I’m in the market for a new Linux laptop. My current machine is a 2018 i7 with 64GB of RAM, a 4K screen, 1TB of storage, 2x USB-C and 1x USB-A.

I’m looking for something that can match my current specs but brings great battery life, modern Wi-Fi, and a fingerprint reader. I don’t have to have 4K, and may actually prefer lower resolution for the battery savings.

I’d love to hear some recommendations for a machine built within the past 12 months. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

  • drdnlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I had an extreme, as nice as it was it kind of sucked on Linux due to all the dual gpu weirdness (working hdmi or battery longevity, pick one)

    Has this changed recently? Because it used to be due to the wiring of hdmi though the external gpu

    • docler@feddit.itEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I have a gen4 with Nvidia 3050, and with the newer cards/drivers the support for power states is actually decent. On arch I don’t need any of the trickery you used to have to do to power off the card, if the card is not used for some time (less than a minute) it properly shut downs, and powertop reports something around 9w of power usage if you don’t fire up the CPU for compilation or such. When a program needs it, it powers back on. You still have some of the Linux/Nvidia headaches (with Wayland etc.) but it’s much better than it used to be

      • drdnlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Interesting, thanks. I’ve been avoiding dual gpu stuff for a couple years now for this reason (mostly buying amd only)

        • docler@feddit.itEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I bought mine in a moment of low supply from lenovo, so I couldn’t configure any laptop and I just had to buy what they had in stock, and this was the only one meeting my requirements. I like it much more than my previous XPS15, and it’s a great laptop, but I’d still go with AMD if I had the choice. Intel’s processors heat up a lot under heavy load, I don’t really need the nvidia graphics card (but the intel’s integrated one is not really good), and as I said things are better with linux, but still not great. Modern ryzens should solve all of those problems.