[ale] Good Laptop for Linux these days

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

Hi,

I probably use laptops in a really weird way, since I travel so much and I
have been stuck without good (or any) Internet connections, etc.  Therefore
I always had a laptop that I could keep all of my relevant data on it to
create presentations, videos, etc.   I have three TB of storage on my
laptop.

Of course you have to back this up, and with a 3.0 USB port it takes over
18 hours to do that.   So my next laptop will have USB 4.0, waiting for
devices to catch up, or doing parallel backups of different datasets to
different devices.   USB 4.x will be a driver.

Of course I am also have NAS set up and can do backups almost continually
over the network, but when I do not have that network (or a poor one) I
will still have my data with me.   3 TB or 4TB on my laptop?  Nah.  One
Western Digital M.2 SSD will hold 4 TB for 269 dollars.

Networking would be the next issue, but if the built in networking is not
good enough, a docking station or dongle going out through the USB 4.x will
provide that.

All of the other issues mentioned here (Screen size, CPU power, etc.) are
good and depends on how much you want to pay.   Replace a battery in a
laptop?   Something you do every three or four years, let the pros do it.

I usually buy "top of the line", then let the line get a little crufty.
My current Lenovo W510 "workstation" laptop is a heavy, powerhungry beast
that started out with 16GB of RAM (and still has that) with 500 GB of HDD
(now 1 TB of Hybrid SSD/HDD and 2 TB of HDD) but had an option added of two
3.0 USB Type A sockets that made it "last longer.   It has four cores with
eight Virtual cores that does much of what I want it to do.  I have
replaced the keyboard three times myself (the oils in my fingers eat
through the keycaps for a total of 100 USD for all three.   I have replaced
the batteries a couple of times (of course they are external).

I have an external DVD, external floppy disk reader, portable scanner all
of which would work fine with the next system.

I also have a Lenovo X1 fifth gen laptop that is light, with two cores and
four hypercores, but "only" 1TB and "Thuderbolt 3" connector.   I have
ordered that 4TB M.2 connector.  This may replace my W510 simply because
the X1 is so light and so much easier on battery.  I will probably be using
that on my trips this year, and leave the beast behind.

On the other hand I was looking at the Lenovo web site and configured a
new, thin laptop with 64 GB of RAM, two USB 4.0 ports, 4TB of NVMe storage a
15" screen and the latest in WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI, etc.and a kick-butt CPU
which I swear had 20 real cores running at some insane frequency.   Fully
configured as a monster laptop it came in at less than 5K USD and would
probably last me for the rest of my life, or at least until I was senile
(if I am not already there).

Of course YMMV.

md

On Wed, Aug 2, 2023 at 8:29 PM Bob Toxen via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> All,
>
> What would be a good laptop for Linux these days?
>
> I've had good luck in the past with Lenovo and Toshiba.  However, with
> my most recent Lenovo it was impossibly difficult to replace the battery.
>
> I'm not a gamer (or a password cracker) so I don't need lots of CPU power.
>
> I do need WiFi, good size disk (or solid state), DVD burner, and
> ability to watch movie DVDs, good keyboard action, and good size screen.
> I'll have a trackball so touchpad/touchstick not too important if it
> isn't in the way.
>
> All thumbs up or down greatly appreciated.
>
> THANKS!
> Bob
> _______________________________________________
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