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   Ben Werdmuller (ben@werd.social)'s status on Monday, 28-Jul-2025 07:30:17 JST Ben Werdmuller

   What is the absolutely gold-standard, best-in-class, most diamond-class experience for a Linux laptop in 2025? I'm interested in model, distribution, etc. My work computers are all Mac but I'm thinking about diverging for my next personal machine.

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     Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com) (mattl@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 28-Jul-2025 07:30:15 JST Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)

     in reply to

     @ben curious what you come up with. In my experience of late virtually all of the keyboards and trackpads on laptops that ship with Linux are significantly worse than current Apple devices*but* I have yet to try a Framework laptop.

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     Luis Villa (luis_in_brief@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 28-Jul-2025 07:40:00 JST Luis Villa

     in reply to

     • Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)

     @mattl @ben I have a first-gen framework, and the keyboard is… pretty meh. At best. And I’m not even a keyboard snob. Not sure if better with their 2nd-gen keyboard; I don’t use it enough to justify swapping out the keyboard—but that is at least possible!

     Otherwise a pretty nice little box, and the philosophy is A++; I think deeply appropriate for a Linux box.

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     Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com) (mattl@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 28-Jul-2025 08:41:17 JST Dr. Matt Lee (1800www.com)

     in reply to

     • Luis Villa

     @luis_in_brief @ben deeply struggled with this problem at my last job. System76 desktops are very nice but their laptops weren’t great at this time. (I hear they’re better now?) I grabbed a stack of ThinkPad X1s at the start of the pandemic to send people home with. These later got replaced with much beefier Dell Ubuntu machines but with terrible keyboards.

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     fu (fu@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 31-Jul-2025 12:45:33 JST fu

     in reply to
     @ben ThinkPads have a long history of good free software compatibility. But I'm unaware of any laptop that runs Libre firmware. So you either have to give up some freedom or give up the convience of mobility. The choice is yours.