zlacker

>>tonyst+(OP)
Yeah, no. Maybe with old laptops, but newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewrite but has since been fixed, the fnlock key LED didn't update properly, which I spent a while debugging and submitted a kernel patch for, and while over the years the fingerprint scanner has been implemented, it's a pain to install and support for fingerprint scanning in linux is still in a very sorry state. Oh and bluetooth still can't connect more than one device at a time, so I had to buy a dongle to connect two joycon controllers.

Granted, I've always had these kinds of issues with new laptops, especially when it came to proprietary nvidia or AMD graphics (before AMDGPU) and I agree it's improved a lot, but I still need to tell people that there's caveats with some (especially newer) laptops.

>>mid-ki+H5
For the past 20 years I have been only using Thinkpad from the T and the X series. The only one with an issue was I think the X220 with the SD card reader not being stable. All the other ones are working perfectly well. My current one is a T480.

But I always take some time to look if somebody succeed in installing Linux on the laptop I want to buy before. If it means I need to wait an extra 6 months, then I wait a bit.

>>Loic+X7
same. it's been rock solid on thinkpads because thinkpads are some of the strongest pc laptops and as such have been popular (and well supported by) oss developers.

>>a-dub+bj
old IBM Thinkpads were pretty solid, but now they're made by Lenovo who has a long history of shipping devices pre-infested with malware and backdoors, usually in exchange for money. They've even been caught stuffing malware into UEFI so that users reinstalling their OS would be infected over and over again. However nice their laptops are, I could never trust them. They have already proved that they are perfectly willing to compromise your security and privacy to line their own pockets.

All the builtin radios, cameras, microphones, and sensors in modern laptops make them ideal for stealing your private data. I already have an untrusted cell phone, I want my personal laptop to be something I can feel comfortable keeping my data on. Because I can't personally audit every chip, that means I need some level of trust, and Lenovo has demonstrated over and over and over again that they cannot be trusted.

>>autoex+5p
What laptops brands do you buy? Why?

>>petra+mr
Right now I'm liking System76. Expensive, but I like that they come with linux working out of the box. They're specifically designed/tested to work well with linux so no worries about the hardware not being supported. Like many other companies they are basically selling re-branded laptops made by the Taiwanese company Clevo. I still can't audit every chip in them, but at least I don't have clear documentation of repeated abuses (so far).

System76 is looking into making their own hardware now too so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they come up with in-house.

>>autoex+Lt
I got a Meerkat mini desktop 6 months ago, and I love it.

They do make their own desktops and minis now. I think they use Clevo for laptops, and those do get more complaints here on HN than the desktops (but I think the consensus is they are getting better). They have more laptop models, so making their own would be a huge task.