and again on the replacement. Anyway, even with a completely un-tuned Aurora, that 8GB X1 Yoga runs great, and is really usable in tablet mode as well.

Edited to add: I really like the idea of Framework, so I’m not ruling out trying one of those at some point.

Also wanted to mention that because so many business users buy ThinkPads, there are always a lot of used ThinkPads for sale with great specs that will last for years, and often cheaper than brand-new consumer-grade laptops that definitely won’t last as long.

  1. The only exception to “everything just works” I’ve seen on the last four ThinkPads I’ve put Linux on is the fingerprint reader on my X1 Yoga, and even that has a third-party project that I used earlier under Linux Mint. ↩︎

  2. A lightly customized Aurora that I setup with Blue Build, which I highly recommend if you want to customize even a little. ↩︎

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Newer thinkpad keyboards are just so much worse than the legendary ones. Like comparing my ex T480 to my X1 Carbon the difference is night and da

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