Help me shop for a Linux desktop and laptop

[captain_aggravated]

As mentioned, I've had a pretty rough and unenjoyable time with my Dell Inspiron.  The warranty is about to expire, so it's time to replace this heap.

 

A continuous problem I've had with this machine is the hybrid AMD graphics.  Half the time, I get worse benchmarks out of my Radeon R7 M265 than my Intel HD integrated graphics, the other half of the time it simply refuses to work.  Suffice it to say I'm butt sore enough from my Inspiron that I'm not really willing to trust hybrid graphics on a laptop again.

My main computers have been laptops since seventh grade.  I've only had four.  I've tended toward your higher end "normal" laptops, my higher spec Inspiron with the second biggest procesor, maxed RAM etc. is typical.  It can do a lot of tasks from coding to gaming, but it's not great at any of them.  So, I'm going to get two computers, both will run Linux.

 

1.  A high performance desktop.  I'm thinking a Core i7 class machine, around 16GB of RAM, Nvidia 1060 graphics or so, etc.  I'm looking to spend no more than $1800 on it.  I'm going to compile code, edit video, batch process photos, do 3D modeling, some gaming (Kerbal Space Program is my favorite) all while playing Youtube videos with about 8.7*10^34 browser tabs open.  Must run Linux (probably something on the Ubuntu tree like Mint or Elementary), and EVERYTHING must work.  Given the choice, I will trade performance for reliability; if my hybrid graphics worked, I wouldn't be in the market for a computer right now.  Not really looking for a "gamer" machine...If ordering from Dell's catalog, I'd rather have a Dell XPS than an Alienware tower. No All-in-ones.

 

2.  A lean laptop.  I'm thinking a mid-range ultrabook.  This machine will be tasked with web browsing, email, slack, word processing, spreadsheets, video playback, and lots and lots of SSH/terminal stuff.  I want it to boot, launch applications and open large files like PDFs quickly.  I want it to not be in the way.  I want to not hate the keyboard or display.  I'm also going to require at least one USB type A port what for the occasional thumb drive or mouse.  I'd like to spend $600 or less. 

 

In both cases, I'm looking for pre-built machines that are known to work with your garden variety Linux distros without too much fuss, so straightforward hardware that is well supported--even last year's models are acceptable.

 

Advice, discussion?

[WereCatf]

5 minutes ago, captain_aggravated said:

I'm going to compile code, edit video, batch process photos, do 3D modeling, some gaming (Kerbal Space Program is my favorite) all while playing Youtube videos with about 8.7*10^34 browser tabs open.

Most of what you mentioned benefit from lots of cores, wouldn't a Ryzen be the better choice?

[Master Disaster]

There's one general piece of advice with Linux. It really doesn't care what CPU you have but when it comes to GPU always try to run Nvidia and the reason is drivers.

 

AMDs open source driver (Mesa) is perfectly functional as long as you don't want anything that's hardware accelerated, it falls flat on its face when it comes to gaming, rendering etc etc.

 

AMDs proprietary driver is straight up garbage, honestly I can say I've never managed to successfully install it without it destroying X server and I have followed guides and tutorials, used PPAs where it's supposed to be pre built, heck I've even tried manually installing it and letting X server reconfigure itself. Nothing I've ever tried has worked. I believe it's improved somewhat over the last year or two but I've never tried the newer version so cannot comment on that.

 

Nvidias open source driver (Nouveau) is much like Mesa, it works fine for basic stuff but not for anything accelerated.

 

Nvidia proprietary driver is on par with Windows. It's usually a few versions behind the Windows one however by using a PPA to install it it just works and it performs roughly equal to it's Windows counterpart. In some cases it runs stuff better than the Windows version.

 

As for Intel, I've never used an Intel GPU in Linux but I believe there is only an open source driver available. No official Intel driver exists for Linux. If anyone knows different please correct me.

 

My advice is simple, if you want to run Linux go with an Nvidia GPU.

[captain_aggravated]

10 hours ago, WereCatf said:

Most of what you mentioned benefit from lots of cores, wouldn't a Ryzen be the better choice?

Maybe, in someone's world.  I'm currently running a five year old dual core laptop processor, so the hex core desktop machines I'm eyeing have "lots of cores" to me.  I'm actually okay with my current CPU's performance, most of the rest of the machine like the DDR3 RAM, the physical hard drive etc. are my bottlenecks.  Also, I've blacklisted AMD entirely on principle, since I'm petty, childish, and butthurt about...

9 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

My advice is simple, if you want to run Linux go with an Nvidia GPU.

That's my advice too!  I tried.  I ordered Nvidia graphics in my current computer, but that's not what I got.  See the "your worst laptop" thread for details.  Short answer is, I got AMD graphics the way a lot of people got Windows 10: A corporation made a decision for me, and I've been trying to unbreak things ever since.  This has nothing to do with Ryzen CPUs at all, but when you're making an emotional decision it doesn't have to make sense.  I give my money to Intel and Nvidia, not AMD.

 

I am going to have to change how I speak; for the longest time "integrated graphics" and "Intel graphics" meant basically the same thing.  Now that they're making proper GPUs, that terminology isn't useful anymore.  I do have some hope for those Intel GPUs and Linux; I've never heard of a problem with Intel integrated graphics, they're very well supported by the Linux kernel and I hope they do the same with their discrete GPUs.  My opinion on them right now is "not yet."  I want them to be in the wild long enough to gain a reputation before I buy one.

 

Also, another major reason is, I've been looking at pre-built systems, the majority of which are Intel boxen.  Though I'm starting to come around to the idea of building the desktop. I keep running into weird issues when researching pre-built machines.  "The HP BIOS is really unhelpful and useless."  "Dell ships M.2 SATA boot drives, which interferes with mounting normal SATA drives somehow."  "Gateway hasn't existed in years, stop asking."  Etc. It seems that no manufacturers can help themselves, they've always got to do something stupid and non-standard to make their home desktops a pain to live with, not to mention every single company apparently has huge quality control problems.  I was looking at my father's Dell XPS thinking of buying one of those.  Couldn't get it to boot an Ubuntu Live USB.  I've looked at the corporate side of things as well, but A. they're either little mini-towers meant for cubicles, points-of-sale and schools or Xeon/Quadro workstations, and B. ugh.  Looking at pre-builts because I've never built a PC before, I've never shopped for cases or individual components (though I realize LTT is a great resource to learn this stuff), I'm used to having a warranty (Though Dell's support has been so hilariously bad I've contemplated suing them)...Okay, I'm gonna go price out a system equivalent to the $1800 XPS I spec'd.  If it's at least $500 cheaper to build myself, I'm doing that, assuming the component manufacturers all offer warranties.  Then I'd move all discussion of that to the appropriate subforum.

 

On the laptop side of things, I haven't paid ultrabooks much mind, so I don't even know if I want ARM or Intel architecture.  I want a little portable Linux box with as little aggravation as possible.

[markr54632]

If you have a microcenter locally look into their house brand Powerspec prebuilts. They use standard off the shelf components and are pretty fair priced. They also have a warrantee.

[captain_aggravated]

Okay, been looking at laptops while sort of putting off the desktop idea.  I think I'm aiming at a Dell XPS Developer Edition.  About the only thing I've seen people fuss about that laptop is the (admittedly derpy) placement of the camera, and I don't video conference.  Probably go with the i5 version; that extra $250 for the i7 just doesn't seem to be enough of a performance boost.  It's more than I want to pay but to go much cheaper is to ask a lot of questions.