Comment on Question: Laptop vendors with long-support for Linux + stylus + powerful CPU?
GrapheneOSRuinedMyPixel@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
What kind of vendor support do you need? Unless you buy something esoteric (like the surfaces suggested in the thread, where specific downstream linux kernel patches are required to make it work) all firmware is already backed into mainline linux kernel and it just works right out of the box.
I daily drive a thinkpad Z16 gen 2, which is basically a more modern/macbooky X1 Extreme with AMD, it ticks all your boxes:
- wacom support (though limited to pressure, I couldn’t figure out how to make tilt work)
- kinda powerful CPU and passable GPU: I have a max spec P1 Gen 6 to compare, my poorly optimized CPU bound python tasks run a bit faster and much cooler, and the Z16 is mid spec 7840HS compared to 13900H on P1; GPU exists and is old, can’t really comment since my workflow does not require a lot of graphics power
- all hardware is supported right out of the box, I use NixOS and didn’t have to do anything after booting my custom image
- hardware in general is as good as it gets, great build quality (I have a small list of grievances like only two USB4 ports and a proprietary 135W type-c charger instead of proper PD 3.1, normal type-c charges are supported up to 100W)
- has a good battery life (even on the 4K OLED version)
- runs incredibly cool (fans never turn on unless you run something on the discrete GPU).
Oh wait, I remembered an idiotic thing: while stylus is supported, max display lid angle is about 135°, this does not make this a great drawing tablet and might be a deal breaker for you. The screen does not wobble though and I can somewhat comfortably draw on my slides with a pen.
pglpm@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
This looked really cool and more or less what I’m looking for. But it seems the Z series has been discontinued? Maybe they joined it with the T series.
One problem in the Lenovo website is that you can’t filter laptops by pen-capability. They have a “touch” search filter, but that isn’t the same.
GrapheneOSRuinedMyPixel@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I actually bought the Z16 just a few months ago to replace my aging 16" Intel MBP - I wanted good linux support, type-c charging, normal keyboard and a 16" 4k OLED screen, nothing new seemed to be comparable.
If you absolutely need something new, notebookcheck has a pen support filter in their search. Just look for laptops without Nvidia GPUs and maybe check Arch wiki (they have device specific pages) or hardware probes on linux-hardware.org. New hardware generally has worse linux support that improves over time.
pglpm@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Thank you for netobookcheck, great resource! 🙏 So you bought your Z16 for some store? I’ll look around too :)
GrapheneOSRuinedMyPixel@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I got mine used from a local ebay-like site. Can’t really justify buying new hardware most of the time. Thinkpads in general are really easy to buy second-hand in great condition when corporations replace them. Z-series were not very popular so getting it was a lot harder than a T14 or P1, but still, there were some great options.