Best/worst laptops for Gentoo?

Message

Krotos · Post by **Krotos** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:21 am

I realize that this question gets posted periodically but I haven't seen it on the forums recently. My old laptop has become largely nonfunctional and I'm looking to buy a new one; of course, I will be putting Gentoo on it. I'll be using it primarily for coding and office work (as opposed to gaming or multimedia). Does anyone have any recommendations for recent-ish models and brands in the sub-$2000 range, and also ones to avoid? (In particular, I've had trouble in the past with wifi.) Even better would be if there's no preinstalled Windows so you don't need to pay the Microsoft tax.

Thanks!

Hypnos · Post by **Hypnos** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:55 am

Any PC with Linux-compatible components will work fine with Gentoo.

One well-known vendor for Linux-compatible laptops without Windows pre-installed is System76.

I myself only buy Thinkpads with all-Intel components, as I need the ergonomics (e.g. a trackpoint) and durability/ruggedness.

HTH

s_bernstein · Post by **s_bernstein** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:13 am

I would also recommend looking for a Lenovo ThinkPad. The ThinkPad part is important if you expect to get something reasonable. Also, if you don't need to be cutting edge with the latest hardware, you might consider a refurbished TP with an older model core i and save loads of money or get a better equipped model (like ssd or wwan).

roarinelk · Post by **roarinelk** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:45 am

I have a Dell M6600, which also works extremely well with Linux. Wireless, even the builtin 3G-Modem, external display connectors, brightness control, hotkeys, etc, all work out of the box.

Hypnos · Post by **Hypnos** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:40 pm

Let me add Gentoo-specific recommendations for specs:

1) SSD -- super fast Portage tree searches, generally makes life better (not suitable for mail or database servers which have lots of writes)

2) extra RAM -- so you can build most things in tmpfs and minimize swap usage without wearing out your SSD; also useful for having a bazillion browser tabs open

3) faster CPU -- makes compilation go faster

#1, 2 are most important; #3 just comes down to your patience and how heavy of a software setup you like to use. The 1.6GHz ultra-low voltage Core2 Duo in my Thinkpad X301 is more than adequate for maintaining my lean XFCE desktop (I use binary versions of OpenOffice and Firefox). The only time I wish I had more CPU is when playing certain HD vids, e.g. inside Flash.

gienah · Post by **gienah** » Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:51 am

Since I compile lots of stuff, personally my preferences were in this order:

1) faster CPU -- makes compilation go faster

2) extra RAM -- zfs uses it to cache stuff

I don't have an SSD, could not afford it after the CPU and RAM. I need the disk space anyway so run
spinning hard drives, zfs with lz4 compression.

ppurka · Post by **ppurka** » Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:42 pm

In terms of hardware, avoid broadcom wifi chipsets - they are a real pain to get working well. Frequent disconnects and unreliable wifi with binary driver (not to mention no guarantee that it will work with the next kernel), and no powermanagement with the in-kernel driver.

Nvidia drivers for nvidia graphics used to be good but they messed up in a major fashion with the move to xrandr. Last time I checked, it wasn't possible to get the resolutions that the laptop graphics supports - one would get only the max resolution. This transformed the simple act of cloning displays from a simple disper command to a hell of an experience. The nouveau driver is ok, again if you don't want powermanagement. End result - avoid nvidia graphics, unless they have fixed this crazy xrandr implementation. Also try to find out the status of support for dual graphics cards (nvidia+intel). I would avoid them.

For now, I see that intel graphics works well - I have cycled my laptop with Intel HD4000 through about 20 suspend-resume cycles and it is (still) working fine. For the record, I also found the binary nvidia drivers to be very stable with respect to suspend-resume cycles - I had gone more than an entire month of suspending and resuming my laptop at least twice every day.

Finally, don't buy one of those ultra cheap machines which are less than $600. They are cheap for a reason. The last one I had (a lenovo) had bad wifi (broadcom), overheating problems, terribly awful and aggressive hard disk powermanagement, and a display that literally had a vertical viewing angle of about 5deg - the colors would change drastically if I wasn't looking right about orthogonal to the display. It is not like nothing works on linux - things do work, but they don't work well. With these cheap laptops the hardware itself is so bad that it doesn't matter whether you run linux or windows; it sucks either way.

EDIT: My current config is a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook. Everything works, after applying a patch for backlight to the kernel. Typical battery life is around 7 hours with text editing and browsing.

twwwater · Post by **twwwater** » Fri Jul 05, 2013 9:31 am

That's what i find . I also want to buy a new laptop for recent days. And want to ask for advices. Thank (all of you )

for your suggestions

glenn_s · Post by **glenn_s** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 2:04 am

I just bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T530, and I can attest that it plays well with Gentoo. This is my first-ever Gentoo installation, and it has gone nearly flawlessly for me.

There's great AHCI support for the hardware, and a lot of the buttons end up working "out of the box".

I got mine with the nvidia card, but right now I'm running everything on the Intel graphics without a problem. Saves on power, too. Hoping to get Bumblebee running soon.

Plus, the hardware itself is great, the price point is reasonable, and my customer service experience so far has been great.

666threesixes666 · Post by **666threesixes666** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 2:19 am

there needs to be an OS usb stick that audits and rates hardware. like take usb stick pre loaded with it, that says nvidia, junk, ath5k wifi +, seagate, junk. and rate that box an F for linux compatibility...

no linux support? boycott... and get everyone else you know boycotting too... stuff that works in linux generally works PERFECT in doze.

Princess Nell · Post by **Princess Nell** » Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:44 pm

T530++. I'm very pleased with it. The only thing I haven't got to work yet is the SDHC slot. Even got FreeBSD/gnome to work with Intel

On the downside, the overall feel of it is cheaper than older ThinkPads, keyboard etc. Also, it doesn't have a LED for the capslock key which I find rather idiotic. How much can you shave off the price of a USD1k+ laptop by leaving that out?

defer- · Post by **defer-** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 10:56 am

Thinkpad is great choise. I have been using R500 since 2009. Its quite durable laptop and the trackpoint mouse is great. It has core 2 duo, ssd and intel graphics. The intel graphics driver is best i have seen.

chithanh · Post by **chithanh** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:53 pm

The wiki usually gives you an idea how easy or difficult it is to make a particular laptop work well with Gentoo:
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Category:Laptops
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Category:Laptops

C5ace · Post by **C5ace** » Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:44 am

I have two HP (8GB ram) and two Toshiba (4GB ram) laptops.

The Toshiba are much better quality, faster and most important much better displays and keyboards.

The Toshiba where bought 2013 for about $1,000.00 each.
TOSHIBA.Satellite C850.PSKC8A-09V00S.7C143459R.PSKC8A-09V00S
Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B970 @ 2.30GHz

The HP's where bought 2015 for about $500.00 each.
HP Notebook CND5413TC5 P4Y45PA#ABG
AMD A6-5200 APU with Radeon(TM) HD Graphics, Socket FT1

Compiling OpenOffice is much faster on the Toshiba laptops than on the 4 core AMD HP..

irenicus09 · Post by **irenicus09** » Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:38 am

Warning: Grave digger spotted!

Why not simply start a new thread instead of digging up a 3-4 year old thread.

Anyway, I'm interested in this topic as well and want to hear other peoples opinion.

Post by **fedeliallalinea** » Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:44 am

In OTW there is a recent thread

cboldt · Post by **cboldt** » Sun Feb 26, 2017 12:04 pm

T420 and X201 (ThinkPad) machines - best of the few models I've tried. Got a few HP models to work fine, but the hardware failures make them second rate in my book (NC6000, N5425).

Amazon and NewEgg sell refurbished ThinkPad. Can't beat the price/performance combo.

klas · Post by **klas** » Sun Sep 10, 2017 10:44 pm

my lenovo x1 second gen just can not work with gentoo , arch or centos only work with fedora, I don t know why . I tried install gentoo or arch for two weeks it can not work . I am looking forward to buy some laptop that can ,
my desktop is on arch

ct85711 · Post by **ct85711** » Sun Sep 10, 2017 11:00 pm

my lenovo x1 second gen just can not work with gentoo , arch or centos only work with fedora, I don t know why

Linux is linux, it doesn't matter what distro you are using, as it is the same software either way. If it works in one distro, it could work in another, you need to figure out what is different between them (either some package version, a patch, or configuration setting). Now if you are having issues with their boot cd's, I've encountered numerous issues of where my system will only with certain ones due to differences in the drivers (and their version) available. Even then, the boot cd has no impact on installing gentoo, so in the end that issue was no concern...

P.Kosunen · Post by **P.Kosunen** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 9:36 am

klas wrote:my lenovo x1 second gen just can not work with gentoo , arch or centos only work with fedora, I don t know why . I tried install gentoo or arch for two weeks it can not work . I am looking forward to buy some laptop that can ,
my desktop is on arch

Copy kernel config from working Fedora to Gentoo and start from there.

nokilli · Post by **nokilli** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 9:46 am

ct85711 wrote:
my lenovo x1 second gen just can not work with gentoo , arch or centos only work with fedora, I don t know why
Linux is linux, it doesn't matter what distro you are using, as it is the same software either way. If it works in one distro, it could work in another, you need to figure out what is different between them (either some package version, a patch, or configuration setting). Now if you are having issues with their boot cd's, I've encountered numerous issues of where my system will only with certain ones due to differences in the drivers (and their version) available. Even then, the boot cd has no impact on installing gentoo, so in the end that issue was no concern...

That's what I thought too.

So I bought a Chromebook. An HP Chromebook 14 with an Nvidia Tegra K1 inside.

There was a Chrubuntu hack I found that let me get a pretty decent Ubuntu installation going so I thought naturally let me put Gentoo on there instead. At the time no handbook for ARM but that wasn't really the show stopper.

It turns out the Chrubuntu script basically just rips out the kernel from the ChromeOS install, video drivers and all, and then pairs it with a reference Linux image provided by Nvidia which is based off of Ubuntu. No source available for Nvidia's video drivers (surprise!). So while technically I am able to build Gentoo for the system, it would either be with a kernel I build using open source video (which means none of the Tegra K1 goodness... which is pretty good considering the price) or using the ChromeOS kernel, which wouldn't be the installation I am used to doing where the kernel sources are laid out for X and all the other hardware stuff and where I'm not able to get my feature set (no LVM or dm-crypt I think it was).

Ubuntu becoming a standard means hardware vendors feel free to just get shit working there and then leave everybody else (Gentoo, et al) to figure out the gnarly details for themselves. So I would just amend the above sentiment to read, it doesn't matter what distro you are using, unless it's Ubuntu, where then it most probably will work, but where you should maybe work a little harder just to make sure it does.

BTW I'm still using the Chromebook pretty regularly. It's a very comfortable size with good battery life that is more than capable of running emacs, an rxvt or two, and my own code. Ditch unity for ratpoison and I don't even notice I'm not running Gentoo.

albright · Post by **albright** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 11:09 am

my lenovo x1 second gen just can not work with gentoo , arch or centos only work with fedora, I don t know why

Lots of advice here and (my thinkpads x300, T440S and now x1 carbon gen 3
all run gentoo flawlessly):

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_2)

[Moderator edit: fixed [url] tag. Forum auto-linking does not work when the URL contains parentheses. -Hu]

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Mon Sep 11, 2017 9:21 pm

Hardware wise go for something where the most stuff is socketed.

Like ivybridge notebooks. e.g. Asus g75vw

Later hardware is most of the time everything soldered. One broken connector, a broken mainboard, and hte box is beyond fixable costwise.

I saw asus has now a ryzen noteobook where the cpu is socketed and such
some clevo barebones have desctop intel cpus which are socketed

go for something discrete gpus. Some are happy with integrated intel gpus, others are not. Just a slight warning to avoid intel gpus. they had also some issues in linux
optimus has also some issues. Also a flame topic. I say it does not work well in windows or linux. some claim they are happy with it. also issues wiht hdmi supported spec with intel gpu vs nvidia gpu for example

amd seems to have / will have better open source gpu support. I intend to prefer an amd gpu with my next notebook

I also suggest that you go for something slight older, like an ivybridge notebook. I will not buy anything new again. When the hardware is supported in linux, the hardware is dated, some bugs will be hardly be fixed. e.g. broken asus bios on ivybridge for example. Also see the amd and intel woes for their cpus when they are brand new. e.g. ryzen had / have many issues with their cpus. ram timings and such ...

I would avoid apple, as they have now swapped a pin on their ssds, and now the usual ssd will not work in their hardare on some models

some lenovo hardware has a locked down bios, does not allow something else as windows on it. => ssd raid or something like that with a weird bios

also check if the box can be easily opened and fixed. cleaing fans, reaply new thermal paste and such.

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:36 am

In my recent experience, avoid integrated i7 GPU + discrete Nvidia video card = NO HDMI (and no nvidia opengl)
Everything else works on my recent HP (December 2016) out of the box, remembering loading firmware for intel and wifi.

Yamakuzure · Post by **Yamakuzure** » Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:45 am

bandreabis wrote:In my recent experience, avoid integrated i7 GPU + discrete Nvidia video card = NO HDMI (and no nvidia opengl)
Everything else works on my recent HP (December 2016) out of the box, remembering loading firmware for intel and wifi.

I have a Dell Precision M4800 with i7 and an Nvidia Quadro. HDMI and Nvidia OpenGL work just fine, using Bumblebee for almost four years now.

It really depends on how those parts are assembled.