An Early Look At Our 2017 Linux Laptop Survey Results So Far

[Jumbotron]

800 or less is very wide. My current laptop costs 99$ as new.

Agreed. Should have added a 400 or less category. And modify the 800 or less to 800-400 category. I don't buy anything over 400 either laptop or desktop. No need. And all off Ebay. New...or refurbished with warranty.

[bug77]

He probably forgot to mention NVIDIA switchable graphics, or switchable graphics in general (AMD isn't much better last time I checked).

On most laptops with single GPU Linux works fine. There are some duds with fucked up ACPI tables because some moron decided to use Windows-only functions and compiler (like in a HP Envy 15 I'm currently selling off) though.

Eh, if it were that simple. But in the world of laptops you never know when the manufacturer decided to save a couple of cents and used some unknown part that's not well supported. A wireless controller here, a touchpad there... To the point we have this: http://www.linux-laptop.net/

Also, the appeal of linux is rather lost on a laptop imho. You're not going to use a laptop as a server, for media consumption any other OS is better and for web browsing it's roughly on par with others. Linux is a great tool for software development, but I personally dislike development on a laptop: the CPU is always slower and the battery life worse than Windows or OSX. Also, laptop keyboards are jokes as far as development is concerned.

That said, we do have laptops at work, but they're constantly plugged in. And despite being the same configuration (Asus), in a couple of years I have been unable to use and upgrade them problem free, while the guy next to me ran into trouble at almost every single upgrade (disk partition wasn't recognized anymore - though fwiw his home partition is encrypted).
At one of my previous jobs the problem was an unsupported Broadcomm wireless controller on some Dell laptops.
Come to think about, the GPU was never a problem: we just picked Nvidia and slapped on the blob.

[Nille_kungen]

Depends from GPU versions, I think the 7xxx are left out in the cold as they were working in dual setups only with the blob (that was discontinued) for example, and there are probably others. I think bug77 is one of the affected ones or there was another guy on this forum asking for that.

Post-carrizo stuff (i.e. AMDGPU driver) should all work fine though.

I don't think 7xxx gpu:s gives much problems or any at all.
It might with amdgpu but let's be honest it works great with radeon module.
Some might argue about fp64 but it can be overridden.
I got an richland+SI part in one of my laptops and it works great.
Post-Carrizo amdgpu works great.
Some old muxed system might give some headaches but those system where released before 2011.

Edit: strange if i remove the - from Post Carizzo line and use space instead the forum breaks an won't post with "Error while saving content: SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 2 column 1 of the JSON data"

Eh, if it were that simple. But in the world of laptops you never know when the manufacturer decided to save a couple of cents and used some unknown part that's not well supported. A wireless controller here, a touchpad there...

Wireless adapters that doesn't work as they should, that is something i can relate to.

[andrei_me]

the appeal of linux is rather lost on a laptop laptop imho

To be honest with you, I started using Linux in 2004, when I was a teenager and found out that I could watch porn without the fear of getting any virus.

Also, I started to learn programming that period, so it was the perfect match

[coder111]

Hey, there's very few decent AMD APU+dGPU laptops out there. What do you have? I have an ancient ASUS with A6-3400M + Radeon 6550. It's getting really obsolete now, and I'm looking for a replacement. The only decent spec APU+dGPU laptop I've seen out there was Lenovo Y700 (expensive, probably not sold any more) and old MSI GX60/GX70 (also obsolete, but faster, expensive-ish when it came out and not sold any more).

So I'm also waiting for Raven Ridge APU. Or some mobile Zen CPU + dGPU or something...

I use AMD based laptops APU+dGPU, dual GPU with AMD works great.
Right now I'm waiting for raven ridge.

[Geopirate]

"Just about 10% of the respondents say their laptop came pre-loaded with Linux"

Just as I thought, we have shitty Linux support because we don't want it...

Well the most popular budget is under $800. The vast majority of pre-installed Linux laptops are above this price point.

Edit: several people also mentioned second hand systems.....

[starshipeleven]

I don't think 7xxx gpu:s gives much problems or any at all.
It might with amdgpu but let's be honest it works great with radeon module.

Talking about switchable graphics here. I don't remember but there are at least two gens of laptop switchable GPUs from AMD that were basically left out and are unusable now without the blob. Maybe it changed, but it was pretty bad a few years ago.

[Nille_kungen]

Hey, there's very few decent AMD APU+dGPU laptops out there. What do you have? I have an ancient ASUS with A6-3400M + Radeon 6550. It's getting really obsolete now, and I'm looking for a replacement. The only decent spec APU+dGPU laptop I've seen out there was Lenovo Y700 (expensive, probably not sold any more) and old MSI GX60/GX70 (also obsolete, but faster, expensive-ish when it came out and not sold any more).

So I'm also waiting for Raven Ridge APU. Or some mobile Zen CPU + dGPU or something...

I got many laptops around but the ones i use most is an HP pavilion 15-e061so and an ASUS X550IU-DM001T.
AMD laptops APU works great and isn't the desktop market, people often compare strange on laptops i think AMD if better then most think.
I'm also looking forward for raven ridge.

[coder111]

Hell, I cannot use HP laptops because of stupid arrow key layout with tiny up-down buttons and huge left-right ones.

And that Asus is unavailable in UK or anywhere in Europe...

I got many laptops around but the ones i use most is an HP pavilion 15-e061so and an ASUS X550IU-DM001T.
AMD laptops APU works great and isn't the desktop market, people often compare strange on laptops i think AMD if better then most think.
I'm also looking forward for raven ridge.

[Nille_kungen]

Hell, I cannot use HP laptops because of stupid arrow key layout with tiny up-down buttons and huge left-right ones.

And that Asus is unavailable in UK or anywhere in Europe...

It was available here in Sweden when i bought it and Sweden is Europe as far as i know