Hi all,

I am looking for suggestions for a new laptop to run KDE on, but I want it to be amazing out of the box.

I have run kubuntu and neon on HP and dell laptops previously, and they are fairly good, but things like the GPU not being auto set up, or hibernate type features not working have made it a bit of a pain.

I think my main bugbear is the power management. My wife’s macbook air can have the lid closed and it will wake up again a week later just fine. My laptop barely makes it overnight and get hot in the bag.

What are some good laptops to run KDE, where they have been fully integrated and have great power management?

The main ones I know of are slimbook and framework, but would love to hear some experiences if you have them.

Thanks!

  • AVincentInSpaceEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I cannot recommend Framework laptops enough. I recently got my hands on one and it’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned. It of course runs Linux like a dream. Everything works out of the box. No proprietary blobs needed for any of its hardware drivers, of course, plus the firmware for the embedded controller as well as the keyboard are open source and can be reflashed from the device (the keyboard firmware is even a fork of QMK). Its 165Hz 1440p 16:10 monitor being driven by a Radeon 7700S makes it one of the best laptop gaming experiences I’ve had, which is especially impressive considering it’s not marketed as a gaming laptop. Three hours battery life with the dGPU installed is the best I’ve seen out of a gaming laptop ever, and if you pull out the GPU and run off integrated graphics, the battery life doubles to a very respectable six hours for web browsing.

    There’s also of course the obvious customization aspect. Don’t like which I/O ports are on the side? Swap in a different module! You don’t even have to reboot your computer. Want your trackpad to be centered or off to the side to make room for a numpad? Move it around! You don’t even have to reboot your computer. Who needs Nvidia Optimus when you can physically remove the GPU from the laptop, reducing power savings even more and making the laptop several pounds lighter to boot? (You do have to shut down to do that, and swapping it out takes around five minutes, but still.)

    I know this post sounds like it was sponsored but it wasn’t. I just really love this thing ^-^