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  • Laptop recommendation

    Hey guys,
    It is time to retire my old Lenovo Z61m. This has been my portable linux workstation for many years but as the distros have gotten heavier, this thing has gotten slower to the point it is not fulfilling it's mission.
    I want to spend under $400 so I'm not after a high end laptop. A ready to go laptop with Linux already installed is outside this price point (at least the one's Ive seen).
    This old Lenovo has been great all these years and I wouldn't mind another one.
    But I have to get one that will "play nice" with linux. I tend to stick to Debian distros.
    Can anyone make a recommendation ?


  • #2
    get thinkpad X230 or latitude e6230. On ebay, I think it priced in range $250 - $320, 4GB RAM i5 ivy bridge. Or you could go with elitebook too, 8470p

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    • #3
      Avoid Acer in particular and laptops from other OEMs which have Broadcom chips in it.. or some oddball GPU which is not supported by Linux (a la Intel PowerVR)

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      • #4
        Quite happy with my Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P, so you can still go for Lenovo laptop

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        • #5
          Lenovo ideapad 700
          15.6 inch
          1920 * 1080
          Intel Core i5 6300HQ
          GeForce 950M 4GB DDR3 VRAM
          8GB DDR4
          1TB 5400RPM
          Serious gamers may laugh at the idea that they could get a competent gaming laptop under $600. It’s true that these budget-friendly computers may not be able to play the latest games on the highest setting, but they can’t deliver...Read more

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          • #6
            get this one by acer https://www.amazon.com/Acer-E5-575-3...=acer+i3+7100u
            it comes with 7th gen i3-7100u processor
            4gb ddr4 ram
            1tb hdd
            15.6 inch full hd display
            that's the best under $400
            for more suggestions check https://laptopjar.com/best-laptops-under-400-dollars/

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            • #7
              Originally posted by mikejohn View Post
              get this one by acer https://www.amazon.com/Acer-E5-575-3...=acer+i3+7100u
              it comes with 7th gen i3-7100u processor
              4gb ddr4 ram
              1tb hdd
              15.6 inch full hd display
              that's the best under $400
              for more suggestions check https://laptopjar.com/best-laptops-under-400-dollars/
              Acer Aspire's in general tend to suffer under faulty "generic" proprietary UEFI implementation. You'll see buncha problems getting anything non-windows on them. I've had few in my hands and they were pain.

              Some examples:
              if particular bios of an Acer Aspire has no choice for turning on "legacy boot" (some models are that way) and refuse to boot Linux in UEFI - what can you do?
              - Use one with the windows it came with.
              - Install some Linux that does not have UEFI-capable boot media yet. Fat chance, most do have it. And moment you insert the media - it's going to TRY to boot in EFI mode.
              - Install older but supported flavor of non-UEFI BSD. FreeBSD 10.3, OpenBSD 6, NetBSD7 or something.
              - remove the HDD from Acer, do install on some other machine and swap the drive back in.
              - often, installers would up and quit for some mysterious reason. For example linux "burned" to USB stick, has installer failing after probing USB devices. Gparted would not boot 50% cases from CD. Just freeze at random point. I suspected hardware but both Acers more or less shared the symptoms and they worked dandily when I tried windows boot media on them..

              out of dozen of distros I tried - UEFI mode, Acer and Linux got along only when I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It did not want to work so with Leap 42.2. Rest of the Linuxes - only "legacy". If you could manage to install it. You even could most of the time but then Acer's BIOS would tell you at boot "No operating system found".

              As an extra "bonus". Acer's do not seem to have "upgradable" wireless. What is in it, you are stuck with. I tried to replace Broadcom b/g/n unstable (even in windows - gradual slowdown of traffic until complete packet loss) shit in one of them with ten different modules (from other Broadcom's to variety of different Intel's and Atheros models) and it did not work with any other than it's original junk. Modules were recognized, drivers loaded but cards never saw any Wifi AP's around them. It had either non-standard mini-pcie pinout or module was tied to to some Broadcom custom chipcheck on motherboard. I suspect the latter because other modules would work when I replaced wifi modules when machine was in suspend.. after waking they would work until next reboot.

              When there are no Acer's recovery partitions on the GPT-formatted drive, you'll get interesting issues like machine refusing to shutdown properly. Even from windows. It won't even want to restart. You'll have to do hard reset using power button each time.

              Google suggests Acer Aspire E5 has similar problems going for it.

              My suggestion: avoid Acer, it's selling junk, especially if you plan on having anything non-Windows on it, replacing a HDD and/or WiFi module et cetera...

              You are better off with Asus, Samsung or Dell (especially business-class machines). HP and Lenovo have whitelisting issues although the latter offers actually pretty good machines.
              Last edited by aht0; 04 May 2017, 07:44 AM.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by aht0 View Post

                Acer Aspire's in general tend to suffer under faulty "generic" proprietary UEFI implementation. You'll see buncha problems getting anything non-windows on them. I've had few in my hands and they were pain.

                Some examples:
                (...)
                That's sad.
                I can say that Asus laptops seem able to boot modern linux just fine, even on a fairly "old" UEFI laptop (sandy bridge so circa 2012,) or brand new quad core Atom with soldered RAM and eMMC.
                Even then there aren't many options besides setting time and date, boot order and a few mostly unused options.

                I would much like to see options relevant to hardware nerds : ability to underclock the CPU, use a slower RAM speed, disable secondary GPU, disable much anything I want to (e.g. the wifi/bluetooth chip, built-in sound or anything really).
                Because when the thing gets old and semi-fails and/or overheats it's nice to be able to do something (e.g. an old desktop is unstable at DDR 400 speed but goes back to entirely stable at DDR 333 speed. no-brainer)

                I don't know of any laptop like that. On the other hand on the "old" Asus laptop there are a few options at least (disable touch pad, some option for the USB3 controller in case you're booting something that doesn't like USB3 controllers, etc.)

                MSI and Gigabyte might be similar to Asus : they're name brands from the retail PC motherboard market. Asus got earlier and much more broadly into the consumer electronics market.
                Too bad about Acer. They made $1000 laptops back when that was an incredible deal.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by laban View Post
                  Lenovo ideapad 700
                  15.6 inch
                  1920 * 1080
                  You might want a desktop that supports fractional GUI scaling. That's the issue with 1080p laptops - you might use them with no scaling if you're okay with everything being very small, too. And there's 14" 1080p or smaller which might be really small.
                  Apparenty Unity desktop is good at fractional scaling or the only one doing it - you'd need to use e.g. Ubuntu 17.10 with Unity 7, later upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04. Or maybe KDE is good enough on 1080p laptop already.
                  Otherwise you can even go with 15.6" 1366x768 depending on what you think of the issue.

                  I suppose Gnome 3, Cinnamon will gain fractional scaling support but I don't know when.

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                  • #10
                    What about HP with AMD processor?
                    • 2.0 GHz Quad-Core AMD A6-5200 APU
                    • AMD Radeon R4 graphics with 2048MB graphic memory
                    • 6-inch WLED-backlight BrightView display
                    • Digital media reader and 3.0 super-fast USB
                    • 2 2.0 USB and HDMI
                    • Dual speakers and full-size keyboard
                    • 3-cell 2.8Ah 31 WHr lithium-ion polymer battery
                    Below link contains some budget laptops you could see.

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