As the title says, I am currently learning to be a programmer, and my tablet does not suffice for the job.
I have already finished a small MEAN-Stack application for learning Typescript, learned some Java syntax (I expect nothing more exciting than a sorting algorithm, but exam language is Java, so…) and the next stop will most likely be plain vanilla C to learn about handling hardware.
Windows I hate with a passion, and I don’t know squat about Macs, so I am thinking of getting myself a decently sized laptop for a sensible Linux install.
History (I started my Liux journey with SuSE Linux 4.4.1, way back when) taught me to be very wary of driver issues on laptops, so I thought I could ask you for recommendations that play fair with Linux.
(as an aside, if I could play GuildWars2 on it in the evening and attach my two big monitors when at home, that would be super cool)
I can not recommend the framework laptop enough. Love their mission of producing a reparable and user-friendly laptop. You can even buy it without windows, to install your own OS from the get go.
I’ve only heard great things about Framework (https://frame.work/) however their laptops are not cheap. I wouldn’t necessarily assume that they fit a student budget. OP didn’t say what their budget is but you can definitely get a laptop that is adequate for programming for less than half of the price. That being said if the budget is there the upgradability and repairability may make it an economical option over the long-term.
Yeah, Framework seems like a premium product for sure. I want one but I definitely can’t afford it anytime soon. Also worth noting that a new framework mainboard rivals the price of some entire laptops. So while it is definitely upgradable and one of the most repairable laptops in the world, it is still a pricy ecosystem to be in.
I had been holding off on a laptop purchase waiting for framework to ship an AMD board, but they took so long that I had to buy another laptop instead. The new models they were showing off at Computex look so cool though. I am really excited about their swappable GPUs.
old thinkpad FTW!
got a T430s for 115Euros one year ago
Laptops these days do much better with Linux than before. But if you really want ~0% chance of dealing with driver issues, I’d go with System76 laptops. They’re made for Linux, and with Linux pre-installed.
Dell and Lenovo also offer laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed and supported.
can’t speak to lenovo, but i’ve had very mixed results with Dell. it certainly isn’t as smooth as system76 or the old (pre lenovo) think pads but they’re workable. the 13in dell models are better supported then the 15in in my experience
I would highly recommend a Framework if it’s within your budget and you care at all about right to repair. Otherwise I’d highly recommend a used Thinkpad as they hold up exceptionally. I’ve used Linux on both very smoothly.
Thank you all for your suggestions, I will have a look at used thinkpads or tuxedos. Scratches never bothered me.
You are all very helpful!
pickup a t440p for peanuts, can add more ram and processor if you want
wasn’t the t440p the I’ve that did away with the trackpoint buttons?
Checkout Framework laptops. If they don’t do it for you, maybe try System76.
if you are from the EU i can recommend Tuxedo Computers. they have a wide range of laptops to fit your budget, and among those a lot of customisation options.
the only downside about mine ive noticed, would be that the keyboard legends seem to wear a bit faster than normal. then again that is because they are laser etched, which means for a small upcharge they will put whatever you want on there.
or Framework as others have mentioned, not only because they seem to have produced a great product, but also because their mission is definitely worth supporting.
I tried a Tuxedo Laptop a few years ago and the keyboard was noticeably worse than my T480s and a MX Keys Mini. But that probably depends on the model.
Thinkpads are absolute tanks and support Linux quite well. Would shy away from the T470 and T480 though. The touchpad on those isn’t really well implemented. If you don’t care about reliability my Surface Laptop Go does Fedora Silverblue 38 really well.
As someone that has to support a fleet of various ThinkPad models… just don’t get anything made in the last 5 or so years. They’re still built well, but the internal hardware is HORRIBLE - trackpads will ghost click, random keys will stop working or just fall out, thr USBC controller WILL break, and the hinges get loose and wobbly. I personally wouldn’t get one at all anymore to be honest with what I’ve had to deal with.
My usual suggestion: Get a generation-old business or workstation class machine from one of the major manufacturers, as a refurb. Mostly meaning keep an eye on Dell Refurbished or Lenovo Outlet - sometimes you can also get a deal on a refurb via woot - for something that appeals to you. The stock is always changing at those, and there are almost always sales/coupons for around 40% off at the first-party refurb stores, so +/- a week of patience can save you a bunch of money.
Business or workstation class machines (think Dell Latitude or Precision, especially the ones with models that start with a 7, or Thinkpad) are typically mechanically much better built than their consumer counterparts, and usually full of reputable components that are connected in standard ways - low end consumer stuff sometimes has issues where they got weird less-common components or connected things in stupid ways to save a few cents per unit that will cause driver issues.
Waiting a generation gives time for mainline kernel driver support to fully mature to minimize driver problems, and drastically cuts the price.
I’ve had several machines following that advice, and I think the only driver trouble I’ve had with them has been with unsupported fingerprint/smartcard readers, which I …don’t care about anyway.
Or, if you want a way cheap beater and don’t mind some hackin’, grab a used/refurbished AUE Chromebook that is on the Mr. Chromebox Supported List. AUE means they no longer receive ChromeOS updates, so their price craters to like $50, and you can flash a normal UEFI payload and use them as a (feeble, storage starved, low resolution) computer. Not a good main machine, but they make fun beaters for experimenting. There are often batches of them being dumped via woot.
…also, don’t buy anything with an Nvidia GPU unless you have a specific compelling reason, it’ll be a pain in your ass for the life of the machine.
Thank you for putting some actual student-budget options.
I’ve used pre-owned corporate thinkpads for years. At least in here we have multiple of stores to purchase previously leased (and since wiped+inspected) laptops for quite cheap (your definition of cheap may vary). Just now I have one waiting at the post office, T495 for 299€. Granted that’s never been a top line model, but it’s well sufficient for my usage and it’ll happily replace the old x240 I’ve been lugging around.
I’ve ran them with ubuntu/debian, dualboot and pretty much every combination. They just seem to work, altough there may be more or less hiccups specially with keyboard lights and (to me) minor things like that. Networking, hardware itself, suspend and everything else just works. And there’s mountains of information on various wikis etc to check before purchasing.
+1 for used thinkpads. If you can live with some scratches you can find great deals. Plus you can look up the model you would like to get on https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo and make sure compatibility isn’t a concern.
I (and many of my colleagues) do this since I switched to laptop 7 years ago. I use them during my whole time in university (CS using Linux).
They are very reliable. And (at least the old models that I use) can be fixed manualy when something is wrong (change SSD, RAM, thermal paste,…)
If money is no issue, I would go with a framework (I have no first hand experience with them). If money is to be considered, I would go with a refurbished ThinkPad.
Linux is the correct (and only) choice for programmers. 99.9% of the internet runs on Linux. When you get a job, you’ll most likely deploy to Linux servers. Other people (MacOS/Winblows) will spend a significant amount of time trying to emulate a Linux environment.
My daily driver is a Dell XPS 13 9310. The build and finish is pretty good. All the hardware works out of the box.
I also used a Lenovo X1 Carbon for a few years. Also very good. I think the speakers sounded better on the X1 compared to the XPS. I think at this point all the hardware is supported by the latest kernel. When I had it, I think I had to wait for microphone support because the X1 had some fancy array of microphones. Eventually the software support caught up though.
Not recommend: I’ve also tried a System76 laptop. I quickly returned it because the build quality felt super cheap and I had a dead pixel. I also didn’t like that the power adapter was a barrel plug. (Although, yes, you can also charge with USB-C, but then you still have a useless barrel plug.)
Not recommend: Framework laptops. They seem cool, and they are, but the build quality is not as good as the XPS or the X1 Carbon. Also, the biggest reason to avoid Framework is due to the poorly supported HiDPI display. This goes for all laptops, by the way.
Finally, I’d also like to mention to be successful in Linux, you have to adopt a different mindset too. If you go into Linux expecting MacOS or expecting Winblows, you’re going to be disappointed. Linux is Linux. It’s great for computer science. It’s not great for video/image editing, music production, gaming. Sure, technically you can find a way to run those apps, but it’s not going to be the best experience. Similarly, it doesn’t make sense for me to go to MacOS and complain that I can’t use systemd or LUKS.
tl;dr
- Linux is the right choice, can’t avoid it.
- I’d recommend the Dell XPS 13 or the Lenovo X1 Carbon.
- Avoid HiDPI displays (unless you want to debug issues and still end up with slightly fuzzy apps)
- Avoid NVIDIA
- Different tools for different jobs
I disagree with your take on the framework. The inferior build quality alone is not a good enough reason to say they aren’t worth it over an X1 Carbon or XPS. Neither of those offer easy repairability and the XPS has atroucious IO.
I use a Framework and have run it primarily using Plasma Wayland and Hyprland. Both of these have had fantastic HiDPI support. Both can scale Wayland and Xwayland apps seperately so that you do not have any fuzziness and both support Wayland’s newest fractional scaling protocol.
If you’re running a modern distro (one with good wayland support), you should have no problem with hidpi. The more recent comments in the thread you linked support this.
I highly recommend the X1 carbon too. I run it and fucking love it.
At work we used to roll-out the XPS 13" because Dell officially supports Linux. I personally don’t like it because there’s no USB-A port, but our employees were very happy with it.
Now Linux is obviously a great OS for development, but there’s so much misinfo here.
Other people (MacOS/Winblows) will spend a significant amount of time trying to emulate a Linux environment.
It’s 2023, most shit is either platform-agnostic (Anything front-end, Java, etc) or runs in Docker nowadays. Or both. I run plenty of Java shit in Docker despite the fact that it’d run natively on any major desktop OS. It’s easier to guarantee an environment in a container than get a bunch of Linux users to agree on an environment. Otherwise you get one dev with Java 8 as default as per company spec and then another with Java 17 because some tool they use requires it and they’re too lazy to set 8 as the default and invoke 17 specially for that use case.
Matter of fact, I know most companies I know people at, either use Macbooks or give you a choice.
Does it really take a significant amount of time trying to emulate a Linux environment? Eh, I suppose. I first install brew and THEN install docker. Whereas on Linux, I’d just use the distro’s built-in package manager to install docker, because everything gets deployed in containers for k8s anyway, so why would I run it without docker locally and complicate things?
Linux is the correct (and only) choice for programmers
Also, funnily enough, according to the latest Stack Overflow survey, Windows is actually the most popular OS among developers. Probably because of all the ancient legacy win32 shit. MacOS is second, but if Linux wasn’t split into different distros, it would likely be second (multiple choice survey, so y’know, can’t just add them together linearly), but it’d be a close call anyway.
99.9% of the internet runs on Linux. When you get a job, you’ll most likely deploy to Linux servers
This part is technically true (I believe the real number is closer to 96%, with Windows Server and FreeBSD accounting for the rest), but it’s highly irrelevant because most modern backend applications run on multiple layers of abstraction to the point where it doesn’t matter if the development takes place in Windows, Linux or MacOS.
At the end of the day, I want my dev machines to always work, so they’re Macs. My personal desktop is mostly used for gaming and tinkering, so it doesn’t matter if I fuck something up and have downtime. That runs on Gentoo. That said, OP is a student and should use Linux precisely because they can probably afford the downtime so what better time to tinker? But for work, reliable and polished > tinkering and infinite customizability.> 99.9% of the internet runs on Linux. When you get a job, you’ll most likely deploy to Linux servers
Don’t make the same mistake I did and get it with a good CPU. Good CPU bad GPU far outweights good GPU bad CPU
Personally I would try to get a ThinkPad from a bankruptcy auction or similar, I got my T15 for around $600.
any recent laptop (or even older stuff) would work pretty well with linux. just make sure that you can have access to the BIOS or UEFI. I personally like AMD hardware, but Intel and Nvidia work just as well.
if you can afford it, System 76, Framework, or other linux first manufacturers are nice, but otherwise any normal laptop should work.
If you’re bringing it to school, consider the weight and size, also the backpack you’ll put it in. Big screen is good, but more annoying to carry around. I have a tiny 13" that I bring between home and work, which works great, because apart from meetings, I never actually use the screen. Might consider the keyboard too, but unless you go apple, I feel like laptop keyboards are always gonna be “eh”
Guild Wars 2 works without issue, though if that’'s specifically what you want to play, Guild Wars 2 works better with a good CPU and an SSD, whereas the GPU would be good but doesn’t need to be great. That of course depends game per game, just I know that Guild Wars 2 specifically relies a lot on the CPU, and without a SSD it will stutter.
