I’m moving soon and I won’t have access to my desktop computer for a few weeks. I’m shopping for a laptop to continue my programming work during that time, and as a supplement for later when I want portability. Does anyone here have a favorite?
I made my own mechanical Bluetooth keyboard that I want to use; so I’m curious about 2-in-1 or tablet devices where the keyboard can be put out of the way, or even excluded.
I’m looking for:
- portability over power
- but enough power to run Rust Analyzer without being painfully slow
- high-resolution screen
- doesn’t have to be the latest model
I’m a longtime fan of the Dell XPS 13, but I haven’t tried any of the 2-in-1 versions. The Asus Zenbook Flip also looks promising.
I’m thinking of trying out Nix’ remote builds feature to shift load away from the local processor and RAM. But I’m sure that won’t funny eliminate the need for some local processing power. It’ll be interesting to find out.
I’d advise to stay away from HP spectre. From my experience, Windows works just fine. But getting Linux drivers to work is next to impossible. I couldn’t get Bang Olufsen speakers to work and I tried literally every suggestion I was able to find. Bluetooth headphones also didn’t work of the box, but I managed to fix that.
I’m using a Lenovo Yoga 14ARB7 AMD 2 in 1 with Manjaro installed, quite happy with it! (After soms fiddling everything works, even the keyboard locks when folded) Only downside is 16 GB ram max, I do hit this limit now and then.
The arch wiki has some compatibility lists that should apply to other distros. Here is the Dell list:
System 76 machines are very nice and you get a lot for your money.
Well I went chasing after pretty OLED displays which led me to a great deal on an Asus Zenbook Flip S13. That is a model I mentioned in my original post. So far I’m happy with it. Everything works out-of-the-box on a NixOS 23.05 install except the feature where the touchpad can turn into a numpad, and automatic screen rotation. It looks like screen rotation can be set up without much trouble. There seems to be some experimental software to make the touchpad-numpad thing work, but I’m not super motivated to experiment with that.
I was concerned at first because the laptop was very hot, and the fan was running all the time. That was while I was on the preloaded Windows install to make sure I could update the firmware. After I switched to Linux it’s cool and quiet - so no problem after all. And it turns out that Asus provides a firmware-update utility that doesn’t require Windows anyway.
The stylus works just as it is supposed to, except that it requires more pressure than I want to apply even after I changed it to the softest setting in the Gnome settings. Hopefully there are other mechanisms I can use to tweak that. Like maybe I can use the dconf editor to get a softer value than the settings UI allows.
I’m getting some random disconnects from my bluetooth keyboard which is something that I don’t see when using the keyboard with my desktop computer. The frequency is roughly twice per day so far. I may have to do some investigation to see what I can do to make that connection more stable.
