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by minzi 947 days ago
In my opinion, if you have the money, a Razer or Asus laptop is the highest quality machine that you can get to run Linux. Of course there is also Framework, but those are not as well built in my opinion. Personally, I have the new Blade 14 and it is great. Large trackpad, 16:10, 6 hours of battery life (pretty good for linux) and an RTX 4070. That said, it is absurdly expensive.
2 comments
redundantly 947 days ago
In my experience both ASUS and Razer are terrible brands. Poor support. Poor build qualities. Getting drivers for Razer is like pulling teeth, especially for previous gen hardware. Keyboard lighting controls for Razer requiring cloud connected software. Hard pass on both for me.
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minzi 947 days ago
I think you are correct about the history of Razer products, but this latest line up has been very solid. I had issues with the first laptop I got. It turned out to be a software issue and I got support within a day and they patched the problem within a week. I should also add that they have battery limiting features now and a two year battery warranty. Those two improvements protect you from 90% of the bad experiences people report with these laptops.

Asus I have had consistently bad experiences with and that is why I tried Razer. Of course this is all just my personal experience and I doubt either is perfect.

As far as needing cloud connected software to configure Razer hardware: that is simply false. The laptop is configured via an embedded usb interface that you can send reports to in Linux. There are open source projects that make this particularly easy to do.

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redundantly 946 days ago
I should have clarified, the cloud integration requirement for adjusting the keuboard's RGB settings is under Windows. It's software Razer developed themselves and require for basic functionality on their shipped product. It left a terrible impression with me.
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A4ET8a8uTh0 947 days ago
ASUS used to be my goto for quality on some items long time ago, but it has changed drastically in recent years. Sadly, it is just a reminder that one should not rely on brand recognition. Things change. Do research. Talk to people.
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leeman2016 947 days ago
Personally, I find ThinkPads and any of the Dell laptops without discrete graphics cards, reliable for Linux.
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prmoustache 947 days ago
Same here.
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