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Best Laptop for Debian

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stevepusser
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Re: Best laptop for debian?

#21 Post by stevepusser »

You hear wrong. Most people don't have any trouble with laptops of 2017 or older if they read the instructions and make sure to have the firmware, firmware ISO, or a wired connection handy.

You are getting a biased view of the problems since most successful users don't bother to post.

Lenovos have a very good reputation. Acers are also very good in my experience, except for tweaks necessary in the BIOS setup lately. I also have a new powerful 2018 MSI GP63 RD running just awesome with MX 18, but that'll need a lot of backports in Debian Stretch to work right.
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GarryRicketson
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Re: Best laptop for debian?

#22 Post by GarryRicketson »

This topic looked just like this other one, Best Laptop for Debian

I don't see why we need to have another topic on the same subject ?

Forum guidelines. Please read before first post!

Please Read.. What we expect you have already Done

what laptops and hardware is supported by Debian
First 2 hits: https://wiki.debian.org/Hardware
and
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/ ... 01.html.en
As for best , that is really a matter of opinion, personally I like HP, I have several, never paid over $100 for any of them, and had No problems installing Debian to them.
I would avoid ASUS, they are junk.

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esp7
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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#23 Post by esp7 »

I am a Thinkpad guy...
ThinkPad X220: i5-2520M CPU 2.5GHz - 8GB RAM 1333 MHz - SSD 860 EVO 250GB - Debian - ME_cleaned
ThinkPad X230: i5-3320M CPU 3.3GHz - 8GB RAM 1600 MHz - SSD 860 EVO 500GB - Debian - ME_cleaned

nemanja
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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#24 Post by nemanja »

Hello everyone again,

In the end I decided to buy the following laptop: Lenovo V330-15 (15.60", Full HD, Intel Core i7-8550U, 20GB, SSD). This one was suggested by the friend of mine, who told me that the best is to chose a computer with as many Intel components as possible, due to the compatibility.

As I am now about to join the Debian family, I would like to ask you about which Debian should I choose in respect to the processor architecture? What I found is that Intel i7 processor has x86-64 architecture, which was initially developed by AMD but is used by Intel as well.

I did a search myself, and what I did found is that the "amd64" is recommended for this computer. If this is true, could anyone briefly explain to me why isn't there something like "intel64" version of Debian? I am confused at the moment, because I was initially told to choose only Intel components, and now I see that an AMD product is recommended. Could anyone please clarify me this?

Thanks!
Nemanja

Wheelerof4te
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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#25 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Yes, amd64 arch is what you're looking for. It is named so because AMD is the first one to invent it. It is basically both AMD and Intel 64-bit arch.
nemanja wrote: because I was initially told to choose only Intel components, and now I see that an AMD product is recommended.
AMD is recommend now because they made their graphics stack and drivers open-source. AMD's APU's are more powerful than Intel's iGPU CPU's, but they also consume more power.
In the end, you chose a good laptop, Intel has solid open-souce drivers and they are working on new one now.
Choose Buster, it is about to be released in a couple of weeks.
https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdima ... 64/iso-cd/

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stevepusser
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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#26 Post by stevepusser »

You will also need some non-free firmware to make sure Intel hardware runs correctly. Debian's default ISOs don't include it, but a simple web search will turn up the Debian ISOs that do include it. You will need firmware-misc-nonfree, intel-microcode for processor security fixes, and firmware-iwlwifi for Intel wi-fi chipsets.

You may also want to turn off hyperthreading for security reasons. You might be able to do that in the BIOS, or there is a script that can do it: https://github.com/damentz/smt-manager
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nemanja
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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#27 Post by nemanja »

Wheelerof4te wrote:Yes, amd64 arch is what you're looking for. It is named so because AMD is the first one to invent it. It is basically both AMD and Intel 64-bit arch.
nemanja wrote: because I was initially told to choose only Intel components, and now I see that an AMD product is recommended.
AMD is recommend now because they made their graphics stack and drivers open-source. AMD's APU's are more powerful than Intel's iGPU CPU's, but they also consume more power.
In the end, you chose a good laptop, Intel has solid open-souce drivers and they are working on new one now.
Choose Buster, it is about to be released in a couple of weeks.
https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdima ... 64/iso-cd/

Thank you very much!

nemanja
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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#28 Post by nemanja »

stevepusser wrote:You will also need some non-free firmware to make sure Intel hardware runs correctly. Debian's default ISOs don't include it, but a simple web search will turn up the Debian ISOs that do include it. You will need firmware-misc-nonfree, intel-microcode for processor security fixes, and firmware-iwlwifi for Intel wi-fi chipsets.

You may also want to turn off hyperthreading for security reasons. You might be able to do that in the BIOS, or there is a script that can do it: https://github.com/damentz/smt-manager

Thanks a lot! I will keep this in mind, however, during the initial learning period I will skip it, until I become fluent with all the details.

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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#29 Post by zarathustra-f90 »

From my experience I've never faced and compatibility issues with Debian or other distro no matter the laptop. The special cases of issues arise with some brands of wifi adapters and some of the latest Ryzen CPUs that might not be supported fully yet by a kernel.

You can search in the internet about the brands and models for both these cases but in general for a laptop less than 500$ and fully compatible with Linux I would suggest anything from the Lenovo series (probably something refurbished/used in order to get something with good specs).

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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#30 Post by wizard10000 »

Bulkley wrote: 2018-12-03 20:14...Use it to boot any machine that interests you. If the sales person won't let you, find another store.
I don't work in retail but if I did I'd fire an employee who allowed a customer to boot one of my machines from a USB stick :mrgreen:
we see things not as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin

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Re: Best Laptop for Debian

#31 Post by Hallvor »

[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

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