New Laptop Advice April 2022

[mitzini]

Doesn't forcing the fanless laptop give you low performance?

[RyanH]

A Good, Fairly Simple Setup:

I'm currently using an Acer Aspire 5. Bought in 2021 but I think released in 2019. It came with:

-10th Generation Intel i5 processor
-built-in ethernet port
-20 GB RAM
-no dedicated GPU

With this setup I am able to do anything I want in terms of making music. Also no problems with wifi (except once in a while the service will fail to start and I have to reboot), and quite good battery life. If I have a lot of software open at the same time while also having a rather complex project open in QTractor, it starts to push the system a bit, but I can still get a couple of hours in before the battery dips lower than 50%, and experience few, if any, x-runs.

Overall I'm super happy with making music and general computer use with Linux on this laptop. As a bonus, Acer makes it relatively easy to open the device to replace the battery or SSD, or add RAM or a 2nd HDD for storage (without voiding the warranty, if I'm not mistaken)... although I haven't had to do any of these things. Also, although it wasn't the cheapest laptop, it cost much less than any laptop I've seen that ships with Linux.

For comparison, I also have a much older Asus i5 with 8 GB of RAM and an HDD rather than SSD. That one is fine for making more basic music (i.e. smaller projects, fewer things open at once), but it does struggle a bit under a higher load.

I am dual booting with Windows, so had to do just a couple of steps to make Linux run smoothly on this newer Acer: switch something-or-other to AHCI in the bios along with a terminal command in Windows, and turn off Windows Fastboot. I assume if you will be wiping Windows, you can just switch it to AHCI without issue and forget about fastboot.

I would say that, before you buy, make sure your bios will allow you to turn off Secure Boot (if you plan on using AV Linux - Ubuntu Studio works with Secure Boot). Also make sure there is nothing in the bios settings that prevents the running of 3rd-party-signed kernels (you will know whether that's the case when you try running your live USB version). I haven't encountered that, but some newer Lenovo machines have been reported to be set up this way. In those reports the option could be toggled on/off in bios.

One more thought: 20 GB of RAM is more than I actually need for making music. I could easily get away with 16, and with these newer, faster Intel systems, 8 might even be ok.

Cheers