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Ask HN: What's a PC (for Linux) laptop that doesn't suck right now?

10 points by tumult ↗ HN
I'm in the market for a laptop that I will be running Linux on. All I will be using it for is programming. In other words, it must have a good keyboard, screen, battery life, and passable Linux drivers. Things I don't need: glossy screen, advanced trackpads, optical drive, powerful GPU, 3G wireless.

Things I do want: Build quality. Good keyboard. Good display (does anyone still make IPS laptops?) And that's it. Size preferred would be 12" - 14".

My desktop right now is a 2006 Mac Pro, which is more than powerful enough for everything I do. I have several operating systems set up on it. I have nice big Dell IPS screens from 2005 which I'm still using to this day. Switching from that to the MacBook (2007) which I currently have is like getting spikes driven into my eyes; the screen is utter crap. I rarely use it.

The current state of affairs in the non-Mac laptop industry looks pretty pathetic. Are there are diamonds in the mountain of coal? I could get a MacBook Pro if I had to (can run Linux on it fine), but I would have to get the 15" matte model, and that's a huge/fast computer -- I will basically only be using it to edit text. Overkill. I would get the 13" MBP but it's a glossy-only computer.

Suggestions? I have no brand loyalty. Price doesn't matter.

I was looking at getting a ThinkPad x201/x201s, but recently the x201s has vanished from Lenovo's website, though it's still there in their annoying glitzy Flash banners when you are looking at their lineup. I also know that a large part of the ThinkPad lineup is now plastic crap that they try to trick people into buying thanks to the ThinkPad branding, which is unsettling.

6 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 26.4 ms ] thread
there
there are still plenty of new, in-the-box x201s' on ebay. the thinkpad edge 13" is cheap ($) and has decent specs, but you get the annoying glossy screen and case.

i'm typing this on a thinkpad x301. with the dvd drive swapped out for a 2nd battery, it's pretty nice. it's costly though, and i wouldn't really recommend buying it when there are other thinkpads available for 1/3 the price with much more than 1/3 the performance.

carmen
my x200 takes 20 minutes to POST and the BIOS downgrades fail via both GRUB and windows7. similar experiences litter the lenovo forum. if apple had an issue like this it woulda been frontpaged on every tech site and fixed within a day..

its hard to avoid rebooting because the hardware hardfreezes a couple times a day. also the network slot has a very small whitelist should your card crap out

jefurii
Sorry to hear about that - I've got an x200 and it's been rock solid since I got it in november. I think I like it even more than I liked the 12in Aluminum PowerBook that it replaced.

PowerBooks have this modernist minimalist thing going on, but my x200 has a highly evolved, almost organic quality to it. I see tons of powerbooks and Asus/Acer/whatever laptops around, and a ThinkPad is so clunky-looking it's like a geeky cool pair of thick-framed glasses. And it runs Linux really well.

blangblang
Lenovo T410s come standard with matte, LED-backlit screens.
tumult
Yes, but they are low-quality TN panels. I decided to buy a refurbished T60p with an IPS display.
sigil
Try a used T40, T41 or T42 -- maybe a bit on the bulky side for you, but they have really solid hardware support under Linux / BSD (eg suspend resume usually works with no fiddling, wireless works, etc). These were the last decent models in the original IBM Thinkpad line. For some reason the T43, the final T-series model which predates Lenovo, is much flakier than its predecessors.