Hi everyone!
I need to buy a new laptop to replace my 12 years old laptop. I didn’t look after hardware for a while for some personal reasons.
I will buy something new. My needs are:
- photo editing
- video editing
- vector graphics editing/creation
- good battery life (I don’t want to worry about)
- web navigating, docs, spreadsheets
- USB-C charging would be nice
I don’t game, and Framework isn’t available where I live.
I would be happy to have some recommendation on what is a good hardware for this use and good brand.
Thanks!
Tuxedo computers could be a good fit I think? It’s like system76, but from Germany. You can pick from a few OS including an Ubuntu fork they made ( tuxedo os ). You can tweak the laptop yourself ( different you/CPUs/disk sizes/… ) to fit your use case.
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com
Personally I’ve never bought there, but a friend of mine has and he’s happy with his purchase.
Note: I do not work for them, or am affiliated with them in any way.
What da bot doin
Looks like my account was marked ( unintentionally ) as bot in my settings. That should be resolved now. I found and updated the setting
Also have some Coreboot Models!
I would favour an AMD Ryzen 7000 based laptop. Much better battery life than Intel and better graphics performance.
Lenovo ThinkPad T and P series are excellent build quality.
Asus Zenbooks or Expertbooks with OLED screens are also excellent. Displays are on par, or superior to Macbooks. Excellent colour accuracy.
Make sure you get something with at least 16GB of Ram, or 32GB if available.
While I agree with the recommendations (I have a ThinkPad P14S Gen4 now) I wouldn’t say the battery life is great - especially if OP wants to do video editing and such. Otherwise it’s an amazing laptop (now that it’s actually supported by the kernel). I still suspect the Intel variant would be better for battery life though.
With that being said for anything this intensive you’ll need a charger with any laptop because it will simply not be able to keep working for 8+ hours with this kind of software. In fact get a docking station and a second screen too unless you plan to be on the go all of the time; the productivity increase from getting a second screen is insane.
Oh and be prepared to lose a lot of the fancy stuff with Linux - sure you get an amazing screen but no HDR. You don’t get the sound improvements from the official Lenovo drivers for Windows, etc. Oh and you should keep the Windows partition (just shrink it to a minimum) - makes it much easier to keep the bios up to date.
Just get a thinkpad.
Easy choice. Takes out the guesswork.
Yeah, Thinkpad’s are at the end of the IQ curve.
Any T or P series with the minimum specs you’re lokkung for. Tons on eBay.
Which one?
I know you don’t game but a dedicated GPU will be a godsend for video editing. Depending on the budget I would get a used gaming laptop like an Omen or a legion 5
Edit: worst case wait a year for parts and laptops to be really cheap haha.
+1 for Lenovo Legion/HP Omen.
In this order, IMO.
The downside of a dedicated GPU is that your battery life is going to be bad. Intel Iris graphics have come a long way and are likely fine for this kind of thing.
A dedicated GPU will mean reduced battery life. If you are only going to edit video at your desk, I would suggest getting a laptop with a thunderbolt 3 or USB 4 port and an external GPU. Make sure the port provides 4 PCIe lanes, not all of them do.
As someone who frequents the laptop market, I’ll throw in my two-cents.
If you’re looking for value, don’t compromise on performance, buy refurbished.
While I’m certain it is definitely different from country to country, a refurbished laptop typically has more life to give in them.
I’d recommend business laptops, such as the Dell Latitudes or the Lenovo Thinkpads, but an M1 MacBook Air provides an absolutely shocking amount of performance for the price.
Checking sites like eBay or the pages of hardware resellers rather than big box stores is definitely where I’d go.
I will not compromise on the performance. I will definitively look to the refurbished units. The biggest issue we have here, it’s we are a small country and our own keyboard layout (the keyboard isn’t a real issue).
Thanks for the help.
True, M1 and even M2 macs have superb battery life. Fedora Asahi remix will still be pretty hacky though and have more problems. But a lot works now, it has opengl support, a FOSS rust driver for the GPU and more.
My two cents; if you want to use Linux on it, then do yourself a favor and pick a laptop from a Linux-first vendor. So the likes of NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo and others found on the link over here come to mind. Besides that, it’s important that the device in question either has a dedicated GPU (or at least supports eGPUs). Furthermore, choose a device with relatively high battery capacity; they go up to ~99 Wh, so pick something that’s at least relatively close to that number.
Please don’t; tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule, and the hardware is “fine” at best. I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.
tuxedo/system76/metabox/etc are all rebadged Clevo ODM designs.
Yup, clearly. /s
The support that these vendors put in for Linux is miniscule
Wow, that’s a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.
the hardware is “fine” at best
Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple’s finest go beyond “fine”.
I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Hmm…, very interesting! I’m totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.
Conversely, Dell and Lenovo laptops tend to have very good Linux support and can be had relatively cheaply, especially if you get something that isn’t bleeding edge.
I don’t deny this. However, none of Dell’s laptops with decent Linux support have an AMD CPU (or one of Intel’s latest Meteor Lake CPUs). Thus, at least in terms of battery life, it’s not desirable; with battery life being something that OP has explicitly mentioned. As for Lenovo, the Thinkpad-line (the one generally recommended for its Linux-support) with AMD CPUs starts at a very high price. At which point, the “fine” hardware from the Linux-first vendor not only starts to be attractive but highly desirable by comparison.
Yup, clearly. /s
That seemed nice until…
WTF? 400€ to change the keyboard language?
So what happens is that changing the keyboard language comes together with the CPU upgrade from Intel® Core® i3-1315U to Intel® Core® i7-1360P. That’s what you pay for*. I agree with you that they might have done a better job at conveying what’s happening. For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t immediately notice this myself. Therefore I tried to contact them in hopes of resolving the issue. They responded very quickly (like within a couple of minutes) and explained what was going on. Props to them for that!
Good on them for explaining. But at that price, why even propose the option? That’s a 40% price increase just to get your keyboard layout where it’s free everywhere else.
That’s a 40% price increase just to get your keyboard layout and a CPU upgrade
Fixed that for you*.
Oh right, I misread your first comment sorry.
Wow, that’s a bold claim if anything. First time seeing a Pop!_OS-denier, I assume you also deny the existence of COSMIC? And these are just some of the work done done by System76 only.
To clarify, they do jack shit to add major hardware support (etc). This seems like a disingenuous response.
Pop isn’t adding anything much to Linux; it’s yet another Debian derivative by way of Ubuntu. Take this from me as a system admin who has supported (and used) Pop, and has had to dig into the internals and submit bugs. Cosmic is cool and all, but it’s mostly just eye candy for GNOME at the end of the day. System76 also seem to still be developing working with other people skills.
That’s fine, if that’s what you want. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using Pop.
Tuxedo still haven’t as far as I’m aware released ITE829x Linux drivers (in an upstreamable form) for example; I had to reverse engineer the damned chip.
Clevo hardware lacks a lot of the polish that you just quietly get from a major manufacturer.
I for one love my desktop 3700x and 3060ti mobile stuffed into a laptop chassis. No compromises were made on this hardware.
Hmm…, very interesting! I’m totally oblivious of the existence of such a thing. If that is your benchmark, then I can actually understand what you meant with your earlier claim. Please feel free to enlighten me on how this works 😊.
Sorry, the 3060ti was conflating my desktop; it’s literally a 2060 which is far worse in terms of termals and power.
The Clevo NH58AD can be specced with a Ryzen 7 3700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. I have one. There are definitely trade-offs and for some reason the damned thing is quite unstable with 3200MHz RAM even though it’s explicitly supported.
I have this laptop. I look at the Linux offerings from these manufacturers. I contribute to them. In my professional life I’ve managed fleets of Laptops from major manufacturers (particularly the business-y lines), with some rebadged Clevos (for some reason) at the mix. I am speaking from experience with the hardware here.
I actually have another previous gen Intel one, too - it has some interesting design choices.
I’m not saying that it’s all bad, and you seem to be taking this as something of a personal attack.
It’s fine to like these companies. I want them to succeed, but Clevo as an ODM tend to produce products that lack the polish of a comparable (say) Dell, and don’t achieve the same volume of sales as a major manufacturer to achieve lower costs through increased volume (etc) - the cost savings have to come from somewhere and often that’s the firmware, material design, and design quality.
These products are fine, don’t pretend that they’re perfect though, you’re doing them a disservice.
Can we discontinue the /s please. Its just cringe and adds nothing. (Minor pet peeve)
Hmm…, I think with the level of literacy (or just plain text skimping) we find on the internet, anything that helps in conveying the message is a clear win; especially if merely the use of just two characters enables one to achieve this.
Could you elaborate on what you dislike about it? I’m just genuinely curious*.
The /s is cheap, lazy and sometimes rude. I’ve never seen it add anything and at worst it can be a insult to someone’s intelligence.
Hmm…, so if I understand you correctly; using /s is lazy, so I should either not try to convey sarcasm in written text or make it more clear that it’s sarcasm without saying that it’s sarcasm? Perhaps a better question would be: how would you formulate that one sentence? Once again, I’m genuinely curious and I’m thankful that you took the effort to type that down.
I think the key is not trying to make a joke out of something obvious. It isn’t funny and if you are making the joke right most people will pick up that its satire.
I had a 10th gen S76 Lemur. The hardware was a mixed bag. Chassis was nice and light (compared to Apple), but enameled so the edges eventually chipped. Keyboard/trackpad were average. Speakers were awful… Battery life was excellent like usually got around 20 hours on a charge (and often more with a little effort!). I also had a number of hardware failures and dealing with their support was pretty terrible… Broken control key out of the box, Wifi died twice, second time they replaced the motherboard (and that took like… 9 weeks), then it completely died a year later when it was finally out of warranty. A real mixed bag of Pop OS being nice, and having great software/firmware support, but also multiple hardware failures coupled with terrible warranty support.
I found there support to be pretty helpful although I’ve only had two issues. The first issue was the track pad would quick working on a reboot and was fixed by updated the firmware. The second issue was my thunderbolt port stopped working and was fixed by disconnecting the battery for 10 min.
Other than that my laptop is very nice and performs well. The speakers are also pretty good and I don’t have any complains.
I disagree. I have a System76 laptop and I love it and there support team. I could care less that it is a Clevo. It also comes with system76 boot which allows you to weaken Intel ME.
That’s good for you, really. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it and I’m not going to have a go at you for liking a brand.
I have several rebadged Clevos just through happenstance - right place right time deals. For what I paid they are great laptops - I wouldn’t buy one new though. My old (secondhand) XPS 15 was a far superior experience overall while still packing broadly similar hardware to one of my Clevos - I ended up giving it away when I got a 3700X based system which just lacks some of the polish that you get from a major manufacturer.
I also once had a Dell that would ‘sing’ to me in a quiet room; I eventually worked out that I was hearing the pci-e and USB through the speakers. Not pleasant. YMMV. Use what makes you happy.
I highly recommend avoiding this rhetoric because you will end up paying more for inferior hardware.
You are not actually “doing yourself a favor.”
Ultimately, any discussion on this would boil down to cost vs convenience. As OP hasn’t explicitly stated anything on this regard, it seems unproductive to delve into this further. However, strictly speaking, I have to agree with you that the Linux-first vendors are (in almost all cases) more expensive. Thank you for pointing that out for OP.
In case you're as bored as I am 😅.
Let’s start with stating some facts from OP:
- OP takes the effort to state six wishes/requirements without mentioning price.
- OP implies to at least have considered the Framework laptop, for which the 16 inch variant -the one actually capable of video editing etc- is not a cheap device either.
- OP states: “I don’t want to worry about” when talking about battery life. If anything, that sounds like one that would prefer convenience over cost.
Therefore, I assumed that OP wasn’t cost-limited by any means (they didn’t state it anyways).
Anyhow, allow me to illustrate how much OP might have to “pay more” for “inferior hardware”:
- Found this one on https://old.reddit.com/r/LaptopDeals, a site which you mentioned elsewhere under OP. Seems like a cool laptop, not gonna lie. It’s just a random one I picked. Let’s see what we can find on the other side:
- Well look at that? Better CPU and better battery, just all around a great package (it even has a mechanical keyboard?!). Furthermore. better warranty terms and possible to extend to 5 years (compared to a measly 1 year for the other laptop). Yes, it’s a significantly more expensive laptop. But, (for me) it’s clearly the superior deal especially when the Linux support is considered. You’re absolutely free to disagree though 😉.
They said they don’t game. Why GPU? That’s horrible for battery.
They said they don’t game.
GPUs aren’t exclusive to gaming (as you should know).
Why GPU?
OP mentioned the intent to do video editing on the device. Unfortunately, the amount of good video editors on Linux is currently limited to just Davinci Resolve(; sure, the likes of Kdenlive (etc) exists, but none of them are very suitable for professional usage[1]). While I’m thankful that Davinci Resolve works on Linux, it’s -according to their own documentation- simply not possible to make use of it without a dedicated GPU (at least on Linux). Thus, warranting the need for a dedicated GPU.
That’s horrible for battery.
I’m aware that that’s a concern. Thankfully, there are workarounds. And if all else fails, there’s always the possibility to make use of eGPUs; which I’ve actually explicitly mentioned in my earlier reply for this exact reason (without mentioning explicitly for which reason it was mentioned*).
- OP might not even need it for professional use, but I assumed they did*.
Just my two cents… But my x1 carbon, running tumbleweed has been my single greatest Linux on laptop experience, ever… And I’ve used many different laptops over the years. System76, framework, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, hp, apple… My x1 has been absolutely amazing!
That’s very valuable! Thank you for mentioning that! To make it even more relevant to OP, I would like to pose the following questions:
- Which CPU?
- Which GPU?
- How has the battery life been? Consider both light and heavy use*
Thank you in advance!
Cpu is an i5, and I forget what specific model but I can check. My carbon is an older Gen 5. It also just uses the Cpu for graphics… No dedicated graphics card. Battery life is good concidering the age (the battery is still original, and I get probably 3 hrs with moderate use. My carbon also is the 8gb (ram) model. On this particular model the ram is soldered on, so upgrading isn’t an option (without replacing the board, obviously).
Now, for me… I use the machine for work. I’m a systems administrator and spend most of my time remotong into servers and end user machines… So the work load on the laptop is on the lighter side. I do have various vm’s that I spin up form time to time, but never more than one at a time.
Anyway, as I said before, it has been the single greatest Linux experience on a laptop I’ve ever had. Everything just works, and it’s been rock solid. I’ve been running this machine as a daily driver for work now for about three years.
Edit: Love the down vote, also. Makes me feel like this is reddit all over again. Lmao. Down vote for sharing an opinion of what’s been the best Linux on laptop experience I’ve ever had. Whoever down voted me… Can you correct me and tell me the correct answer for what has been the best Linux experience on a laptop? I’m obviously mistaken.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences! I’m afraid it might not be very relevant as it’s a device that’s at least 6 years old by now 😅 (at least according to this source. Regardless, user experiences are valuable. And I’m glad to hear that the device has been working flawlessly for you so far 😊.
Love the down vote, also. Makes me feel like this is reddit all over again. Lmao. Down vote for sharing an opinion of what’s been the best Linux on laptop experience I’ve ever had.
Haters gonna hate, I guess. Don’t worry too much about it. The thread you’re in (so the one starting with my first reply under this post) also is the most controversial under this post. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some folks just down voted indiscriminately for… some reason…
it’s easy to recommend a ThinkPad for Linux, and something in the T or P series laptops might suit you. video editing is a potential difficulty though, as that feels a little more workstation-grade than the rest, and you’ll probably want to go big on RAM (32GB would be best) and be sure to get at least an intel i7. I’ve not had great luck with battery life on AMD (shame because everything else is great) but perhaps others have tips for doing better.
you could also go for the ThinkPad yoga models (make sure they’re still ThinkPad though! they also sell a different model line just called “yoga”) if you wanted a tablet/convertible for graphics work.
anyway look at the T14, P14s, or P16 if you want something bigger. whatever the latest generation of those models is.
Lenovo build quality has been shit lately. My IT dept is constantly returning Thinkpads for various issues.
The state agency bureau I provide IT support for has had 10% (8 out of 80) of their new ThinkPads returned for warranty work, with several more showing signs of developing the same problem. The USB-C charging/data port broke on all of them.
I work in a computer repair shop and we rarely see any Thinkpads of any age.
Far from shit. And they have among the best warranty options in the biz
I constantly check out dell refurbished for deals on workstations. Pretty good Linux compatibility in my experience, workstation hardware, and they have 50% deals all the dang time. The precision line of workstations looks like it would meet your needs.
I’m still convinced the Dell Refurbished website isn’t real. Like why do they even bother selling crappy Celeron and Pentium systems when this website exists?
good battery life (I don’t want to worry about)
Define good battery life.
I’m fine with several hours of use. 6 hours would be great. The second point is to no worry about having no battery when I take out of my backpack. The second point is also depending on the OS. With all I read and people, I would look for 94Wh at least.
Too many choices to help narrow it down for you. But you need to keep your own workflow in mind when picking out your CPU and GPU, for the software compatibility.
I use Davinci Resolve for my video editing, one of the few Professional NLE officially supported on Linux. Intel’s iGPU is incompatible with the software at this time. There are hacks and unofficial patches which are pointed out on the arch wiki, but the work required isn’t easy.
If you are using Adobe software you might need more power so you can run Windows in a VM, or has up-gradable storage so you can comfortably dual boot.
Good Battery is an cross x86 issue. While Intel and AMD are now trying to compete with Apple Silicon in terms of power and battery life. Stand by battery drain is still an issue. Google “Windows Modern Standby” if you want to get informed. If I remember correctly the laptop needs to have S3 Sleep enabled on it, and it’s usually not specified on a spec sheet.
Another battery saving tool is a CPU limiter like Slimbook Battery. My Laptop has a terrible fan curve and I need to throttle the CPU back, else the machine overheats. But it’s also good for the battery life too.
Software support is down to the Package Manager. Flatpak is your friend for most of this, but if you wanna dive into the deep end, so is the AUR if you installed Arch.
USB-C Charging is down to the laptop manufacturer. Here is a good infographic on the ones you need to look for. Intel Laptops are a safe bet.
Do you know if the intel Xeon GPUs are also not working with Resolve?
Do you know if the intel Xeon GPUs are also not working with Resolve?
Do you know if the intel Xeon GPUs are also not working with Resolve?
No clue. According to the arch wiki you need a nodded Intel computer runtime
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/DaVinci_Resolve#Installation
Dell XPS or Latitude or Precision, ThinkPad P or X, Framework, LG Gram, System76 and other linux-focused manufacturers, Asus Vivobook
My actual laptop is a Librem 14 by Purism and it is amazing!! I would recomend also checking https://system76.com/laptops , https://es.starlabs.systems/ and https://minifree.org/ These all come with linux, are made with coreboot or libreboot installed and are privacy and security oriented.
if you want really really good battery life, a good laptop for that seems to be the T480 (8th gen intel).
It’s relatively cheap used and if you get the 24wh internal and 72wh external batteries you can get 96wh in total
Have no idea if they’re any good but since you ppstwd this in Linux maybe one from the people that do PopOS:
I would not recommend them. I bought a Galago Pro in 2020, and it’s been a huge disappointment. Pop!_OS was very buggy, and their support was not helpful. I ultimately installed Ubuntu, and it’s now significantly more stable, but I’m left asking the question “why did I pay a premium for a clevo, when I’m not getting anything out of the custom software or support?”
Even with Ubuntu, it’s not a good laptop. The speakers are worse than my phone, a fully charged battery will die completely in less than a day when the laptop is suspended, it runs unbelievably hot. As a developer who depends on this machine for daily work, it’s been intensely frustrating.
That’s not the experience I’ve had. Maybe they have gotten better as my battery life is a full day and the speakers are great. I wish it had more thunderbolt but that may be fixed if or when they release there own hardware.
The battery life and speakers will certainly be model dependent. The quality of the machine I received and the lackluster support, given the price I paid, are what I find most frustrating. The computer would be fine for ~$600, but I paid over $1000. I paid a premium expecting System76 to hold themselves to a high standard, and so far, they’ve let me down in multiple ways.
I do recognize with a different model, the experience could be 180°, but if buying from them is a roll-of-the-dice, for me personally, that’s enough to buy from someone else next time.
I have this device and it works well. Keep in mind there support is based in Denver Colorado so if your international you may have a issue.
starlabs maybe?
