I'm using a Chromebook pixel at the moment, with Ubuntu sideloaded and elementaryOS installed as a Window Manager on top of that. It's working pretty well.
I'm using a Chromebook Pixel running Arch right now. It works pretty well with KDE, and almost perfectly with GNOME, with the exception of— stupidly— Chromium, which has pretty minimal high-DPI support.
I've been using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon for 2 years (I pre-ordered one and then upgraded it a year later). I have nothing but good things to say about it. I'm an avid user of the Trackpoint and only use the mousepad for scrolling so can't comment on the quality of the mousepad... Otherwise, the machine is perfect. Build quality is good, performance is fine and it's got a nice sized screen. Mini-DisplayPort. Excellent keyboard layout. Bog standard hardware, so everything is well supported by Linux.
I have a hard time imagining a more suitable laptop for Linux.
I also have an X1 Carbon, been running linux flawlessly for over a year, probably close to 2. I love it. It's great. I got some bleeding edge graphics drivers and play Strike Suit Zero without issues (but my standards are low) when I'm not having it do map reduce jobs :)
That said, we've got some Lenovo T440s in the office that come with a wifi card (Realtek RTL8192EE) that's unsupported by ubuntu at the moment (there's an active bug at ubuntu [1] that walks through the issues and has workarounds)
Same here, the X1 Carbon (2013) is the best Linux laptop I've found to date. Unfortunately, the 2014 refresh completely screwed things up with both the TrackPoint[0] and the keyboard[1].
I got the Carbon X1 Touch myself, and absolutely love it. I only have two complaints:
(1) my battery only lasts for 2.5 hours in linux on a good day, while it lasts over 6 hours in windows, and
(2) I develop touch-based apps, and ubuntu doesn't broadcast touch events to its browser. The system itself can receive touch events (if you tap three fingers on a window, it triggers the move mode), but the browsers themselves only receive mouse events. The result is that I cannot use pinch-and-zoom on touch-enabled webapps.
I had similar problems with battery life. Take a look at TLP [1] - my battery life improved dramatically after installing it (mostly on default settings).
I'm using the Dell Developer XPS 13, fresh installed with Xubuntu 14.04 (XFCE is by far the best), with no problems. It's very competitive with the MacBook Air line, similar lightness but with good performance. The keyboard types really well, and doesn't have a lot of weird extra buttons like many PC laptops do. It's also devoid of the legacy oddities many PC laptops have (red nipples in the keyboard, VGA ports, etc).
I did have to make a slight tweak to the trackpad config, but I believe they have fixed that with a recent change. If not, google for synaptics AreaBottomEdge and that will give you what you need to tune it.
I previously had a MacBook, and decided to stop using Apple products after the Bitcoin app ban fiasco (and because I don't agree with many of their policies). Now that I'm comfortable with my Linux laptop, I like it a lot more than my old MacBook. It's been a great experience, and it also means my development environment is closer to my production one, so I'm happy with it.
Edit: Despite my reservations towards the legacy weirdness of the Thinkpad line, I've learned through observation that they are kindof the industry standard for Linux laptops right now, and people seem to like them. When I meet someone running a Linux laptop, it's usually a thinkpad.
I must say it's strange to me to pick dell over apple because of an App Store policy. If dell had an App Store, how confident are you their policies would be better than apple's?
The "legacy ThinkPad weirdness" is one of the reasons why ThinkPads are popular for Linux (and free OS's in general). Older ThinkPads were IBM PC first and laptop second, thus were designed such that the whole thing works reasonably well when you run DOS on it (ie. OS that predates ACPI and thus has no idea that such thing even exists) and it not only worked, but was actually supported by IBM. This allowed Linux to work reasonably without any special considerations towards laptop-specific hardware. Somehow, this was deemed insufficient and commmunity had reverse engineered almost complete BIOS and embedded controller APIs for ThinkPad line (it certainly helps that these APIs are remarkably backward compatible, even though IBM->Lenovo transition had broken some important features like hardware volume control)
+1 on the XPS 13 (although I got mine refurbed rather than the dev edition) - aside from a little typical wifi flakiness, it's bloody fantastic and very un-Dell!
Have shortscreens started to fall out of fashion at all yet? I'm having a serious case of tech-inadequacy after I got my mom an X230 and my girlfriend decided she wanted one too. But looking at that X230 side-by-side with my identical-width T61, I can't bring myself to give up 2.5 inches of vertical screen real estate. (And the "14 inch" T440p is still a whole 1.5 inches shorter, in addition to the whole thing being much wider).
I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)
I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up at all, given that manufacturers have moved on to even more terrible ideas like soldering a paltry amount of RAM to the motherboard, and then removing one or even both sodimm slots. Maybe I just need a NUC strapped to a car battery.
I'm an avid Thinkpad user and one of the many reason is the 16:10 screens. What is largely the reason that I have not upgraded from my current x200/201 hybrid[1] is the lack of 16:10 screens. I've considered a Mac but I can't get past the keyboard/glass screen and lack of trackpoint.
Either way I understand you position.
[1] x200 chassis with x201 motherboard. Ask for more details if you're interested.
> I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)
It does not erase your installation when it loses power. If you switch into or out of developer mode, it'll wipe user data, but otherwise your data is safe.
As for "locked-down computing", as long as Google continues to mandate developer mode as part of their hardware requirements, that seems quite sufficient to me.
Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:
> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch
I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?
I wouldn't be worried about my data per se (backed up with unison, etc), just the hassle of reinstalling and ultimately wary of electing into that kind of user-hostile design.
"Developer mode" is equivalent to rooting your phone - something that most users won't do, and that some misguided developers will even think they should discriminate against (I believe some banking apps were recently mentioned here). Even if you go out of your way to do it and suffer the oddities, buying such a device sends an economic signal (to Google and developers) and social signal (to less-clued friends) that the official locked-down experience is desirable.
> Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:
>> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch
> I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?
News to me; ugh. Quoting one of the Google posts on this: "The problem here is that the flags that remember whether or not you're in dev-mode have to be stored somewhere, and we chose to put them in the battery-backed CMOS. When they're lost, we have to assume we should be in normal mode, or it opens a security hole. The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode. We may be able to fix that in future Chromebooks, but changing the verified boot security features generally requires a change to the read-only BIOS, which isn't possible with an update."
> The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode
Has this delay been quantified? I've used Linux-based systems with dynamic root of trust, with the TPM being queried at boot. There wasn't any noticeable delay in boot.
I can't fathom why so many laptops feature half-height arrow keys. Do all important consumer segments use vim keybinds?
Plus, the images of the products are always at oblique angle that make seeing the keyboard unnecessarily difficult. Nobody gives two shits what a laptop looks like 85%-shut from the corner.
x220 here. The only bad thing I'll say about it is the out of the box wireless was crap. I caused myself endless problems by not selecting the $5 Intel 6205 upgrade.
Battery life is only 4-5 hours (Windows squeezes out 6-8), but I can live with it.
I would also add Macbook Air with Parallels/VMware/etc. running Linux. Price is in the $900 range for an entry level one, build quality is great, and battery life is amazing. Running Linux in a VM is nice because you get working power management, touchpad, etc. from the host OS without any screwing around.
I'm also running Linux (XUbuntu) as my development environment of a MacAir. It's been pretty sweet so far. The only thing it could use is more memory. A 32GB option would actually be nice in the MacAir but there might be hardware limitations for this.
I'm using a Samsung NP900x3c with a plain ubuntu 14.04 install and I have to say its the smoothest experience i've had with linux on a laptop so far. Everything works out of the box and the most technical thing you have to do is disable windows 8's securite/quick book options.
I would have really loved to use elementaryOS on it but without the 3.13 kernel the CPU and GPU refused to play nicely and the machine refused to sleep. These issues were fixed in the 3.13 kernel.
The main problem I have found with laptops and linux is still GPU. Im reluctant to use a laptop with anything but an intel GPU these days because the last experience I had with an AMD GPU was simply terrible. The AMD drivers refused to install on anything but a specific kernel and even when installed the laptop performed better when i told the AMD control panel to always use the intel chip over the AMD one.
Id like to be able to change my opinion, but AMD and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still some sort of absurd joke.
I've had zero problems with the nvidia drivers, so long as I use the binary ones. Nouveau has been useless. radeon has been very crashy, NoAccel is my only option for it being stable.
I posted separately on my experience with my laptop, but I would vehemently +1 the driver issues for AMD Radeon. My laptop has Radeon 7700 graphics, which in practice means I have had to wipe and reinstall Ubuntu four or five times in the past year after a system upgrade broke the graphics. Catalyst drivers work great, but they break completely upon some combination of upgrade (kernel? who knows). I realize this was naive reasoning, but I assumed that AMD's sponsorship of OpenSUSE would mean better support for Linux.
I didn't have trouble with my Dell e1505 running Nvidia drivers, but I didn't tax it very hard, either, other than using Compiz for some desktop effects.
I thought having a proper graphics chip rather than integrated Intel graphics would make for a snappier experience, but in the future I'll just stick with integrated graphics and max out the RAM.
Edit: Good to hear the Samsung works so well. I remember seeing some issues with those on the Ubuntu forums when they came out, which is why I opted for a different brand, but I'd expect to revisit them on my next purchase.
T440p, works great with Ubuntu 14.04. I've not figured out the driver for the fingerprint detector yet though. Not that I care much about that. The SSD makes it super fast to boot and autologin (~7 seconds)
I have one of the old Lenovo X1 Carbons from when they first came out. It's great, I had been considering a MacBook Air, but I liked the thin bezel on the X1, a little more screen resolution, and Linux-ability (was also a couple hundred cheaper at the time). I mainly use it for coding and web browsing and the slowest CPU with 4GB memory and 128GB SSD does fine for a dual boot setup with Win7 and Ubuntu. The overall look and feel, and the keyboard (pre-weird function row thing) are the highlights, but the screen is not the best, especially after using a MBP retina often. But it works and I'm happy with it. The changed keyboard would make me question a new model, and I'm not interested in a touch screen.
Also, the touchpad is the best I've used on a non-Apple laptop, and is of comparable quality. It has a trackpoint, but I never use it.
I have a very old x201 that I love... except for that damned screen. The visual angle is so small that even sited directly in front of it, looking square on, the blacks around the edges look bad. Makes it hard to watch a dark movie.
The other thinkpads I've seen don't have screens this bad, but this one is a corker. Apart from that, I love the little thing.
Sounds like I have some thinking to do. I've had this laptop for 5-6 years, and apart from the bad screen, the only fault is that the speaker started failing about a year ago (so I've been using headphones). Spend some time and effort fixing and upgrading this thing (new battery, screen, hunt for speaker issue, perhaps ssd upgrade?) or just go for a new machine?
One of the big bonuses to the thinkpads is that very complete user manuals are available free online, including exploded disassembly diagrams. Perhaps I should do the upgrade just because it's possible :)
Well that descision is pretty up to you. It depends on your needs and how much you like the laptop.
I'll recount my recent story.
I started out with an x200, which I loved for the size and lack of trackpad (I only use the trackpoint, I use keybinds and tiling wms heavily), and ran that for a few months. I did the screen upgrade[0] and was extremly happy with the mod. Unfortunatley a mishap at a hackerspace involving a large cup of beer destroyed my poor motherboard. I had a descision to make: either buy a new laptop or repair this one. I went with the rebuild plan. I squeezed in an x201 motherboard into the chassis instead of going with the same C2D mobo. I bought a refurbed 120GB SSD and a new 4GB stick of RAM. On top of that I had to replace my keyboard so that came as I also bought a new 9-Cell battery.
In the end I ended up with a near new x201 with an x200 chassis, an IPS screen, SSD, full DIMM of RAM, and a kew keyboard with roughly 8-9 hours of battery life all for about $550 out of pocket. I've spent about 2 years with it like this and if I had to make the choice again I would absolutley do the repair; I love my laptop. But I'm also only a sysadmin and compiling code and major power isn't a conern for me. Portability and reliability is.
[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4hVYq9glKg : This mod is just under $200 but you get an IPS equivalent screen that covers roughly 75-80% colour gamut. Way nicer to watch movies on.
Thanks for the info. Do you recall the model number of the IPS panel you used?
Poking around on youtube a bit more, here is the x201 TN screen (same as mine) in a side-by-side with an IPS screen - it's quite a dramatic comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzP3rFZXSgE
There's two screens you can choose from. The 120 is a matte finish just like the stock screen (a little finer/nicer than the stock finish) and the 110 is a glossy finish. Your preference.
The screen is a direct swap for the x200. For the x201 you need the CCFL/screen controller from an x200. The x201 has an LED backlight and it doesn't work with this screen. You need the CCFL controller from the x200. Easiest way to do this is to source a broken x200 with the lid intact and swap the screen into the lid, and then the lid onto the x201. Aside from that it's a direct swap.
These look pretty nice, especially the 1920x1080, despite the 14.1-inch form factor -- https://system76.com/laptops/model/galu1 -- especially if you're weary[1] of configuring binary drivers for the 9001st time, and again whenever you install a new distribution. I've never actually met anyone who has a system76, though, and personally, I think that installing Debian on a MacBook is a big pain (REFind notwithstanding), though it is nice once you get it going.
Only problem is that system76 seems to be stuck in the early 2000s, making laptops which are simply bigger than anyone really wants these days. Pixel density on the small ones, at least, has come on par with many PCs, but still lags Apple.
Earlier this year, I raved about my System76, it blew my Macbook away. Then is died a horrible death - thankfully, it was a client's.
Now, I've gotten a custom build Sager from ReflexNotebook (reflexnotebook.ca). It screams, it's 13", it was fully supported out of the box by Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17, and more importantly, a full 3 year warranty.
Though, if you'd like to support the community, check out ZaReason. I'm done buying from everyone else. Linux support is (shockingly) finally at the point where usually, things just work.
I might be the odd one out. I have a macbook pro retina running ubuntu 14 using parallels. Could not happier.
Assuming budget isn't an issue, I find many linux laptops (including the 13inch Dell) to have bad UX. Relatively short battery life, low res screen, and may i say, terrible trackpad.
Apple trackpads are significantly better than all competitors.
On top of that, a lot of nice to have apps don't run on linux. Things like screenhero. And apps that do have a linux build often don't work as well. (Think skype, hipchat)
Running VM on macbooks is the best of both worlds, you get linux for development and OSX for everything else.
Comparing notes with an OSX colleague, hipchat runs as poorly on OSX as it does on Linux. Mine sometimes gets random freezes (1/fortnight), his gets unreconnectable disconnections (1-2/week), both require relaunching the app. We have no devs on Win, so I don't know how that compares.
Go with parallels, without a doubt the best you can go with. Very fast and feels native.
The downside if you won't be able to use a windows manager like WMII. Because parallels provide bindings for unity that makes the whole experience smooth and they don't provide bindings for other windows managers
I had to take my old T60 apart last summer to clean out all the fans and apply more heatsink compound. Runs smooth now, but had an annoying habit of crashing during heat waves before I did this.
This also means that you shouldn't have any issues with running Linux distros on it. I have one and it is more than enough for the things I'd use a laptop for - email, SSH, programming, light web browsing.
As I need a new laptop, I was excited to see this – even more when I followed the link and saw that you could buy one with 3GB RAM and an SSD hard drive. What killed it for me was the screen size: 12 inches is much too small for me.
:(
I got a secondhand laptop, works great for the bulk of my work. HP 6910p, 2.4ghz core2duo, 4gb ram, $160. Pretty magnesium case and a ton of features and a trackpoint, easy sell for me, I'd have to spend ~$1500 that I consider much of an improvement.
Running Lubuntu 14.04 -- most of my work is Python related at the moment. I'm happy with this setup -- if I need more power I can always use the desktop which is a Core i5, $1500 to carry that around with me wasnt convincing
This guy is a big fan of Samsung, despite the case cracking on his? Sounds like a range of laptops to avoid.
I have a Thinkpad T410, it has been very solid, I don't think there is one item that will physically wear out anytime soon, except for the power plug, which is larger than most brands, but has started to become loose. Oh for a magsafe power plug! Actually the little bumps on the trackpad are starting to wear off in the middle, but this doesn't seem to affect it's function.
> except for the power plug ... has started to become loose
Another great thing about Thinkpads is they're quite easy to fix.
I assume you mean the jack? That should be a separate piece, attached to the motherboard with a cable. If it's just wobbly, then it just needs to be tightened, possibly even without opening the laptop. If it's a poor connection, then you should be able to get a new one for <$5. On the T61, both of these things are dead easy, but check the T410 Hardware Maintenance Manual for the details.
(of course, now I'm thinking about the prospect of replacing this piece with a magsafe connector...)
Would need more qualifiers; do you want a big screen, minimum size+weight, etc?
I just got a "new" Thinkpad T530. It's a two year old model, but the last of the Thinkpads with physical mouse buttons, essential for using the Trackpoint. Got it for $550 with three year warranty after rebates; the specs are comparable to a current model. It takes up to 16GB RAM and supports up to three dedicated storage devices. In general Thinkpads run Linux very well. This was mainly for the larger screen, I saved enough I can wait for a travel computer in early 2015 based on Broadwell.
You can find them from various closeout locations. They aren't usually such a great deal (value of unremoved features aside) but the 2392APU I got for an effective $550 is a very good deal.
89 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadHave they solved the EFI glitch when power was lost?
What's the baseline power consumption (as reported by powertop)?
I have a hard time imagining a more suitable laptop for Linux.
That said, we've got some Lenovo T440s in the office that come with a wifi card (Realtek RTL8192EE) that's unsupported by ubuntu at the moment (there's an active bug at ubuntu [1] that walks through the issues and has workarounds)
[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1239578
0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXa0XzNvuZU
1. http://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/01/stop-trying-to-innovate...
(1) my battery only lasts for 2.5 hours in linux on a good day, while it lasts over 6 hours in windows, and
(2) I develop touch-based apps, and ubuntu doesn't broadcast touch events to its browser. The system itself can receive touch events (if you tap three fingers on a window, it triggers the move mode), but the browsers themselves only receive mouse events. The result is that I cannot use pinch-and-zoom on touch-enabled webapps.
[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XXVnP0Y...
I did have to make a slight tweak to the trackpad config, but I believe they have fixed that with a recent change. If not, google for synaptics AreaBottomEdge and that will give you what you need to tune it.
I previously had a MacBook, and decided to stop using Apple products after the Bitcoin app ban fiasco (and because I don't agree with many of their policies). Now that I'm comfortable with my Linux laptop, I like it a lot more than my old MacBook. It's been a great experience, and it also means my development environment is closer to my production one, so I'm happy with it.
Edit: Despite my reservations towards the legacy weirdness of the Thinkpad line, I've learned through observation that they are kindof the industry standard for Linux laptops right now, and people seem to like them. When I meet someone running a Linux laptop, it's usually a thinkpad.
The TrackPoint is not a "legacy oddity," it's a far superior input method compared to a trackpad, if you take the time to learn how to use it.
IMHO the proper way to use a pointing device is "sparingly", which suits the trackpoint _perfectly_.
I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)
I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up at all, given that manufacturers have moved on to even more terrible ideas like soldering a paltry amount of RAM to the motherboard, and then removing one or even both sodimm slots. Maybe I just need a NUC strapped to a car battery.
Either way I understand you position.
[1] x200 chassis with x201 motherboard. Ask for more details if you're interested.
It does not erase your installation when it loses power. If you switch into or out of developer mode, it'll wipe user data, but otherwise your data is safe.
As for "locked-down computing", as long as Google continues to mandate developer mode as part of their hardware requirements, that seems quite sufficient to me.
https://plus.google.com/111049168280159033135/posts/4nkSEmGo...
Its the main reason why I dont use my pixel anymore.
> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch
I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?
I wouldn't be worried about my data per se (backed up with unison, etc), just the hassle of reinstalling and ultimately wary of electing into that kind of user-hostile design.
"Developer mode" is equivalent to rooting your phone - something that most users won't do, and that some misguided developers will even think they should discriminate against (I believe some banking apps were recently mentioned here). Even if you go out of your way to do it and suffer the oddities, buying such a device sends an economic signal (to Google and developers) and social signal (to less-clued friends) that the official locked-down experience is desirable.
>> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch
> I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?
News to me; ugh. Quoting one of the Google posts on this: "The problem here is that the flags that remember whether or not you're in dev-mode have to be stored somewhere, and we chose to put them in the battery-backed CMOS. When they're lost, we have to assume we should be in normal mode, or it opens a security hole. The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode. We may be able to fix that in future Chromebooks, but changing the verified boot security features generally requires a change to the read-only BIOS, which isn't possible with an update."
That's really broken.
Has this delay been quantified? I've used Linux-based systems with dynamic root of trust, with the TPM being queried at boot. There wasn't any noticeable delay in boot.
Plus, the images of the products are always at oblique angle that make seeing the keyboard unnecessarily difficult. Nobody gives two shits what a laptop looks like 85%-shut from the corner.
Everything works perfectly, including integrated GPS and 3G modem. Here's the setup instructions captured in Ansible so i don't need to do it manually when wiping: https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home-network/blob/master/role...
I would have really loved to use elementaryOS on it but without the 3.13 kernel the CPU and GPU refused to play nicely and the machine refused to sleep. These issues were fixed in the 3.13 kernel.
The main problem I have found with laptops and linux is still GPU. Im reluctant to use a laptop with anything but an intel GPU these days because the last experience I had with an AMD GPU was simply terrible. The AMD drivers refused to install on anything but a specific kernel and even when installed the laptop performed better when i told the AMD control panel to always use the intel chip over the AMD one.
Id like to be able to change my opinion, but AMD and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still some sort of absurd joke.
I didn't have trouble with my Dell e1505 running Nvidia drivers, but I didn't tax it very hard, either, other than using Compiz for some desktop effects.
I thought having a proper graphics chip rather than integrated Intel graphics would make for a snappier experience, but in the future I'll just stick with integrated graphics and max out the RAM.
Edit: Good to hear the Samsung works so well. I remember seeing some issues with those on the Ubuntu forums when they came out, which is why I opted for a different brand, but I'd expect to revisit them on my next purchase.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_integrated_finge...
The other thinkpads I've seen don't have screens this bad, but this one is a corker. Apart from that, I love the little thing.
One of the big bonuses to the thinkpads is that very complete user manuals are available free online, including exploded disassembly diagrams. Perhaps I should do the upgrade just because it's possible :)
I'll recount my recent story.
I started out with an x200, which I loved for the size and lack of trackpad (I only use the trackpoint, I use keybinds and tiling wms heavily), and ran that for a few months. I did the screen upgrade[0] and was extremly happy with the mod. Unfortunatley a mishap at a hackerspace involving a large cup of beer destroyed my poor motherboard. I had a descision to make: either buy a new laptop or repair this one. I went with the rebuild plan. I squeezed in an x201 motherboard into the chassis instead of going with the same C2D mobo. I bought a refurbed 120GB SSD and a new 4GB stick of RAM. On top of that I had to replace my keyboard so that came as I also bought a new 9-Cell battery.
In the end I ended up with a near new x201 with an x200 chassis, an IPS screen, SSD, full DIMM of RAM, and a kew keyboard with roughly 8-9 hours of battery life all for about $550 out of pocket. I've spent about 2 years with it like this and if I had to make the choice again I would absolutley do the repair; I love my laptop. But I'm also only a sysadmin and compiling code and major power isn't a conern for me. Portability and reliability is.
[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4hVYq9glKg : This mod is just under $200 but you get an IPS equivalent screen that covers roughly 75-80% colour gamut. Way nicer to watch movies on.
Poking around on youtube a bit more, here is the x201 TN screen (same as mine) in a side-by-side with an IPS screen - it's quite a dramatic comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzP3rFZXSgE
Brand is Hydis
HV121WX4-110 or HV121WX4-120
There's two screens you can choose from. The 120 is a matte finish just like the stock screen (a little finer/nicer than the stock finish) and the 110 is a glossy finish. Your preference.
The screen is a direct swap for the x200. For the x201 you need the CCFL/screen controller from an x200. The x201 has an LED backlight and it doesn't work with this screen. You need the CCFL controller from the x200. Easiest way to do this is to source a broken x200 with the lid intact and swap the screen into the lid, and then the lid onto the x201. Aside from that it's a direct swap.
Only problem is that system76 seems to be stuck in the early 2000s, making laptops which are simply bigger than anyone really wants these days. Pixel density on the small ones, at least, has come on par with many PCs, but still lags Apple.
Now, I've gotten a custom build Sager from ReflexNotebook (reflexnotebook.ca). It screams, it's 13", it was fully supported out of the box by Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17, and more importantly, a full 3 year warranty.
Though, if you'd like to support the community, check out ZaReason. I'm done buying from everyone else. Linux support is (shockingly) finally at the point where usually, things just work.
Assuming budget isn't an issue, I find many linux laptops (including the 13inch Dell) to have bad UX. Relatively short battery life, low res screen, and may i say, terrible trackpad.
Apple trackpads are significantly better than all competitors.
On top of that, a lot of nice to have apps don't run on linux. Things like screenhero. And apps that do have a linux build often don't work as well. (Think skype, hipchat)
Running VM on macbooks is the best of both worlds, you get linux for development and OSX for everything else.
The downside if you won't be able to use a windows manager like WMII. Because parallels provide bindings for unity that makes the whole experience smooth and they don't provide bindings for other windows managers
https://www.parallels.com/
I think people have been putting ubuntu on it.
#All of them has up time for more than 500 days. #T42p been on since 2007. #I am missing old IBM laptop, almost everything are serviceable.
I believe in "user-serviceable" of anything, Cars, Washing Machines and old IBM/Lenovo laptops.
I have fans controlled not to run unless CPU or GPU over 52C.
Looking for a replacement like Thinkpad is extreme hard.
http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-...
This also means that you shouldn't have any issues with running Linux distros on it. I have one and it is more than enough for the things I'd use a laptop for - email, SSH, programming, light web browsing.
Running Lubuntu 14.04 -- most of my work is Python related at the moment. I'm happy with this setup -- if I need more power I can always use the desktop which is a Core i5, $1500 to carry that around with me wasnt convincing
I have a Thinkpad T410, it has been very solid, I don't think there is one item that will physically wear out anytime soon, except for the power plug, which is larger than most brands, but has started to become loose. Oh for a magsafe power plug! Actually the little bumps on the trackpad are starting to wear off in the middle, but this doesn't seem to affect it's function.
Another great thing about Thinkpads is they're quite easy to fix.
I assume you mean the jack? That should be a separate piece, attached to the motherboard with a cable. If it's just wobbly, then it just needs to be tightened, possibly even without opening the laptop. If it's a poor connection, then you should be able to get a new one for <$5. On the T61, both of these things are dead easy, but check the T410 Hardware Maintenance Manual for the details.
(of course, now I'm thinking about the prospect of replacing this piece with a magsafe connector...)
I just want nice things! ;)
I just got a "new" Thinkpad T530. It's a two year old model, but the last of the Thinkpads with physical mouse buttons, essential for using the Trackpoint. Got it for $550 with three year warranty after rebates; the specs are comparable to a current model. It takes up to 16GB RAM and supports up to three dedicated storage devices. In general Thinkpads run Linux very well. This was mainly for the larger screen, I saved enough I can wait for a travel computer in early 2015 based on Broadwell.
https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=t530&...