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!
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.
Yup, clearly. /s
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.
Another bold claim; one which only holds true if merely Apple’s finest go beyond “fine”.
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 😊.
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.
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.
Fixed that for you*.
Oh right, I misread your first comment sorry.
Np fam. In retrospect, I agree with you that I should have done a better job at making it as clear as possible ☺️.
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.
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 think I got you now. I won’t change my ways; /s is just way too convenient for me to give up on 😅. I guess I’m weak… Regardless, I think you’ve at least given me some food for thought. So thank you for that!
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.