It is time to get a new laptop and I hope to find a good laptop/hardware that works well with Linux and available in the USA, as well as which Linux distro may be best for what I am mainly wanting. I have built our own main systems for years, but B (now deceased) was the software architect, so they were done to exacting work parameters with him determining most of the software demands. Many years ago he asked the Linux Community here for advice transiting our main system to Mint, so I am hoping to gain more knowledge and advice again now.

The laptop would mainly be used for writing, reading, internet surfing, light (mostly older) gaming such as puzzles, Skyrim/modding, Age of Wonders II, Torchlight II, Rimworld, Banished, Stardew Valley, Guild Wars 1 styles. Thus a screen and card based more on easy reading and high text usage, while also working with my own modding of games and decent graphics but not necessarily highest end. Many of our games were set up with Wine, /play.it, proton or dual boot into Win 7 currently.

So what laptop/hardware should I look for to work best with Linux? I know there used to be hardware that didn't play nice with certain distros, is that still true? Also what main system hardware should I be looking at to work well with Linux/dual boot or VM'd Windows (for certain games) when I upgrade the main system next year? Thanks!

Oh, and fairly quiet if possible! Too much high-pitched fan noise would drive me crazy!

I'm no Linux expert, but the general view (as I understand it) is going with AMD hardware is generally considered better for Linux due to drivers.

I'm sure I'll be floorboarded by a horde of people saying otherwise within minutes.

Thats all I have.

I think AMD is generally recommended, but Intel is fine as well. Both of them support Linux pretty well.

Nvidia is the big problem.

You can get Nvidia to work, but it's more of a hassle.

thanks for re-iterating my point. ;)

Don't Nvidia. While things have improved, they're still stubborn & obstinate on the matter.

And for personal reasons, I would select the Mint Debian spin, if I were to insist on Mint in the first place. There's a few personal reasons but it boils down to Debian being closer to upstream than the backport recursion.

Actually, I'd sooner pick OpenSuse (Leap for slow maintenance, Tumbleweed for bleeding edge), or take a cheesy quiz to see what your needs are.

The only caveat that used to be was that certain wireless & sound chips sucked, but that's mostly solved due to iterative upgrades and Pipewire these days.

There's three categories of Linux laptop hardware that I'd consider reasonable.

1. Go low end. Get one with an Intel Celeron or Pentium chip, integrated graphics, 4GB RAM, and maybe 64/128 GB storage. (Ideal if it's possible to upgrade the storage; not usually an option, but I was able to get one that does have that option.) These computers can be light, fanless, and cheap (might be able to get one for under $200 if you're lucky). Don't expect to play any higher end games, however; this is mainly for older and low-end games. (Even Spiderweb Software games aren't without slowdown, though I note that Celeste runs well.) This is the only tier where I'd really recommend Intel.

2. Go mid-range. For this, go AMD CPU, no discrete GPU, and I'd say at least 8GB of RAM. Expect to pay around $500 or so, and there will be a fan (though it hopefully will be quiet), but you have a more powerful system to work with.

3. Go high-end. Just make sure the discrete GPU is AMD, not Nivida. (See Sachys's, Sheershaw's, and Darvond's posts above.) You may need to pay $1000 or more for this. Whether this is worth it is an interesting question.

One more tip: It's often best not to get the newest and shiniest tech. When new tech is introduced, it can take some time for it to be supported by the Linux kernel (though sometimes there's day 1 support), and then it can take even more time for those kernels to hit the distribution repositories.

A lot of people swear by the Framework laptop, especially those who read and write a lot since it has a 4:3 display. Beyond that, its main strengths lie on the possibility to easily repair an upgrade it, and on the promise that users will be able to keep doing so for years to come. Also, in case you'd be interested in using those distributions, Framework provide official support for Ubuntu and Fedora (besides Windows). Anyway, check out their website (frame.work) if you're interested, it's very well designed and you won't get swamped by tons of information (look at the AMD option over the Intel one if you want less fan noise).

Regarding the Nvidia debate, I'll leave these links here, they're pretty informative:
- Huge Nvidia Wayland fixes: https://youtu.be/Yi5LFtNTGrs?si=i7_EbLmDLcaMS6ne&t=254
- NVIDIA on Linux is WAY BETTER than everyone says, but...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f4B8uIPqcE

Edit: if I'm not mistaken, Mint doesn't provide Wayland support as of yet, though it seems they're working on it. This might not be a biggie for many but I guess it can also be noteworthy for some.

P.S: Hope this helps!

This is a misnomer. Gnome, Sway, KDE, those should all have Wayland (And the middle never had an X option) by now, unless that's just how far into backport hell Mint is; Mint is but a distro, the desktops are what matters.

The Cinnamon Desktop Environment indeed does not yet have Wayland, and neither does XFCE, but the latter may have it sooner than later.

Thank you all! This gives me a very good starting place for further research and I greatly appreciate it. I have no problem working with AMD and avoiding the hassles, which seems to be the main thing to watch you all agree on. I have seen things on Debian but I haven't looked into OpenSuse at all before. Thanks for the link and I may have to play around with some distros. Considering the gaming aspect (as I am still a gamer) are there distros out there to avoid or don't play as nicely with gaming considerations?
Good to know that outside the AMD/Nvidia issue the other hardware drivers issues seem to be better these days.

----- Probably mid-range from what I'm seeing, I don't think I'll need the higher end in the laptop - possibly mid-higher for the main system upgrades next year. As for tech, we always went one below the latest, waiting for the first bugs and flaws to turn up and be ironed out even with Windows, so I can see this as great advice considering Linux and distros. Thanks!

----- I had not heard of the Framework laptop, but you are correct about the display and the upgradable aspect is a very good consideration as I'm used to doing just that for decades with the main systems we had, so I'm rather comfortable with hardware swaps. It definitely helps. Thanks!

Again thank you all, Sachys & Sheershaw too, for the advice, links and a good place to start. :)

It's also worth noting that different distributions differ on how "stable" they are; that is, they differ on whether they get the shiny new software right away, or instead stick with a single battle-tested version, only fixing security and other serious issues until it's time for the next major release.

For example:
* debian releases a new version every other year or so. Before a new release, the distribution is frozen for a few months, when no new features or software is to be added, and they spend the time ironing out all the bugs. This means that the software might be a couple years old (though probably not more), but it will have had a chance to be tested, and you won't suddenly have an update that breaks things or ruins your workflow. Also, there's at least 5 years of Long Term Support in case you *really* don't want to upgrade. (Note that, if you like what I'm saying here, you want to go with the "stable" channel, not "testing" or "unstable", which is where the new features go first, and is basically an alpha/beta of the next release.)
* On the other hand, Arch favors the newest and shiniest software. This means you get new feature updates close to when they're released (and sometimes even before, apparently), but it also means that things are more likely to change or break. Big systemwide changes, like the introduction of systemd, can come rather suddenly, unlike in debian stable where a change of that magnitude would never be done in the middle of a stable release cycle.

Very good to know. Yes, at this point and with what I'm wanting to work with I'll probably stick to the stable versions. Thank you!

I can only offer my 2 cents of experience.

I always had some sort of problems with dual graphics setup, wich are most nVidia powered laptops these days. On my current laptop, using Bottles to setup Windows games on Linux Mint, if the games are setup choosing the nVidia Graphics they wont launch on Intel Graphics and vice versa. I'm pretty sure it's user error but I'm too dumb to know how to fix it and too lazy to learn.
With dual AMD graphics I've had my share of problems including "random" crashes and freezes when wake from sleep, this was way back, even before the modern AMDGPU drivers were released.
On Windows they seem to work mostly ok, if the updates are blocked to never update the drivers. For this reason, I avoid dual graphics like the plague but fortunately, modern integrated offerings from Intel and AMD are decent for non-AAA games.
If I was in search of a laptop, would start by looking at AMD powered laptops with DDR5 memory (using the 660M or better yet, 680M graphics) as they are pretty powerful and very battery friendly both in idle and using the CPU/GPU. This way the laptop will have decent graphics while avoiding the dual graphics setup.

My laptop with dual graphics, have been running Linux Mint side by side With Windows 10 but since June, is running only Linux Mint 21 and the Cinnamon(desktop) is not 100% stable all the times. On Mint Settings -> General, there's a setting to restart Cinnamon when using too much memory and I had to lower the memory threshold and increase the checking frequency because at "random" intervals, the system is slow to respond and fans spin like crazy, traced the problem to be Cinnamon and the setting tweak seems to mostly "solved" the issue.

Worth noting that I only restart the laptop when it has some weird behaviour, otherwise only sleep is used (10+ times a day). I know that most users don't setup the computer that way but from time to time some weird behaviour starts to appear and is solved by restarting.

Regarding the nVidia on Linux, a few years ago some small issues pop up every once in a while, the most annoying being, when using a SSD with nVidia drivers installed on any other hardware vendor machine, would simply not boot (kernel panic if I correctly remember?).
Nowadays, on my main desktop I can only recall a single issue wich was solved by a single setting on the nVidia control panel, I use mostly Windows on the desktop though..

Yeah, Linus said as much in one of his talks..

Thank you. Good to keep in mind especially as I am not looking to AAA game on it.


The less hassle the better at this point, so I really appreciate the info. I'll look into this more. Thanks!