I am looking for a new laptop to replace my aging T430, which I feel is too slow and heavy for todays standards.
I’m gonna be using it for tasks such as C/C++ programming (I’m learning graphics programming with Vulkan, but I also play with STM boards, so there is no clear focus), Matlab, reading, web browsing, etc. If I will ever play any game on it, it’s likelly not going to be anything GPU heavy.
What I would like to get into is machine learning which as far as I know requires a powerful system with a powerful GPU. For that purpose, I already have a desktop PC.
Other than the system performance, things such as trackpad, keyboard, and display are very important to me. I don’t want the laptop to be too big and heavy - the preferred screen size is 14" with 16:10 aspect ratio and 400 nits of brightness at minimum. I should also mention that I intend to run a UNIX-like operating system on it, and as I see it the MacBook Air M3 16G/512G would fit my needs pretty well, but any suggestion of a laptop that fits my criteria and has a solid linux support (palm rejection working, media keys working, good battery life, …) is welcome.
If you wanna diy your laptop, you can go for a framework. They officially support Fedora and Ubuntu. The community has built support for Arch.
There’s a tab for Intel and AMD linux support
If you want something bigger the framework 16 might be worth looking into as it is closer to your screen requirements
If battery is a concern, you might want the Macbook. Though given my experiences with mac, you have to make a lot of tweaks to make the ui and key shortcuts behave like windows/linux or learn the Mac way. For example, mac doesn’t natively support word skipping (control + left/right arrow key). Even with the key tweaks to the keybinds.dict file, some applications (web browsers) do not respect it
Thank you for your reply. While I aggree that Framework Laptop is a great machine, or at least it is according to the reviews I’ve read, unfortunately it is still not available in my country despite the fact I live in the EU, and I am kind of done waiting for them at this point.
I know that MacOS is specific in this regard (or, well, disregard for the standard way of getting stuff done), and I’m okay with having to tweak a couple of things to get a working system. I expect I’d have to do that either way. The reason I am strongly considering getting a Mac is because MacBooks seem to be good general-purpose machines that just work, and do not suffer of the problems that both Windows and Linux have. In case of Linux, my biggest concern is HW support.
16" is too big and impractical for my needs, and I found the 14" (or similar size) to be just right for most use cases, and when it is not the 2 more inches are not going to do much, so that one is a hard requirement. What is not is the aspect ratio. I only really preffer taller screen, so something like 3:2 is fine as well.
Makes sense just wanted to let you know after my poor experience using MacOS. I am biased to recommend Linux and windows before mac. I don’t like what apple is doing with the industry
The main thing I look for in Linux is the wifi cards. Intel wifi cards have the best support on Linux. I’ve been using fedora on my Thinkpad E570
Alternatively, you might consider looking at a tuxedo book. The Linux experiment has covered Linux support
Maybe you want to research a bit more, I’m looking for a new laptop myself but I gave up on Tuxedo, there appears to be a lot of complaints about broken out of the box computers, RMA taking forever, no support…
Yea probably, I thought the Linux Experiment’s talking points about running his channel off of a tuxedo book and tuxedo computers made me think that they had better support. My experience with Linux laptop compatibility is just ensuring the wifi card isn’t realtek and avoiding the current generation nvidia cards.
The dedicated Linux laptop market seems to be crappy rebadged clevos. I was looking at the system76, but the reviews are also mixxed.
What were some others you considered? Seems that the linux community runs off of thinkpads.
In the worse case that mac is doesn’t work out, I guess @taurus can wait until asahi Linux makes a m3 version
If you’re already on a Thinkpad as a Linux user, you probably want to stay on the Thinkpad line and just replace the wifi card with an Intel one if it doesn’t come with one. I’ve gotten burnt too many times trying out other solutions that feel like they should just work but the stability (in my experience, and I’m not talking about just Linux/software) of Thinkpads have spoiled me.
I haven’t checked recently so maybe there already are now, but once there are flagship-tier (X/T series) Thinkpads with Ryzen CPUs that should probably help with more manageable battery life, too.
Considering your needs, the MacBook Air M3 with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage is a good choice, especially if you value a good trackpad, keyboard, and display. It offers a 14" screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio, at least 400 nits of brightness, and excellent support for UNIX-like operating systems. Alternatively, the Dell XPS 13 or Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon are good non-Mac options with solid Linux support, good battery life, and functional media keys, known for their quality build, excellent keyboard, and display.
Well, the primary reason it is the strongest candidate so far is that it is the only device that would actually work out of the box without any worries that there might be problems with brightness control, or palm rejection, or the wifi card / sound card. However, because of Apple’s ridiculous pricing, their attitude towards the customers, and API support (for example, Vulkan works only through translation layer), I’m strongly considering other options.
In the past, I might consider a Dell XPS, but with their latest line, they’ve done all of the mistakes Apple did 8 years ago.
ThinkPad has been suggested a lot, and it certainly seems like an obvious choice, but the config I’d actually want (i7/Ryzen7, 16GB RAM) is $500 more expensive than the MBA in case of the T14 and even more so in case of the X1C. Maybe ThinkPads are just really overpriced in our stores, but I do not see how I’d justify that.
I’ve read some reviews of the new Zenbooks from ASUS, and Lenovo’s Yoga Pro 7/9. Generally, the reviews agree on good screens, battery life, keyboards and performance, but as it usually is, none of them tested Linux support. Any experience or clues there?
