Ever since my laptop got too crashy to use about a year ago I've been looking for a replacement and it wasn't and in fact isn't going well. I was looking to support a Linux vendor, hoping for a 15" non-1080p/4K screen, decent speakers/mic/camera and good build quality.

It looks like there's nothing that fits the bill, but maybe I'm missing something?

Most (all?) laptops right now are 1080p, sometimes 4K. It's barely passable at 15", I have no idea how people use them at 13". Linux has barely functional fractional scaling, it's just not an option right now. So I was looking for something with a saner resolution. My previous laptop was 15" with 1440x900 and it was just right. I'd gladly take a HiDPI version of that, but no. Nothing on the market.

I sort-of settled on a ThinkPad despite the screen resolution, but it turns out it's impossible to get one with Linux where I live, even though Lenovo lists Ubuntu/Fedora as an option on their website. So that's a no-go.

So I just got a 2019 Macbook Pro 16". It's very pretty, has an excellent screen (effective resolution of 1536x960), great keyboard, amazing speakers, awful touchbar. It's a terrible Linux machine, but it's just so satisfying hardware-wise. I'm running Linux in VMWare Fusion and it works... barely.

I'm still looking for a good Linux laptop, however. Any ideas?

Last edited by damarrin on 12 April 2021 at 8:09 am UTC