[ale] Good Laptop for Linux these days

[Phil Turmel]

Hi Scott, all,

On 8/4/23 14:17, Scott Plante via Ale wrote:
> MD wrote:
>> external floppy disk reader
> Now, is that an 8", 5.25" or 3.5" floppy reader? ;-P

Heh.

> I've always used Linux on desktops as my main development box. Some 
> years ago I got a Macbook because one big client began requiring either 
> Mac or Windows to access their VPN. I knew it had a GNU shell and I knew 
> a bunch of developers who'd switched. I ended up using Synergy and left 
> just the actual coding on Linux, and just used the Mac for other stuff. 
> Lately I've been thinking about getting a Linux laptop, too (they ended 
> up cutting off VPN access altogether a couple of years later). I was 
> thinking about maybe System76 or Framework.

I been using a System76 "Oryx Pro" for a few years now. Long enough that 
I'm starting to break the decorative plastic, particularly around the 
hinge pins.  Probably not long until I replace it.

(But that's on me.  I'm in unfriendly industrial environments often.)

> I've heard one issue with Laptops and Linux is around sleep and battery 
> usage--specifically when you close the lid it drains the battery pretty 
> quickly unless you do a full shutdown first. This was maybe a year 
> ago--is that still true, or is it something you can work around with 
> config files, etc.?

Somewhat true, in my experience with this unit.  It sleeps for about 6-8 
hours before it kills the battery.  64GB of ram may be a contributing 
factor.  But battery life has never been good the way I run this--a 
couple hours, tops.

I have had gripes about the graphics.  It is NVIDIA-based, and won't run 
4K external monitors without the proprietary driver. ):

And the graphics driver doesn't really like to wake up to different 
monitors than it went to sleep with. :shrug:

> I also heard fingerprint readers were tricky and that for some you *can* 
> make it work with Linux OR Windows, but not both on the same machine 
> (like dual-boot). I think it was all tied into Trusted Compute and not 
> just a reader that the OS can query, but it's been a while since I was 
> reading up on that so it's a bit fuzzy.

This has a fingerprint reader built into a corner of the trackpad.  I 
haven't even attempted to get it to work.

> Scott