A good laptop to run MX

[BitJam]

From looking around I have come to the conclusion (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that what's important at the end is the hardware, right?

Yes. It mostly comes down to whether there are Linux drivers for the hardware or not. This is why it is often safe to go with a model that is distributed with Linux pre-installed, even if you get the same model without Linux pre-installed. If you are interested in a model, I suggestion you Google(Linux $MODEL). You may have to wade through ads and reviews but you should be able to get to some pages of people reporting success and/or failure with Linux. The distro almost never matters, it mostly a matter of whether the Linux kernel has drivers for the hardware. Sometimes it is better to stay away from the latest and greatest hardware since we are often playing catch-up to write drivers for the latest hardware.

SSDs are the way to go. I'm sorry you guys are off Dell. I'm very happy with the last two Dells I've gotten. I'm less happy with an Acer and an ASUS. There certainly was a time I was staying away from Dell but I'm happy with them now. I also suggest getting a laptop with an IPS display.

[radissthor]

Has anyone had any experience buying generic brand laptops? I found this webpage which seems to have pieces with decent hardware, but the names of the brands are just funny:

http://www.made-in-china.com/multi-sear ... _92/2.html

[asqwerth]

Yes, it's the hardware.

Bitjam is right about being careful buying really state of the art, spanking new hardware, as the requisite drivers may be too new to have been incorporated in the Linux kernel or made available for installation.

Example - in the gaming laptop that I tried (see here: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=39691&hilit=laptop ) the Intel wireless chipset and Skylake CPU were too new to work on quite a few live distros. Even MX15's original iso image would not have worked because the default kernel at that time was pre-kernel 4.1. The MX snapshot worked only because I'd updated the kernel.


Other than that,
- Intel graphics generally work in Linux without worrying about needing proprietary drivers (which may be a problem for some NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards).
- Wireless chipset - just check that the hardware in your laptop is not one of those that have problems on Linux machines, like some of the older broadcom ones, or the one in Dedoimedo's linux reviews that always causes a problem for his laptop.

[Richard]

" Just get one with Intel graphics and intel wireless."

That has been my experience.
Intel graphics and wireless have always worked for me;
but then, I've only had one AMD processor over the last 30 years.

[rokytnji.1]

Has anyone had any experience buying generic brand laptops? I found this webpage which seems to have pieces with decent hardware, but the names of the brands are just funny:

http://www.made-in-china.com/multi-sear ... _92/2.html

My last 2 dealings with Chinese sellers left a bad taste in my mouth. Neither was for a laptop.
Which was good I guess. Because

1. The 3XL motorcycle leather jacket I ordered and bought was a medium size jacket with a 3XL
tag sown into the interior of the jacket. I gave that jacket to a shorter, smaller framed biker friend]
of mine.

2. The aluminum phone case for Galaxy S7 Edge. Showed a gorilla glass screen in the ad and
was mentioned in writing also in the ad. The case came without glass.
I got a "oh so sorry" email. They changed their ad and removed the miss-leading
ads after I sent my complaints. I will not ship it back by sending good money towards bad.

YMMV from mine.

[eladhen]

The first thing you need to do is decide what you need: You said you don't need the fastest or strongest laptop in the market. Now think about keyboard and screen size, battery life and things like that.

Then, I would recommend finding models you're interested in and googling specifically for using them with linux. If you can't find information it doesn't mean *you can't* run linux on them, but why take the chance? You'll find plenty models with information about being used with linux.

I myself shopped for a laptop half a year ago and settled for the Asus ZenBook UX305FA which is very light weight and has great battery life, and runs linux like a champ.

[eladhen]

Oh and my laptop has an SSD drive, and so does my desktop computer. No problem whatsoever.

[BitJam]

The first thing you need to do is decide what you need: You said you don't need the fastest or strongest laptop in the market. Now think about keyboard and screen size, battery life and things like that.

+1. The rest of the advice was very good too.

[azrielle]

Since HTML5 swaps pages, among other things, to the HDD in preference to RAM, you owe it to yourself to get one with fast (vertical MLC?) SSD, as a (typical) 5400 rpm HDD is miserably slow if you tend to run alot of tabs at once, especially with a slow cpu as well--such as an E2.

[Stevo]

my laptop has an SSD drive and geforce graphics card
URL link deleted by moderator

Well, you seem to be a spammer if you don't provide any more information than that, as well as dig up a zombie thread.