Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".

Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1]

I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it.

[1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.

▲

zdragnar a day ago | parent [-]

I've had linux on every laptop I've owned for years, and I haven't really had a problem with any of them running linux, except for display port support on a dell xps.

Aside from that one dell laptop, though, I generally avoid HP and dell entirely, so perhaps that's why.

	▲	tombert a day ago \| parent [-]
		In 2013 I bought a laptop that I kept five years that had an Nvidia Optimus. I never really figured out how to get the discrete card working consistently, and since then I haven't bought a laptop with an Nvidia card. I've had issues with wifi cards and sound drivers and the like as well, though it's going a lot better now than it was a decade ago.

▲

system2 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I urge you to try HP.

▲

cookiengineer a day ago | parent [-]

^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.

▲

userbinator a day ago | parent [-]

Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed.

I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.

▲

wtallis a day ago | parent | next [-]

That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs.

It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.

	▲	Guestmodinfo a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I would strongly advice against buying HP laptops if you want to install linux because MX linux worked well on mine pre-owned HP, Zorin OS worked well but somehow I could not install AntiX linux and secure boot of HP troubled me too much and I could install OpenBSD on it but each time I would restart then it would kernel panic and I would havento reinstall. Combined with a long holiday when I left it at home. Now my HP is practically bricked. It is not starting
	▲	userbinator a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That advice holds up very well when taken along with "don't buy the very first major release".

▲

cmckn a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I built a tower several years ago and it had CPU temp issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build, etc. It wasn’t my main machine, but every time I sat down to use it the CPU would run hot and thermal-throttle. It’s an i9 with P/E cores, so I just chalked it up to Linux power management woes. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it.

I guess I did “ have a specific bug that needs fixed”; I just didn’t know it!

▲

cromka 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most of the laptop BIOS updates are now for CVEs and other security fixes, from my experience. You don't have much choice but upgrade.

	▲	userbinator 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		These are for "security" against the user, to be fair.

▲

cookiengineer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

People don't have a choice to update their BIOS, as updates like this are automatically installed, by both Windows and the underlying Intel ME tools.

(And I'm trying to avoid talking about microcode updates, which is a whole other story of fuckups)

Regarding Thinkpad BIOS: I have a Raspberry Pi Zero and a self soldered RP2040 programmer [1] in my travel kit for a reason. When travelling, a lot of the Cellebrite rootkits rely on an OEM BIOS, so they typically reflash your BIOS in the "we gonna check your laptop" phase.

[1] would totally recommend serprog, it's awesome: https://codeberg.org/Riku_V/pico-serprog