Best Linux laptop for 2023 (beehaw.org)

submitted 11 months ago by ede@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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I’m in the market for a new Linux laptop. My current machine is a 2018 i7 with 64GB of RAM, a 4K screen, 1TB of storage, 2x USB-C and 1x USB-A.

I’m looking for something that can match my current specs but brings great battery life, modern Wi-Fi, and a fingerprint reader. I don’t have to have 4K, and may actually prefer lower resolution for the battery savings.

I’d love to hear some recommendations for a machine built within the past 12 months. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

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[-] albsen@beehaw.org 12 points 11 months ago

If your OK with arm I'd say the macbooks and especially the macbook air are ready with asahi for daily use. I'm personally considering getting to run linux on as daily driver.

[-] ede@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago

That’s an interesting point. I could buy my wife a new Air and update her M1 to run Linux. Thanks for the suggestion!

[-] jcarax@beehaw.org 13 points 11 months ago

Check the status of Asahi Linux, they're making a lot of progress on Apple silicon, but it's very early. I wouldn't recommend it, at this point.

Do you actually need 64GB of RAM? The Thinkpad T16 AMD would be a good choice, but the T14s AMD has just stupidly low fan noise in Notebookcheck's review. You definitely want to focus on AMD, Intel's efficiency is... not great right now. As an added benefit, you get AMD graphics from the APU, so none of the Nvidia driver fuckery, and better performance than Intel.

Personally, I'm waiting for the T14s Gen 4 AMD. The 7840u is zen 4, GCN 3, and TSMC 4nm over the 6850u's zen 3, GCN2, and TSMC 6nm. The T14 and T16 just hit Lenovo's model database 'psref' earlier this week, so I'd expect them out in the next couple months. The T14s hasn't been seen yet, I'd guess it hits psref in the next couple weeks. But, I'm prepared to wait into Q4, if need be, and some think I will be.

[-] ede@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah, the RAM is a hard requirement. I’d like more if I could. My desktop is AMD so I’m not against using them at all if it makes sense to do so. I’ve also enjoyed Lenovo in the past but couldn’t find a well enough equipped unit for my liking.

[-] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

What are you doing that makes having 64gb ram useful?

[-] areyouevenreal@lemmy.fmhy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

They already answered this:

I’m in DevSecOps, and do a lot of heavy development and testing, as well as PoCs. Ideally, I’d have 128GB of RAM but laptops aren’t quite there yet. The HD is a Samsung SSD.

[-] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 0 points 11 months ago

I can't see your comment about heavy dev and testing.

I'm curious about what exactly is chewing up that much RAM. Do you have a ridiculous amount of containers running? Or a big ram disk or something?

[-] areyouevenreal@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

It's not my comment. You are talking to the completely wrong person. Go look at their comments.

[-] ede@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago

I develop software and do a lot of PoC with VMs and containers.

[-] jcarax@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

Ah, I think to get 64GB from a Thinkpad you'd have to move up to a P series, and even the P16s and P14s that are based on the T16 and T14 will be significantly warmer and louder than those others. They're very much tuned for performance. Unfortunately, Lenovo is soldering RAM far more on their AMD models than the Intel models, so you won't be able to run above spec.