So, I’ve been looking for a laptop that can compile code fast, has a HiDPI screen, a GPU fast enough to drive said screen for some light-to-moderate gaming, and is unlikely to have issues running Linux. AFAIK, that means either a 6-core i7, i9, or desktop Ryzen CPU, coupled with a Vega 56 or 64 GPU (because of all the issues with NVIDIA’s Linux drivers), and either a 1440p or preferably 4K screen. AFAICT, nobody makes such a laptop. Not even System76.
Aside from the HiDPI screen, the closest I can find is the Acer Predator Helios 500 Ryzen, but for some reason, between announcing it and releasing it, Acer seems to have dropped the 4K option. It’s still listed on the product page (last time I checked, anyway), but nobody, not even Acer themselves, actually sells that configuration.
Aside from “unlikely to have issues running Linux”, the closest I can find is a 2018 MacBook Pro with the Vega 20 option. I’m not sure I want to spend that much on a non-upgradable machine, though, especially one that has such a reputation for thermal throttling. Normally I’m a Mac person anyway, so being “stuck” with macOS is fine, but I’d been really hoping to try running Linux.
Am I really the only person who wants such a laptop? I get that what I’m looking for is unlikely to be cheap, but I can’t find what I want at any price. Of course, at this point the wise thing to do would be to wait until next week anyway to see what gets announced at CES. I’ve been looking off and on since last spring, though, and am unsure if this is a viable market segment that for whatever reason literally every manufacturer simply isn’t serving or if my wants really are that unusual.
I picked up a Dell i7773 (Best Buy, ~$1,000 USD) over the summer and it comes with support for Ubuntu. The major configurable item for it is the hard drive. Some models include a 2TB HDD @5400ron and some come with SSD and maybe NVMe. I got the 2TB option which allows me to upgrade with an SSD, which I did, or an NVMe drive, which I have queued up. There is the NVMe slot and the SSD so you can two drives. The 2TB drive will become storage.
A live USB Fedora worked fine.
There is the option to save the recovery partition to USB for later use to change drives and free up space.
You know, if nothing gets updated during CES, I might go for that. It’s not what I’d prefer, but for around half the cost of some of the other options that might be ok.
(Same for the Dell models, since they’re roughly in the same league IIRC)
Going for an AMD GPU will limit your choices. I’m not aware of any laptops with a Vega 56/64 in them. I imagine most, or all, like the new Macbook Pro’s, will use the newish mobile GPUs.
I have to say the price of a new laptop with your desired specs is an expensive way to sample Linux. What would you do with the new machine if you don’t like Linux? As a former Mac user, I’d opt for the new MacBook. If Linux is problematic on it (in my experience a few years ago, it often was) you’re very likely to find the Linux tools you want to try have been ported to OS X.
K. I hear they have nice keyboards and are reasonably well-made. Both good qualities to have.
There’s one, the Acer Predator Helios 500 Ryzen, that has a Vega 56. And the now quite old ASUS ROG Strix somethingsomething that has an RX580 (seriously, I thought Apple was the only company that could get away with not refreshing their products every year… what gives, ASUS?). Other than those, yeah, I haven’t found anything either.
Yeah, I’m getting to the point where I’ll soon need a faster computer anyway, though (see below), and I tend to buy nice computers and then run them until there just isn’t any chooch left in them. Historically, this has meant that I’ll use a computer as my daily driver for probably around 8 years. OTOH, this has mostly been because Apple’s stuff would last that long (and even then, at least for me, they tend to get too out-dated to get security patches or something rather than stop working — a friend of mine back in Dallas is still running my old 2001 PowerMac G4 DP because he uses some old MacOS 9 software). It this the case with PCs as well? I’d assumed so, but perhaps not.
So, I really only have four concerns WRT day-to-day usage:
For some reason every Linux distro I’ve used uses “ctrl” as the “push to issue a command instead of typing text” button instead of “cmd” (well, “alt” on a PC keyboard). I don’t know why they do that, nor do I know why Windows does it, but the button is in the wrong place… it’s far more ergonomic for the thumb to have those duties, but then if it has to reach clear over to the ctrl key, you can’t easily use that hand to type anything else.
The insanity where copying text from the terminal kills your ssh session (edit: from my PoV, I mean… obviously it worked for someone at some point or it wouldn’t have been implemented this way). Yes, yes, “ctrl-shift-c”, I know. I have a few decades of muscle memory that says otherwise, though, and I don’t care to retrain it.
The third, and I don’t even know if this will be an actual problem, is the keyboard layout. I currently use “Dvorak - QWERTY ⌘”, which is a Dvorak layout until you push the command key, at which point it switches to QWERTY. This is so you can type in Dvorak but retain your keyboard shortcut muscle memory (again, something I don’t care to retrain). I haven’t tried recreating it on CentOS or Ubuntu yet (the two Linux distros I’ve used the most), but on my mac, neither Visual Studio Code nor Visual Studio notice that that the layout changes when I hit the command key. Like if I want to search for something, the OS, as well as every “native” macOS app will say that I’m hitting ⌘-F to bring up the search functionality, but for whatever reason VSC/VS will think I said ⌘-U to do, I don’t know, whatever ⌘-U does. Obviously, this is only two programs, but that such basic functionality would be bugged makes me wonder if the input system in other OSs is too primitive to handle it. As a fall back, I figure I can just edit the shortcuts in the apps I use, but my word that’d be a pain.
The menu bar is in the wrong place (at the top of the window where it’s trivially easy to overshoot your target instead of at the top of the screen where it’s impossible to overshoot since the cursor can’t go any higher). I actually kinda doubt I’ll be able to do much about this, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Getting a MBP Isn’t out of the question, but it’s a lot of $$ for something that can’t even have the SSD upgraded (or the RAM, but it seems that other companies have decided to follow Apple’s mistakes and having RAM soldered on is tragically common these days).
My understanding is that any Linux distro will be very problematic on newer Macs (except maybe the non-pro iMacs? not sure) since Apple hasn’t added support for their T2 chip to the Linux kernel yet (and probably never will… I mean I don’t think they’re obligated to, but I really wish they would). They’ll still boot Linux off a thumb drive, but the internal SSDs are all behind that T2 chip, so you’d have to install the OS on (and subsequently always carry around) an external drive, which, as the laptop users like to say, is bloody annoying. And it’s not about the tools per se (my experience has also been that they mostly work on macOS).
Anyway, onwards towards the 2nd giant wall of text…
So, my current desktop is a 2008 Mac Pro which mostly still works (it’s stopped recognizing 2 of the RAM sticks, but I haven’t had time to figure out if the problem is in the RAM or the computer), but an 11 year-old computer is a bit long in the tooth. Plus, I’m stuck with macOS 10.13.x on it. I put a GTX 760 in it a while ago, but Nvidia hasn’t released drivers for macOS 10.14 yet (there’s some debate as to whether this is their fault or Apple’s, but either way they haven’t been released yet). I could put an RX 4xx or 5xx in it (wouldn’t want to spend too much on something so old), but the 10.14 driver for modern AMD cards uses instructions my CPUs don’t have (Apple dropped support for my Mac in 10.12, but until 12.14 the only actual problem was the WiFi drivers stopped working… in a desktop… with GbE…).
Now, based on Apple’s recent pricing decisions, I think it’s likely that the updated Mac Pro they’re supposed to finally release this year will be out of my reach. So I’m anticipating a cost-induced switch to Linux anyway when the machine I’m typing this on finally either gives up the ghost or gets so slow with modern software that I can’t really keep using it for much (some might say that not such much when that happens, but more of when I realize that it’s already happened, and quite some time ago at that… ). There is a chance that the new Mac Pro will cause prices on used 2012 or 2013 Mac Pros to become reasonable, but I’m disinclined to pay too much for a pile of slick & sexy non-upgradable overheating hotness (in the case of the 2013 model) or something so old (in the case of, well, either of them).
Plan A is to get a computer that’ll let me experiment with different distros, desktop environments, etc, so that when I need to switch I’m ready to go. And if, by some miracle I’m not priced out of Apple’s desktops, I’ll have learned a ton about Linux/GNU-based OSs.
The laptop form-factor is a strong want… I don’t have much spare room here, plus I wouldn’t mind having something newer & faster than my 13" 2012 MacBook Pro that I can take with me if I need to for whatever reason. I could probably find space for a small desktop if I have to, though.
Either way, I want whatever I get to have an AMD GPU because literally everyone (except the vendors of Linux laptops with discrete GPUs, apparently) says that Nvidia is problematic on most Linux distros and that AMD works great. I want it to be a nice(ish) GPU because a) dat HiDPI screen (if I can find a PC laptop that has one, anyway) and b) in my experience the GPU gets too slow before the CPU, so having an initially nice(ish) GPU should extend the life of the machine.
Plan B, if for some reason I can’t get whatever distro/desktop env/etc configured in a way that’d work for me, is to attempt to run macOS on it. AMD GPUs are also a plus here (AFAIK Nvidia cards don’t currently work with macOS 10.14, but I haven’t checked the 10xx models).
Plan C, if all else fails, is to put windows on it and have a gaming laptop as a tribute to my folly — as motivation to think things through better in the future (plus, I mean, it’s just a laptop… it’s not like it’s the end of the world if it doesn’t work out exactly how I want).
I have been using Asus laptops under Linux for years and never had any compatibility issues.
I however have avoided AMD GPUs in laptops as every single one I have had or serviced on behalf of a friend or family member has had failures caused by the excessive temperatures the AMD GPUs reach in the confined space.
This may have changed in recent years, but in the past it was rare to see a AMD based laptop last more then a few years when in the hands of a normie that doesn’t think about accidentally blocking the ventilation. Usually the failure was the GPU would get cracked solder balls from thermal stress that were visible under an inspection microscope.
). There is a chance that the new Mac Pro will cause prices on used 2012 or 2013 Mac Pros to become reasonable, but I’m disinclined to pay too much for a pile of slick & sexy non-upgradable overheating hotness (in the case of the 2013 model) or something so old (in the case of, well, either of them).