[api]

What's the best Linux laptop option these days? Are there any with decent build quality, solidness, aesthetics, and reliability compared to recent Macs?

Also how's hardware support? Last time I used Linux on a desktop, admittedly a few years ago, I still had to futz around with wireless and video drivers routinely.

[davidhyde]

I use a little Intel Nuc which fits in my pocket and set up screens at home and at work and just plug it into a cheap hub on either end. That way I get the equivalent power of a $2k laptop without the noise, upgrade restrictions and sore neck peering down at a small laptop screen.

BUT, if you want to use a laptop then I believe the System76 or Dell XPS line of laptops (just be careful about the nostril camera models) are quite Linux friendly.

Edit: My main PC has an nvidia graphics card (GeForce GTX 1070) and I admittedly had to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers instead of the FOSS equivalent for better performance. Like you I had to fuss around a little to find a version that did not crash my system (I settled on nvidia-driver-460 for Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon kernel 5.4). I probably wouldn't go for Nvidia next time and do my homework before buying graphics hardware. But I can play Windows games using Wine and it uses the graphics card which was surprising for me! For anything else like wireless stuff I find that most hardware just works out of the box. I usually just look for the word "linux" somewhere in the description and then I know that it will work. And you usually don't have to install drivers for stuff like wireless cards / dongles, bluetooth, keyboards, and mice. It just works in my recent experience.

[tomrod]

Exactly this.

[lbayes]

Since 2016-ish, I've been using the Dell XPS 13 "Developer Edition" (3 models so far), and they're consistently decent machines.

I still have a Linux workstation for big tasks, but XPS has been good enough to wean me off Macs ever since they introduced the touch bar, which was a hard pass for me.

Caveat:

I had to swap the radio in the first one due to driver issues, and I continue to experience occasional issues with Bluetooth, suspend and graphics rendering.

It's not all roses, but the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages (for me at least).

[JCWasmx86]

I don't know some laptops by name, but look for:

-Intel GPU in CPU (No firmware required/works even without)

-Or AMD GPU, Nvidia is not that linux-friendly. AMD GPU requires firmware-amd-graphics on debian

-Realtek wifi (I heard a lot of bad things about Broadcom). Requires firmware-realtek on debian

[fsflover]

https://puri.sm/products/librem-14