Gentoo friendly laptop recommendations?

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

I hope that this is the appropriate subforum. If it isn't, moderators please move it to the appropriate one.

I'm looking at purchasing a new laptop. One ideally that is Gentoo friendly in terms of hardware and installing. I've been running Gentoo successfully on a Samsung series 7 laptop for the past 10 years. It hasn't always been easy but somehow with perseverance and this forum I got the job done.

But it's on its deathbed now so it's time for a new laptop. Hardware has come a long way since my initial install so I have some concerns.

I'm currently considering the HP Spectre 360 15 in, the Dell XPS 15 in, or another Samsung in the series 7 or series 9 line. Unfortunately the Samsung series 7 and 9 now no longer have a 1 terabyte hard disk option which isn't ideal for me so I'm leaning heavily towards the HP or the Dell. Both are AMOLED 4K displays and are SSD drives. It seems that mechanical drives have gone the way of the dinosaur. They are also 2 in 1 devices with touch displays. Samsung uses an S-pen. Also, a fingerprint sensor is used in some models.

Does anyone have any experience, comments, reservations about any of these models? Is Gentoo equipped to handle some of this new hardware? Eg touchscreen, 4K displays, fingerprint sensors, etc? Once again I'll have to run as a dual boot but the majority of my time is spent in the Gentoo environment.

C5ace · Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:29 am Post subject:

I have three Hp's and one Toshiba. They all work fine, except hibernation. Just have not bothered because I don't need it. The Toshiba is more than 10 years old and runs 10 hours each day. One HP is used as mail and web server with build in UPS.
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fedeliallalinea · Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:34 pm Post subject:

I have a dell xps 15 9550 and I'm happy but there are some problem with wireless (work but sometimes crash) and sound when plug headphone.
You can consider to buy dell xps developer edition but is a 13' (by default is installed with ubuntu).
Others laptop linux friendly are (no experience with these)

for my next laptop I am interested on TUXEDO
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AlexJGreen · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Sep 2018 Posts: 149

sdauth · Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 1:58 pm Post subject:

Thinkpad are great. Especially older models. I use a T420 with a i7-2640M and 16GB of RAM. Good airflow as well so no worries during heavy workload. Never had a single issue with Gentoo on it (and OpenBSD

) You can also flash coreboot on it

(Which I did)
Of course, it is not slim.. but on the other hand, it can be bought for quite cheap, parts are available everywhere etc..

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 16464

AlexJGreen · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Sep 2018 Posts: 149

halcon · Guru Joined: 15 Dec 2019 Posts: 390

I have Lenovo IdeaPad 720s (Ryzen).

Works everything except:

- Finger Print Reader
- several Fn+X combinations
- in pure ALSA, there's the 'crackling' bug with the built-in microphone; I had to buy a cheap USB one

I did not see ACPI complaints announced at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_IdeaPad_720s_(Ryzen) <-- broken link; parentheses must be in url

Its SSD may be upgraded to 1 TB.

Configuring the hibernation took some additional time, but finally I managed it to work clearly (disabling USB).

When compiling heavy packages, I switch on a cooling pad (2 fans), smartd is silent.

No freezes.

It seems I have forgotten nothing.

In general, I can call it Gentoo-friendly.

nvaert1986 · n00b Joined: 05 May 2019 Posts: 72

I've always considered the Lenovo ThinkPad T/W/P or the Dell Latitude, Dell XPS or Dell Precision series to be the most stable on Linux, depending on your needs. With HP laptops I've always seen lots of weird / unusual bugs.

Thing to look for:
- Intel based LAN adapters
- Intel based Wireless adapters
- Intel based Bluetooth adapters

My personal experience with Intel is that it just works out of the box with most distributions if the module is compiled and the firmware is loaded.

Things to avoid:
- Creative based onboard sound cards (they can give a real headache)
- Qualcomm based ethernet adapters
- Broadcom based wireless adapters

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Does anyone else have any input about touchscreen and stylus support? Also biometric stuff like fingerprint sensors? Also any other issues with the "2 in 1" machines? I can't imagine it would be an issue but one never knows.

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

One issue that I am very interested in hearing about is one that I encountered when I first joined the Gentoo bandwagon.

At that time, Neddy Sagoon (Thank you, for all of your help through the years) pointed out the following:

nvaert1986 · n00b Joined: 05 May 2019 Posts: 72

nvaert1986 · n00b Joined: 05 May 2019 Posts: 72

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

[quote="nvaert1986"]

nvaert1986 · n00b Joined: 05 May 2019 Posts: 72

[quote="Budoka"]

duane · Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 5:23 pm Post subject: Off-Topic Laptop

I know this isn't what you're looking for, but I thought I'd recommend the Motile m142 anyway. You can buy it at walmart.com for around $300 if you watch the price fluctuation for a while. I picked it up as a filler, until I get a real system, but I think I may just stick with this one until it wears out. It's a budget laptop, but a lot of thought (and plagiarism) went into the design.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Walmart-Motile-M142-Laptop-Review-Pretty-Good-for-500.443260.0.html

The only bit that gave me any trouble was getting the touchpad working. I ended up copying the kernel config from my older system, so I'm still not sure what fixed that in the end. It seems to be an elan clone, but it's the best touchpad I've used since my turn-of-the-century thinkpad. It's got a virtual button built into the upper left corner that's used to toggle the touchpad on/off, for typing. I've set it up under openbox, though I haven't tried to get the LED to work. I really like this feature.

The keyboard feels cheap, but it's easy to type on, and well laid-out. I stuck a 500G ssd in the second slot, and now I have plenty of space. I may put 16G of memory in it, but I haven't needed it yet.

After three weeks of use, everything just works.

guitou · Guru Joined: 02 Oct 2003 Posts: 487 Location: France

Hello.

Not specifically Gentoo friendly, but Linux friendly for sure, you have Clevo laptop: been using one for a few months now and quite satisfied (running Debian).
There are many resellers around the world, that may end cheaper than buying from Clevo directly: at least I found one in France and a few others around Europe.

The main advantage of their offers, compared to what main brands offer, is that you can customize many parts of your machine (CPU, RAM, disk, second disk or optical drive, kbd layout and even wifi chip).
Then you can save money and opt for a minimal setup as well as go for a quite heavy configuration, for one single same basis.
For the disadvantages I could notice:
- sound is a little cheap (at least concerning built-in speakers)
- sometimes keyboard is just unresponsive after waking up from sleep (requires plugging in another kbd or halt with button)
- won't fit your needs if you want the cutting edge

++
Gi)

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Thanks for all of the replies and input everyone. For better or for worse, I picked up an HP Spectre 360 (15-df1043dx). 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD Optane, and a 10th Gen Intel i7 processor.

I've come a long way in my knowledge of Gentoo since my first install all those years ago but I suspect this time won't go as easily as I would like so please stay tuned and bear with me as this is bound to continue in the Installation subforum.

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

[quote="nvaert1986"]

jlpoole · Guru Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 356 Location: Salem, OR

I'll chime in. I have a Dell Inspiron 17" and used the Sakaki EFI Install Guide since I wanted to preserve the ability to run Windows so that I could pick up Dell's bios upgrades. The install took a really long time and made me shudder about EFI. But the only regret I have is that I'm finding that my CPUs are being throttled. So, I'm not getting as much horsepower as I should because every time I go into a major resource heavy application or emerge, throttling kicks in.

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 1:32 pm Post subject:

Compal and Clevo are two large Taiwanese OEMs/ODMs that make laptops for many well-known hardware companies as well as smaller resellers. Compal, for example, engineered the Dell XPS laptop (see https://www.compal.com/case-study/laptop-dell/) and HP Spectre. Clevo laptops are badged by Sager, System76, PCSpecialist, Schenker, TUXEDO, Eurocom, and many other resellers.

I own a 10-year-old Mesh-Computers-badged 15.6" Compal NBLB2 (AMD GPU) and a 5-year-old PCSpecialist-badged 14" Clevo W230SS (NVIDIA Optimus).

Apart from recently having to replace the dried-out thermal paste on the Compal laptop's CPU, that laptop has worked solidly for ten years with Gentoo in a wide range of temperatures on five continents.

The Clevo laptop, on the other hand, has been problematic:

- the motherboard failed after three years and I had to get it replaced at significant cost;
- the right Shift key often does not work unless I press it down very hard;
- NVIDIA Optimus is a hassle in Linux (I got it to work the way I wanted after quite a bit of effort but will avoid NVIDIA like the plague when I buy my next laptop);
- the sound quality is not that good;
- the sound card circuitry is not properly isolated and I have to use an external mic amplifier simply to eliminate a loud hum from an earth loop when the laptop is connected to any external powered speakers (see Eliminating the loud hum from powered speakers connected to my laptop);
- a software fix is required to initialise the headphone amplifier so it works after reconnecting headphones or resuming from Suspend-to-RAM (see No sound from headphones after resume from suspension / No sound from headphones after re-plug).

Bottom line for me: for my next laptop I will try to avoid Clevo laptops (quite difficult these days, as so many resellers badge Clevo hardware) and I will try to avoid NVIDIA GPUs, especially Optimus hardware.

EDIT: I've also owned four Acer laptops over the years, two of which were top-of-the-range models. The two cheaper models had design faults: one overheated easily and the other had a ribbon-cable connection problem with the display due to its routing path; the two top-end models had problems due to micro-cracks in the solder tracks on the motherboards.

EDIT2: I miss Gateway 2000 (the original manufacturer, not the company after it was purchased by Acer in 2007). My two Gateway laptops back in the 1990s were well-engineered and built to last.
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Clevo W230SS: amd64 nvidia-drivers & xf86-video-intel.
Compal NBLB2: ~amd64 xf86-video-ati. Dual boot Win 7 Pro 64-bit.
OpenRC eudev elogind & KDE on both.
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Abraxas · l33t Joined: 25 May 2003 Posts: 813

I never have a problem with Thinkpads. My current model is a T490. Just remember to choose a model with intel graphics and wifi and pretty much everything will be supported.
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