I'm currently considering 1) Dell XPS 15 (but the previous one I've had had only 2-3 hours of battery life) 2) Huawei Matebook X Pro, but I prefer 15" screen to 14"
I'm currently considering 1) Dell XPS 15 (but the previous one I've had had only 2-3 hours of battery life) 2) Huawei Matebook X Pro, but I prefer 15" screen to 14"
29 comments
32 GB, 10+ hour battery life, 1Tb of flash storage with OPAL transparent self-encryption, WQHD main display, two USB C ports + two regular USB ports + an ethernet jack, automatic firmware updates through the package manager, and most importantly, no driver issues with the laptop and Linux whatsoever!
I replaced my workstation and gaming computer with this setup and am finally down to one-device nirvana.
Last month I knocked a full cup of coffee on the keyboard, and was relieved to discover the keyboard is completely separate and isolate from the rest of the device and is designed to be easily user replaceable -- I was able to replace the entire keyboard ($80 on Amazon) without even opening the case! The assembly is held in place by two screws on the bottom.
My previous laptop was a 2018 MBP, which I sold after two months due to my dislike (and distrust) of the keyboard. Couldn't be happier.
There was an article published last year that showed that almost all OPAL drives had some security issue that let users bypass(yes I do mean bypass) the encryption. Several instances the PBKD was stored on disk, and a conditional if statement decided to use it
source: https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/11/15/security-researche...
- 20L5
- WQHD
- larger extended battery
- Quad-core i7-5550U
- lighted keyboard
- 16 GiB (will upgrade later to 32 or 64 if unofficially-supported)
- Swapped WiFi to DW1830 and added a third antenna
- Samsung 970 Pro 1 TB + Lenovo SSD tray (took off the retail SSD label on one side for the heat-spreader thermal adhesive)
Looking on Amazon/eBay/AliExpress for vinyl art (Banksy perhaps) to cover up the ThinkPad logo or maybe having it vinyl wrapped with the stuff used on cars (heat-shrunk).
That's a tantalizing option, what kind of gaming do you do on it?
I'm at a point where I'm ready to have one computer, but while I don't do very much gaming any more I do like to pick up new games.
I play Overwatch, Rocket League, GTA V, etc, and run everything with max settings and get consistent 60FPS with vsync and no tearing.
Of course, you can always upgrade the graphics card in your external GPU enclosure to keep up with future titles
Please check my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19451272
I've tried laptops with 4K displays and this is a far better experience, basically on par with my rMBP.
It's also matte, my preference as I do a lot of work in coffee houses where I have limited control over lighting.
My external monitors are 4K, and I almost always run them at 200% scaling.
The only fix I had to make was to add a HiDPI flag for Spotify, but that might not even be necessary anymore
No complaints with this setup whatsoever!
Compared to Mac, it doesn't support any gestures, doesn't mitigate the "oops" finger when you're moving your mouse, and altogether just doesn't feel comfortable. I'll try to edit my comment to be more descriptive once I get home because I don't remember in what ways is Mac better since its trackpad is like second nature to me now.
About the dock not working. I'm running RHEL7.6 and the issue is fixed in kernel 4.5+, otherwise Lenovo provides damn great job with their HW. It really has to do with that Red Hat adopted all of their HW for our development purposes.
[1]: https://www.tecmint.com/tlp-increase-and-optimize-linux-batt...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerTOP
- System76 laptops are generally well reviewed. The Oryx Pro looks nice
- I had a Dell XPS15 and hated everything about it for some reason, but
- I have a Dell XPS13 and I absolutely LOVE it, so that that for what its worth
But, it is large and heavy. I find myself grabbing my MacBook when I am on the move. I would like to replace the MacBook with a very light weight Linux laptop, sometime.
When I’m on the go, I’m not looking to do the kinds of things I do at work.
Lenovo T480: real-life 11 hour battery w/ the second extended battery, lighted/water-resistant/good-feel keyboard, WQHD display, up to 32 (maybe 64 unofficially) GiB of RAM, Quad-core i7, MIL-SPEC rated, still user-servicable. It's not the latest in everything but it's awesome all-around. And, if you somehow find the right channel to order from, you maybe able to order it in a magnesium (!) top-case. There maybe a way to shoehorn in 3 SSDs of different types by using a dual SSD SATA tray that RAIDs them together and presents them as SATA and the WWAN bay with a properly-keyed right-angle NGFF extender.
After my last ASUS laptop I will never buy a non-business laptop again.
If you stick with the Mac, it's not as good as a real tiling WM but I find Amethyst helps.
Previously owned a 4th gen. 16.04, minor tweaking, also excellent laptop. Pricey, but the best you can get.
Otherwise it's been pretty good. I wouldn't say no tweaking at all, but mostly none. Love the keyboard.
Compiling any project that takes longer than 30 seconds kicks the fans into high gear, throttles the cpu, and leaves it nearly unusable until it’s finished.
[1]: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled
To be honest it is not doing its best, I mean not everything works at its best out of the box.
What is broken:
1) There is some bug in intel firmware out of the box. You will never get your peak CPU freq @ turbo boost mode. Check dmesg and see some fake errors like:
```[35678.237593] CPU0: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 123) [35678.237593] CPU4: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 123) [35678.237595] CPU4: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237597] CPU0: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237637] CPU5: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237638] CPU1: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237639] CPU6: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237640] CPU3: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237640] CPU2: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179) [35678.237641] CPU7: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 179)```
It's well known problem, just google "Lenovo throttling fix".
I am sitting on 4.20.16 and still I've to apply some workarounds, such as undervolting CPU and so on.
2) Huge power consumption.
I spent weekend to lower it up to 4-6 wh in idle from 14 wh in idle (sic!)
You have to turn everything unneeded off in BIOS (smartcard reader, card reader, ...?). Changing Thunderbolt Assist Mode to Enabled is a must. But be aware of some nasty bug, when after turning assist mode on you will get a brick instead of working device. To avoid it you have to upgrade BIOS, thanks I get BIOS updates in Gnome Software Center (Fedora). Of course take care and install tlp and so on.
3) There is bug in ACPI, when you enter into S3 mode (by design only CPU0 should be online) all of cores will wake up immediately after entering sleep mode. This leads to increased power consumption in sleep mode (approx 10-15% during all night).
There are some other little quirks that I don't remember at the moment. However overall it's a great laptop.
I am running Fedora 29 and pretty happy.
From what I've read, fingerprint support for the hardware is still experimental but should be working soon.
5 seconds in powertop and I'm getting 10 actual hours of proper use including heavy IDE and loads of browser tabs.
I had a lot of trouble in windows with drivers and the likr, so it's not a perfect machine, but in Linux it's been pretty perfect (Ubuntu and Fedora)
If you want something more in the "thin and light" category everyone I know with a recent XPS 13 loves it.
Also using either TLP or PowerTOP is important; many distros don't have that out-of-the-box.
If I could do it over I'd get an XPS 13, non touch screen.
The X1 Extreme
Pros:
- Up to theoretical 64 GB RAM (2 DDR4 slots) - 15.6in screen. - Secondary M.2 PCIe slot - Optional 4K display.
Con - Nvidia GPU - 5-6 Hour Battery life
There is also the X1 which is 14 in laptop, which max memory at 16GB of ram and but has great battery life.
I was able to buy mine with 64 gb and core i7 (i7-8750H 6 Core Processor) during Lenovo's cyber monday sale for around ~$1,800. It looks like Lenovo is moving aggressively and is selling their high end laptops at a discount to capture the Apple audience. A similarly configured Macbook pro would run closer to $3,500.
I run pop os (ubuntu flavor) and it runs great. A couple of caveats. There is no linux driver for the finger print reader. Also it is super loud, anytime you do something intensive the fans start running. Additionally, you need to tune the laptop to get better battery performance. Usually, I disable the NVIDIA driver for general use which improves the life by 50 to 60%. And finally there have been some documented bios issues which have caused bricking. This is avoidable if you stay away from the touching the bios. Thankfully pop os makes switching between the drivers easy.
Overall, its a great laptop. Love the keyboard and the power under the hood.
My XPS 15 gets six hours, easy on Fedora 29.
Everything works out the box except the fingerprint reader (maybe in 19.04)
On macOS/Windows it will run a small VM with Linux Kernel first.