laptops

[Glenn Holmer]

Hiy'all,

I may be getting a new laptop again. Who's got opinions on what's good these days? Criteria are: 14-inch, sturdy, long battery life. I'm thinking of going back to my one true love, ThinkPad (X1 Carbon). Are ThinkPads still good for Linux?

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Glenn Holmer (Linux registered user #16682)
"After the vintage season came the aftermath -- and Cenbe."

[Sean Malloy]

My work laptop is a Think Pad. It runs Fedora. It works great.

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Sean Malloy

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[Roger M. Jenson]

I have installed Linux on many Lenovo laptop computers and like them for the available hardware documentation that is available to the public.

I started using System76 laptop computers in 2017. The computers are reliable and their tech support is very good. 

Have Fun,
Roger M. Jenson

[Glenn Holmer]

On Fri, Nov 1, 2024, 19:52 Sean Malloy <spine...@gmail.com> wrote:

My work laptop is a Think Pad. It runs Fedora. It works great.

But I'm deeply disturbed by some of their advertising: "World’s first laptop powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra processors, with integrated AI" -- what does that even mean? Are they saying the CPU thinks for itself? Maybe they should start calling them Ono-Sendai or Hosaka!

[Glenn Holmer]

https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/performance/benchmarks/intel-core-ultra-processors-series-2/

So it's all just word salad?

[Glenn Holmer]

On Sat, Nov 2, 2024, 06:24 Glenn Holmer <glenn....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 1, 2024, 19:52 Sean Malloy <spine...@gmail.com> wrote:

My work laptop is a Think Pad. It runs Fedora. It works great.

But I'm deeply disturbed by some of their advertising

Actually, I'm more concerned about Linux support for p-cores and e-cores, but it looks like we've got that covered.

[Roger M. Jenson]

Hello Glenn,

I recommend that you contact the computer vendors with a collection of your questions.

Lenovo:

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/contact/sales-support/

Chat and Phone suooprt is available.

System76:

https://system76.com/contact

Click on the ask a question button under the Sales Questions paragraph and fill out the form.

Best Regards,
Roger M. jenson

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[Glenn Holmer]

On Sat, Nov 2, 2024 at 5:11 PM Roger M. Jenson <r...@eyedigix.com> wrote:

I recommend that you contact the computer vendors with a collection of your questions.

Wait, what? When have vendors ever been able to tell us whether a laptop runs Linux well? This is the kind of thing you go to your local LUG for advice on!

I'm now seeing messages online about compatibility issues with wifi and webcam on the newest ThinkPad Carbon X1, so I'm leaning back in System76's direction. Ignore reviews about the gen 13 Lemur Pro having a crappy keyboard layout ("right shift" issue), as they've refreshed it (model lemp13-b).

 

[Jeffrey Rolland]

This might be helpful: https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?q=&category=Laptop&release=24.04+LTS&release=20.04+LTS&release=22.04+LTS&limit=784

Of course, I don't know which distro you intend to install.

Get BlueMail for Desktop

Glenn Holmer wrote:

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[Glenn Holmer]

On Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 3:47 PM Jeffrey Rolland <airadven...@gmail.com> wrote:

This might be helpful:

Well, I did it. I had the cat mash down on the "Buy" button with his little paw so I can blame him if I don't like the laptop.

System76 Lemur Pro (lemp13-b):

4.3 GHz Core Ultra 5
24G memory (choice between 8 and 24, no 16)
500G NVMe
WiFi 6E/Bluetooth 5.3

System76 won because of Coreboot, right-to-repair, and of course its excellent Linux support.

https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/lemp13/repairs.html

[Tom]

All the feedback I've seen regarding System76 has been very positive. You really should bring it in for show-and-tell, once you've moved in.

 

-T

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[Roger M. Jenson]

Hello Glenn,

Do you plan to try Pop!_OS?

Best Regards,
Roger M. Jenson

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[Glen Peterson]

I will not be able to attend the meeting Saturday; a wedding, don't you know. I plan to use Pop's, good old Debian, Qubes, or Kicksecure (hardened form of Debian).

Sent from AOL on Android

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[Glenn Holmer]

On Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 3:59:01 PM UTC-6 Roger M. Jenson wrote:

Do you plan to try Pop!_OS?

Certainly not! You need to use their bespoke operating system (a derivative of Ubuntu, which is a derivative of the sacred Debian) to get the most out of the machine? I don't THINK so! That's just wrong; a "Linux laptop" should run any distro out-of-box (except maybe the HURD!). To make matters worse, I ordered it with Ubuntu (the only other choice), and one of the boot entries was "restore Pop!OS". Outrageous!

The machine is running Debian as God intended. I did have to upgrade to Trixie to get the touchpad to work, but it's really nice; the bottom edge "clicks" left, center, or right. Outside of that, everything Just Works(tm) without the use of their "System76 Driver" (although there are repos to install it in Debian). The only thing I haven't completed is my signature "master GRUB in its own partition" setup, although multi-boot is working. Needless to say, the supplied copy of Ubuntu will disappear shortly. Currently running Debian Trixie with MATE, Compiz, and Emerald, oh la la!

Bottom line: a great laptop, as you'd expect from System76. Fast like a bullet, excellent graphics... but it doesn't need a bespoke operating system. I do hope it's more durable than the Galago Pro [galp3], which required a very expensive repair after being dropped from just a few inches. The Lemur Pro's case is made from a magnesium/aluminum alloy, which is supposed to be more durable (and I also bought him a nice leather briefcase). It's got 24G of core and a 512G NVMe (with room for another). https://system76.com/laptops/lemp13/configure

[Roger M. Jenson]

Hello Glenn,

Things have advanced since I started using System76 laptop computers. I am glad to hear that you have everything working with your preferred version of Linux. Thanks for the update.

Have Fun,
Roger M. Jenson

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[Glenn Holmer]

On Sat, Nov 23, 2024 at 11:33 AM Roger M. Jenson <r...@eyedigix.com> wrote:

Things have advanced since I started using System76 laptop computers. I am glad to hear that you have everything working with your preferred version of Linux. Thanks for the update.

Solved the "lack of Insert key" issue. Thought I'd have to use some System76 utility or xkb weirdness, but there's a neat app in the Debian repo called "input-remapper". Used it to remap PrtSc to INS, and now I can select files in mc again! \o/

 

[Joe Baker's Remedy Report]

I bought a cyberpower PC tracer 7 (VIi). 

It had the specs that I wanted at a lower price point. I bought it used. They don't honor the warranty once it's been sold to another party. I'm not sure I can even buy parts for it. It came with a water cooling tower that is supposed to use Bluetooth.  Of course they don't have drivers for Linux for the Bluetooth water cooling tower.  I found that if I push and hold the power button on the water cooler and hold it for 6 seconds that it's pump starts going and the fans start driving. So that's working for my needs for now.  

I've noticed that there are water cooling towers where there are open source drivers to control them. But my unit is not one of them.  

I made a big investment in getting a laptop with a powerful Nvidia 4090 GPU. Mostly so I could run local language models for AI work. But now I wonder if I shouldn't have just spent the money on service bureaus that offer remote llm services at prices by a million tokens.  I mean I do that anyway. Because even my 4090 GPU isn't as fast as some of these things I can rent. And there's some services like Claude by anthropic that aren't open source and they provide really good coding support.   I found that openrouter.ai has been good. I'll send them $30 and then I'll be able to select many different open source llms that they have. And they meet her the usage and deduct it from my balance.  I've been able to use through them Google's AI, anthropics AI, and even a 405 billion parameter Facebook model.  

The screen 

The screen on this unit is very bright. I wanted to get something that I could see in the light of day outside sitting at a park.  And this one was pretty good at it.   I think it has some incredible refresh rate like 200 frames per second or more.  And the color quality is supposed to be fantastic and I suppose it is.  Supposedly that color is good enough for people who do art where it has to be calibrated.  

I think I had ddr5 ram inside of it it came with it. But I've been thinking about upgrading that to higher quality ddr5 RAM sticks that support faster timings. I've got in mind for this laptop to be a high frequency cryptocurrency trading platform. 

The video drivers support AI services through something called cuda. I find that when I hibernate or suspend the device upon resuming something happens where I don't have access to the cuda features anymore. So I end up rebooting. I see this because Ollama switches over to using the built-in GPU on the motherboard by Intel which isn't anywhere near as efficient or powerful as the Nvidia GPU.  

I spent some money to upgrade storage. I bought a four gigabyte nvme stick for Ubuntu.  It came with a 2 GB nvme with Windows on it.  In order to get hibernation working somewhat I shrunk the windows partition and created a big swap partition on the Windows drive that exceeded the size of the 64 GB of RAM I'd say I probably had to go to about 75 gigabytes of swap so hibernation would work.   

There just doesn't seem to be the attention in the Linux distros these days for supporting hibernation the way they used to. 

I'm pleased with the Wi-Fi and that I have an ethernet port.   

The keyboard is like a rainbow of colors sometimes. I'm not sure why sometimes it dances with colors and other times it doesn't.  The keyboard feel is okay. I've had to remove the keys to get sand out and I was able to put the keys back on without any problem.   The joys of taking a laptop to the beach.

  This is my first experience with a water-cooled computer.  Being in a house with lots of cats makes me worry about the inside of the cooling system getting plugged up with debris.  Having a cooling tower puts my mind more at ease because I can easily maintain that.   

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