Hi everyone!
I need to buy a new laptop to replace my 12 years old laptop. I didn’t look after hardware for a while for some personal reasons.
I will buy something new. My needs are:
- photo editing
- video editing
- vector graphics editing/creation
- good battery life (I don’t want to worry about)
- web navigating, docs, spreadsheets
- USB-C charging would be nice
I don’t game, and Framework isn’t available where I live.
I would be happy to have some recommendation on what is a good hardware for this use and good brand.
Thanks!
I highly recommend checking out https://old.reddit.com/r/LaptopDeals/ daily until you find something that meets your needs and budget.
I hope this exists, let me type !LaptopDeals@lemmit.online
Shit it doesnt
My two cents; if you want to use Linux on it, then do yourself a favor and pick a laptop from a Linux-first vendor. So the likes of NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo and others found on the link over here come to mind. Besides that, it’s important that the device in question either has a dedicated GPU (or at least supports eGPUs). Furthermore, choose a device with relatively high battery capacity; they go up to ~99 Wh, so pick something that’s at least relatively close to that number.
Please don’t; tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule, and the hardware is “fine” at best. I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.
I disagree. I have a System76 laptop and I love it and there support team. I could care less that it is a Clevo. It also comes with system76 boot which allows you to weaken Intel ME.
That’s good for you, really. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it and I’m not going to have a go at you for liking a brand.
I have several rebadged Clevos just through happenstance - right place right time deals. For what I paid they are great laptops - I wouldn’t buy one new though. My old (secondhand) XPS 15 was a far superior experience overall while still packing broadly similar hardware to one of my Clevos - I ended up giving it away when I got a 3700X based system which just lacks some of the polish that you get from a major manufacturer.
I also once had a Dell that would ‘sing’ to me in a quiet room; I eventually worked out that I was hearing the pci-e and USB through the speakers. Not pleasant. YMMV. Use what makes you happy.
tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.
Yup, clearly. /s
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule
Wow, that’s a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.
the hardware is “fine” at best
Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple’s finest go beyond “fine”.
I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Hmm…, very interesting! I’m totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.
I don’t deny this. However, none of Dell’s laptops with decent Linux support have an AMD CPU (or one of Intel’s latest Meteor Lake CPUs). Thus, at least in terms of battery life, it’s not desirable; with battery life being something that OP has explicitly mentioned. As for Lenovo, the Thinkpad-line (the one generally recommended for its Linux-support) with AMD CPUs starts at a very high price. At which point, the “fine” hardware from the Linux-first vendor not only starts to be attractive but highly desirable by comparison.
Yup, clearly. /s
That seemed nice until…
WTF? 400€ to change the keyboard language?
Can we discontinue the /s please. Its just cringe and adds nothing. (Minor pet peeve)
Wow, that’s a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.
To clarify, they do jack shit to add major hardware support (etc). This seems like a disingenuous response.
Pop isn’t adding anything much to Linux; it’s yet another Debian derivative by way of Ubuntu. Take this from me as a system admin who has supported (and used) Pop, and has had to dig into the internals and submit bugs. Cosmic is cool and all, but it’s mostly just eye candy for GNOME at the end of the day. System76 also seem to still be developing working with other people skills.
That’s fine, if that’s what you want. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using Pop.
Tuxedo still haven’t as far as I’m aware released ITE829x Linux drivers (in an upstreamable form) for example; I had to reverse engineer the damned chip.
Clevo hardware lacks a lot of the polish that you just quietly get from a major manufacturer.
I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Hmm…, very interesting! I’m totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.
Sorry, the 3060ti was conflating my desktop; it’s literally a 2060 which is far worse in terms of termals and power.
The Clevo NH58AD can be specced with a Ryzen 7 3700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. I have one. There are definitely trade-offs and for some reason the damned thing is quite unstable with 3200MHz RAM even though it’s explicitly supported.
I have this laptop. I look at the Linux offerings from these manufacturers. I contribute to them. In my professional life I’ve managed fleets of Laptops from major manufacturers (particularly the business-y lines), with some rebadged Clevos (for some reason) at the mix. I am speaking from experience with the hardware here.
I actually have another previous gen Intel one, too - it has some interesting design choices.
I’m not saying that it’s all bad, and you seem to be taking this as something of a personal attack.
It’s fine to like these companies. I want them to succeed, but Clevo as an ODM tend to produce products that lack the polish of a comparable (say) Dell, and don’t achieve the same volume of sales as a major manufacturer to achieve lower costs through increased volume (etc) - the cost savings have to come from somewhere and often that’s the firmware, material design, and design quality.
These products are fine, don’t pretend that they’re perfect though, you’re doing them a disservice.
I had a 10th gen S76 Lemur. The hardware was a mixed bag. Chassis was nice and light (compared to Apple), but enameled so the edges eventually chipped. Keyboard/trackpad were average. Speakers were awful… Battery life was excellent like usually got around 20 hours on a charge (and often more with a little effort!). I also had a number of hardware failures and dealing with their support was pretty terrible… Broken control key out of the box, Wifi died twice, second time they replaced the motherboard (and that took like… 9 weeks), then it completely died a year later when it was finally out of warranty. A real mixed bag of Pop OS being nice, and having great software/firmware support, but also multiple hardware failures coupled with terrible warranty support.
I found there support to be pretty helpful although I’ve only had two issues. The first issue was the track pad would quick working on a reboot and was fixed by updated the firmware. The second issue was my thunderbolt port stopped working and was fixed by disconnecting the battery for 10 min.
Other than that my laptop is very nice and performs well. The speakers are also pretty good and I don’t have any complains.
I highly recommend avoiding this rhetoric because you will end up paying more for inferior hardware.
You are not actually “doing yourself a favor.”
Ultimately, any discussion on this would boil down to cost vs convenience. As OP hasn’t explicitly stated anything on this regard, it seems unproductive to delve into this further. However, strictly speaking, I have to agree with you that the Linux-first vendors are (in almost all cases) more expensive. Thank you for pointing that out for OP.
In case you're as bored as I am 😅.
Let’s start with stating some facts from OP:
- OP takes the effort to state six wishes/requirements without mentioning price.
- OP implies to at least have considered the Framework laptop, for which the 16 inch variant -the one actually capable of video editing etc- is not a cheap device either.
- OP states: “I don’t want to worry about” when talking about battery life. If anything, that sounds like one that would prefer convenience over cost.
Therefore, I assumed that OP wasn’t cost-limited by any means (they didn’t state it anyways).
Anyhow, allow me to illustrate how much OP might have to “pay more” for “inferior hardware”:
- Found this one on https://old.reddit.com/r/LaptopDeals, a site which you mentioned elsewhere under OP. Seems like a cool laptop, not gonna lie. It’s just a random one I picked. Let’s see what we can find on the other side:
- Well look at that? Better CPU and better battery, just all around a great package (it even has a mechanical keyboard?!). Furthermore. better warranty terms and possible to extend to 5 years (compared to a measly 1 year for the other laptop). Yes, it’s a significantly more expensive laptop. But, (for me) it’s clearly the superior deal especially when the Linux support is considered. You’re absolutely free to disagree though 😉.
Just my two cents… But my x1 carbon, running tumbleweed has been my single greatest Linux on laptop experience, ever… And I’ve used many different laptops over the years. System76, framework, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, hp, apple… My x1 has been absolutely amazing!
That’s very valuable! Thank you for mentioning that! To make it even more relevant to OP, I would like to pose the following questions:
- Which CPU?
- Which GPU?
- How has the battery life been? Consider both light and heavy use*
Thank you in advance!
Cpu is an i5, and I forget what specific model but I can check. My carbon is an older Gen 5. It also just uses the Cpu for graphics… No dedicated graphics card. Battery life is good concidering the age (the battery is still original, and I get probably 3 hrs with moderate use. My carbon also is the 8gb (ram) model. On this particular model the ram is soldered on, so upgrading isn’t an option (without replacing the board, obviously).
Now, for me… I use the machine for work. I’m a systems administrator and spend most of my time remotong into servers and end user machines… So the work load on the laptop is on the lighter side. I do have various vm’s that I spin up form time to time, but never more than one at a time.
Anyway, as I said before, it has been the single greatest Linux experience on a laptop I’ve ever had. Everything just works, and it’s been rock solid. I’ve been running this machine as a daily driver for work now for about three years.
Edit: Love the down vote, also. Makes me feel like this is reddit all over again. Lmao. Down vote for sharing an opinion of what’s been the best Linux on laptop experience I’ve ever had. Whoever down voted me… Can you correct me and tell me the correct answer for what has been the best Linux experience on a laptop? I’m obviously mistaken.
They said they don’t game.
GPUs aren’t exclusive to gaming (as you should know).
Why GPU?
OP mentioned the intent to do video editing on the device. Unfortunately, the amount of good video editors on Linux is currently limited to just Davinci Resolve(; sure, the likes of Kdenlive (etc) exists, but none of them are very suitable for professional usage[1]). While I’m thankful that Davinci Resolve works on Linux, it’s -according to their own documentation- simply not possible to make use of it without a dedicated GPU (at least on Linux). Thus, warranting the need for a dedicated GPU.
That’s horrible for battery.
I’m aware that that’s a concern. Thankfully, there are workarounds. And if all else fails, there’s always the possibility to make use of eGPUs; which I’ve actually explicitly mentioned in my earlier reply for this exact reason (without mentioning explicitly for which reason it was mentioned*).
- OP might not even need it for professional use, but I assumed they did*.
Does it have to be a laptop? You’ll get better hardware and performance on a desktop plus a better screen and seating position.
True, but the focus on battery life suggests mobility is a must.
They could dock the laptop for a desktop experience at home, including a dedicated keyboard, mouse and screens, with a good desk and seating arrangement. A USB C equipped device would be the way to go for this.
But absolutely agree for price, desktop only is better value.
It as to be a laptop. I’m mostly in my new activity, working outside my home. I’m using mostly trains as we can go everywhere with them. It also allows working while going somewhere.
Ok. From what I’ve seen over the years in the Linux community, ThinkPad laptops seem to be the most popular. I think they have the best support for hardware, and ideally, battery usage. I would like at those before you look at Dell, HP etc.
If you have any budget for something like System 76, Tuxedo or one of the other specialist Linux laptops, definitely consider that because you will have zero hardware issues and if you need support you’ll get it.
Whereas if you buy a generic laptop and need support, the only help is the community and Google search…
starlabs maybe?
Just get a thinkpad.
