Acer Is Launching In Germany What Could Be A Great AMD Ryzen 5 4500U Linux Laptop

[cb88]

According to notebooksbilliger.de it is possible to upgrade RAM to 20GB max..
There are two slots. One holds a 4 GB piece which is soldered on the mainboard. The other holds a 4GB piece in the moment but it is possible to change it to 16 GB piece at maximum.

I bet it works fine with 32GB sodimms which are relatively cheap now https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2666M.../dp/B07N124XDS

[arQon]

That's a good point, it's the consumer product lines that are generally garbage build quality that flex and break if you look at them the wrong way. My experience is mainly around HP and Dell, and their consumer lines are trash, while the business product lines are built a lot more solidly, with metal frame and more durable plastics.

Indeed. Dell's consumer gear has gotten terrible over the years, but the "business class" stuff is still extremely high quality (or at least, was the last time I had one), and as you say generally works nicely with Linux either completely or almost so out of the box. (I've had to replace wifi modules thanks to some dumbass trying to save $10 on a $2000 machine, but other than that...)

[arQon]

I bet it works fine with 32GB sodimms which are relatively cheap now

and which would guarantee that you don't get dual-channel support, leaving the CPU even more starved for RAM bw than it doubtless already is...

[Guest]

Thinkpad T-series. They are well build and always end up on Canonical's list of homologated hardware. Currently there are a bunch of Thinkpads there with Ryzen.

https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models?query=&category=Laptop&level=&release=18.04%20LTS&vendors=Lenovo&page=2

Hint: the models that end with "5" are the AMD ones.

As an owner of A485, I must say, it's a solid machine and works well with Ubuntu 19.10. Once ThinkPad, forever ThinkPad... Or, maybe I would consider latest EliteBook 745,... It seems to be solid laptop, too.

[molecule-eye]

In terms of horrible build quality and cheap build materials Acer and Lenovo are leading the pack by a large margin and I have stopped recommending them years ago. Yeah, they are usually the cheapest.

Exactly. I know, I've owned both and currently own a Lenovo Yoga which works well with linux but has pretty crap build quality give a $700USD price tag (on sale). Unfortunately, I don't really see a whole lot of good stuff in the $500-700 range, except for chromebooks, and I remember how awful it was running linux as primary OS on those things (e.g. if the battery runs out).

[thxcv]

I refuse to buy another HP. Quality sucks and the battery is a pain.

Agreed. My battery drains itself after 3 days completely (it's actually not the battery but the stupid laptop that drains it even if shutoff. HP sucks, won't buy again.

[polarathene]

I got a recent Acer Aspire 5 model(2019Q3 release), it has 10th gen intel, and Wifi AX, overall not bad for the $399 USD price compared to others. Was pretty horrible with Windows 10, CPU usage was high causing the fan to come on and rev up, in addition to less CPU time for your own software(I remember idle usage had background tasks using 50% or more CPU).

Linux support is a bit mixed, had some UEFI/BIOS corruption issues going on for a bit, eventually it resolved/reset itself several days later(almost thought I had bricked it). CPU on linux idles at 1%, runs much nicer, but there is a suspend/resume issue that appears to be related to power management for the NVMe disk, first resume works fine, but 2nd resume from suspend since boot will fail and require a hard reset. There's a BIOS update which only mentions nvidia in it's notes(even though this device doesn't have nvidia GPU), but some users have stated it fixed that suspend/resume issue, haven't tried it yet as I need to install windows again to apply it.

The "UEFI" is dated looking like traditional BIOS UI and rather limited functionality wise, switching from Intels RAID thing to ACPI for the NVMe disk(this mode is enabled by default with the Windows install even though there is only a single disk, supposedly advised by Intel to make upgrading storage easy as they include a spare 2.5" bay) requires you to know a hidden shortcut, otherwise appears that you can't change it, and that's requried to be able to install linux, other the disk is not visible to installers.

Biggest gripe though, is the 2017 display panel has an eDP 1.2 connection(from 2011?), something like that, 1.3 is required(and was released the following year) to enable the power saving benefits for the display which can be a notable amount of additional battery life. So a bit disappointed with that... but I guess understandable to fit into a budget price range. Will cost ~$100 roughly to get a display replacement that can benefit from Intels power saving here(AMD recently got support for this in 5.6 kernel I think), actual name of the power saving feature I can't recall right now. It's probably safe to assume they might have the same issue with this model too.

Haven't had any issues with build quality, hinge is quite good, but lifting the lid from closed state a little annoying(no lip at all to grip/pull). USB-C for charging would have been nice. I ordered from Amazon, which was $50-100 or so cheaper than local, but learned that if I have any issue, it has to be sent to US, which isn't too big of a deal, but it also would only be sent back to a US address, no support for out of the US, causing additional hassle(even though there is a local Acer branch here). Not sure if that's the case with other vendors, but disappointing to experience.

[polarathene]

Agreed. My battery drains itself after 3 days completely (it's actually not the battery but the stupid laptop that drains it even if shutoff. HP sucks, won't buy again.

Is it actually powered off? Or in a sleep mode? If a sleep mode isn't properly supported, it may appear to be a low power state, but can end up draining quite a bit of battery. Seems odd that the battery would leak that much if the device is properly powered off.

[andyprough]

i have to admit my last possession of an acer laptop is now over 7 years ago, but acer and asus were always laptop manufacturers where there have been plenty of acpi issues which just didnt make it a good linux desktop poweruser experience.

maybe this has changed though - waiting for tests on amd 4xxx series laptops.

Asus laptop here, zero acpi issues. Had to work around their draconian implementation of secureboot. It's an absolute beast in terms of specs, but battery life suffers.

[aaahaaap]

Michael just wait for one of the new AMD based ThinkPad models (T14, T14s), seems like the best offering so far.