For those who’re currently looking for a nice new device: shown are (from Top Left to Right):
- NovaCustom (NL)
- Star Labs (UK)
- System76 (US)
- Juno Computers (US)
- UbuntuShop (BE)
- Slimbook (ES)
- Tuxedo Computers (DE)
- Entroware (UK)
- MiniFree (UK)
- Nitrokey (DE)
- Laptops with Linux (NL)
- Purism (US)
Not mentioned but also selling Ready-to-use Linux computer:
- Dell
- Lenovo
Also Pine64
Which would be considered a good gaming laptop?
System76 laptops are built for gaming.
They also created their own Linux distro called Pop! Os, which is designed around gaming, and fairly popular within the community. All their laptops come with Pop! os preinstalled
Lol, no? System76 does have gaming-capable devices and Pop!_OS will absolutely get you there, but neither was designed “around gaming”.
To answer the original question: System76, Tuxedo and Slimbook do sell gaming-capable devices. Others might do as well, this isn’t a complete list.
Sure, they’re not designed solely for gaming. But they’re focused on graphical performance which is what makes them suited for gamers.
Pop! Os has a focus on graphical performance, with versions containing preconfigured AMD/nvidia drivers depending on the users build. To claim that gaming hasn’t factored into the decision to focus on graphics would just be silly.
Doesn’t really feel as though that pedantry has added anything to the conversation if I’m honest, as the question was what would be suitable for gaming, and you yourself also recommend 76?
They literally advertise it on their website. They definitely have gaming in mind.
So apparently it’s for the Western people then. (Or I could be wrong)
I simply don’t know any vendors in Japan, Australia, India etc., but feel free to provide some!
Just got a HP pavilion for free. On the other side of everything here. Fucking want to go postal on them. Bios so fucked up I can’t get Linux to run with full disk encryption. Buggy, acpi errors. Support"not our problem it works with windows" …
HP has been awful about that forever. I slapped Linux on one maybe 15 years ago and it was a nightmare
Hm, I had a 250 g5 and it ran linux instantly after install (in ~2018-19).
Had a elitebook for a while missing that one , would still be alive if it wasn’t because I spilled wine on it
some years ago it really was extremely hard. at least now there’s finally some solid shops.
Came to evangelize about our lord and savior used thinkpads
What color are your knee socks?
I had a thinkpad for YEARS running various flavours of Debian / Ubuntu. It never had an issue with drivers and even the fingerprint sensor worked out of the box.
The battery was shot to hell, the hinge was gone, it was time to upgrade. So I bought an ideapad. There’s something funky with the audio quality on Linux and the fingerprint scanner is now a face scanner camera. Howdy is not easy to configure and I’m pretty sure I can trick it with a photo.
That’s a long way of me saying I have buyers remorse and not all Lenovos are made equal :(
I still remember the good old IBM Thinkpads, most of them were indestructible tanks. But with Lenovo, those times are long over. My last machine was a TP L390 Yoga. It overheated frequently, the cooling system was inadequate for the 4.6GHz Intel CPU, one day the logo sticker came off because the glue turned into sticky liquid, the passive Micro-Ethernet dongle cost 50€ and the cable turned into glue after a few months…god, what a shit machine this was.
I was able to work with it for a while by limiting and undervolting the CPU, but one day a Windows update came out that disabled the functionality and it worked like crap on Linux for a long time due to bad drivers.
I switched to GPD now. Never going back, although I miss the Trackpoint a little bit.
Only get the business model. I’ve had T60, T61, T410, T460, X200, x220, X240, X250 and X260. They’re all rock solid. At work we use the X1 Carbon all gen they’re also damn good build quality.
Our experiences seem to differ. I currently have L390 Yoga and it’s the best thing I ever used. The cooling isn’t bad, just the feet are too thin to allow for flipping the screen over. Any cooling pad, or in my case an egg carton fixes this.
Mine has i5-8365U (4.1GHz).The Ethernet is pretty stupid, but I’ve got the dongle from AliExpress for €9.31 and it’s working fine.
I really love the touchscreen in combination with Arch, KDE Plasma and Wayland. It also has pretty great colors, but I am coming from TN, so the bar was laying on the ground.
Driver-wise, everything works OOB on Arch (at least since September 2024 which is when I got it).Really, I only have 2 problems with it:
- The proprietary “Ethernet”
- USB-C doesn’t allow charging from C to A cable despite supporting 5V@2.1A charging from any proper USB-C.
I’m here to evangelize coreboot and Talos and Framework for those with more money than you and I
I have a framework, not that happy with it. It sometimes fails to find my encrypted partition (many times reinstalled different systems over the years), it heated up to 100°C so fast that it throttled down to 400 MHz all the time. The overheating is better since they sent me a new motherboard, but it still goes to 95 easily and heats up when doing the most basic stuff. I’ve also had some sound issues lately on Debian stable and testing, but not sure about that.
Repaste it and make sure the heatsink is evenly screwed down. If its still doing that warranty the board and heatsink. That’s a hardware issue and they should fix it without issue.
I have already received a whole new Mainboard. It’s not something that can be fixed like this apparently.
They told you that? i9?
Regrettable, my amd 7040 works fine since oct 2023, although i had to tinker in the beginning for power optimisation and to get suspension working properly
Talos… are you running kubernetes for your laptop you mad lad? Also, not aware that the coreboot is ready yet for any of the non-chromebook machines.
Coreboot is for the thinkpads. Talos PPC stuff is just cool if impractical.
Add KFocus to the list: https://kfocus.org/
Seconded. I’ve got one and I’m pretty happy with it
all of them are a joke in canada
edit: in case this rubs someone the wrong way its a joke to my wallet/my wallet is the joke
I think what people mean when they say this is that they are looking for the same price point as the equivalent Windows device… I don’t know all these companies but every time I looked for a Linux PC/laptop it was 25-30% more expensive than the equivalent Windows thing.
Computers are fine yes, but I’m still waiting for a Linux phone with not-shit specs LMAO
More importantly good software, Mobile Linux still sucks
The Software isn’t fully there yet for mass adoption (Your mileage may vary, but the general expectations for a modern daily driver are pretty high), at least not for anyone but enthusiasts and developers. If there’s something like a PinePhone 2 it will probably yet again designed to be relatively cheap despite low production volume, so as many potential developers as possible can afford one.
If it can handle my banking app (local credit union) and occasionally play YouTube I’m good tbh
I get by pretty well just using my bank’s website. If you need the bank’s app for something like occasionally depositing checks, maybe you could keep your old phone in a drawer with your checkbook.
A lot of financial apps require Play Protect and attestation. I had to fight for months to figure out how to spoof the integrity check so I could deposit some stupid checks.
I have so much shit in place because of my root its ridiculous, Magisk + Modules, LSPosed, Shizuku (for those apps that detect if devtools is enabled), HideMyApplist and probably at least 2 more im forgetting
It honestly might be cheaper to get a piece of shit phone and keep it squeaky clean for our overlords
Every 6 months I check to see if they’ve figured out VOLTE on PostmarketOS, or Sailfish (my dream OS tbh) on community ports. And then I cry and angrily tell people how Microsoft destroyed Meego until I’m told to hush
Add Lenovo to the list.
I got a client to buy me a System76 (Pangolin), never would have bought one otherwise. Everything is great about it, very powerful and as expected, except for the BT/WiFi module. It’s kinda dogshit.
Besides that, IO is plentiful, it’s a good size/weight, user upgradable/serviceable, has a hardware camera killswitch, and a built-in RJ45 to fix the WiFi issue. When I got mine, they were doing a special, and I also got a neat backpack with it for free!
except for the BT/WiFi module. It’s kinda dogshit.
You can get external USB ones of those, which opens things up. Downside is that it’s another thing to carry, and you gotta plug it in when you sit down. Upside is that it lets you put the antenna wherever you want (which doesn’t matter much for Bluetooth, but can be nice for WiFi). Desktops these days with integrated BT/WiFi tend to have external antennas that you can place where you want, but laptops don’t have that option outside of USB.
That being said, I’ve gotten several exotic USB WiFi adapters for which I needed to compile in support; support wasn’t packaged and in the base kernel. So given the context of the “just works” standpoint, that could be a tripping spot.
Indeed, I got myself a mid-grade Netgear USB antenna. It works much better than on-board, but like you said it’s an extra thing with a wire. Doesn’t help with BT, but at least my mouse has an RF dongle for that.
It’s just a bit of a bummer that the price is what it is and the BT/WiFi is one of the cheap components.
Framework deserves a spot in that meme
They ship with Linux?
Why would you want that? Honestly?
Yes?
No
cries in southern hemisphere
System 76 ship to southern hemisphere
I eventually bought a kfocus laptop, but the shipping on both was horrendous. I think kfocus worked out ever so slightly cheaper for the laptop itself though.
Good to know, cheers
Im with you there, half of the world where buying tech stuff sucks
I mean, I have a Thinkpad and an HP Elitebook. So… what’s the problem?
From other comments, I think that OP is after something where they don’t have to install the OS on, from a “just works” standpoint.
I don’t want an OEM-installed OS, since I very much don’t want any OEM customization and the easiest way to ensure that it’s not there is to install a vanilla copy of the OS myself, but some people do want an “unbox it, open the lid, OS is there” experience.
Some Thinkpads have had a Linux option, but I don’t think that Elitebooks have shipped with a pre-installed Linux distro.
goes to look at HP’s site
They don’t seem to currently be shipping any models that do this, based on the “Operating System” election in the left-hand bar.
