For those who’re currently looking for a nice new device: shown are (from Top Left to Right):
- NovaCustom (NL)
- Star Labs (UK)
- System76 (US)
- Juno Computers (US)
- UbuntuShop (BE)
- Slimbook (ES)
- Tuxedo Computers (DE)
- Entroware (UK)
- MiniFree (UK)
- Nitrokey (DE)
- Laptops with Linux (NL)
- Purism (US)
Not mentioned but also selling Ready-to-use Linux computer:
- Dell
- Lenovo
I still remember the good old IBM Thinkpads, most of them were indestructible tanks. But with Lenovo, those times are long over. My last machine was a TP L390 Yoga. It overheated frequently, the cooling system was inadequate for the 4.6GHz Intel CPU, one day the logo sticker came off because the glue turned into sticky liquid, the passive Micro-Ethernet dongle cost 50€ and the cable turned into glue after a few months…god, what a shit machine this was.
I was able to work with it for a while by limiting and undervolting the CPU, but one day a Windows update came out that disabled the functionality and it worked like crap on Linux for a long time due to bad drivers.
I switched to GPD now. Never going back, although I miss the Trackpoint a little bit.
Only get the business model. I’ve had T60, T61, T410, T460, X200, x220, X240, X250 and X260. They’re all rock solid. At work we use the X1 Carbon all gen they’re also damn good build quality.
Our experiences seem to differ. I currently have L390 Yoga and it’s the best thing I ever used. The cooling isn’t bad, just the feet are too thin to allow for flipping the screen over. Any cooling pad, or in my case an egg carton fixes this.
Mine has i5-8365U (4.1GHz).
The Ethernet is pretty stupid, but I’ve got the dongle from AliExpress for €9.31 and it’s working fine.
I really love the touchscreen in combination with Arch, KDE Plasma and Wayland. It also has pretty great colors, but I am coming from TN, so the bar was laying on the ground.
Driver-wise, everything works OOB on Arch (at least since September 2024 which is when I got it).
Really, I only have 2 problems with it:
T and P series is aparently good, normal L is decent, but others are terrible (yoga, x, ideapad, etc.). But I haven’t used TP-s myself. I did use an Ideapad and it’s terrible (no upgradability, falling apart metal chassis (how the hell does metal break), no key-travel (feels like hitting a rock while typing) and it has a shitload of mediatek hardware which is a pain on linux (but I haven’t tested it as it’s my dad’s).