Re: a question regarding which laptop for around $1000 that I might install Ubuntu on?

I've been looking for a cheap laptop to use Linux full time and ended up
buying a Dell Inspiron gaming laptop IIRC 7000 series with an i5 7th gen.
It was on sale and swapped out the HDD for an SSD m2 nvme. But the overall
performance felt slow on Windows for something that is marketed for gaming
and driver issues kept me from going with a Linux install instead opting
for a vm instance.

If I was going to do it over and had a $1,000 budget, I would have gotten
this. The base model is under the budget, you might find some coupons on
Slickdeals as well.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/xps-13-9370-laptop/cax13w10p2c601ubuntus

Current i5 plus the support from Dell makes for a nice package. I would
support System 76 but the XPS13 build is super nice and size is about the
same for a Mac Book Pro. Not sure on the System 76 laptops.

Robert

On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 6:23 PM Rick Moen <rick-IyCrq+X4Fdq2oZ/[email protected]> wrote:

> Quoting Steve Litt ([email protected]):
>
> > I hypothesize the most likely differentiation between the machines is
> > that the desktop mounts / (and therefore /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin
> > and /opt) on an SSD, whereas the laptop mounts everything on a 5400 RPM
> > spinning disk. When my laptop's warranty runs out, I might swap in an
> > SSD to test that hypothesis.
>
> I'm pretty sure you'll be delighted with the improvement.  Going from
> spinning-rust with slow seek operations to electronic storage with no
> seeking required inherently makes a huge difference.
>
> > One responsive suggestion I can give you is that if you want your
> > $1000 high performance computer to perform like a $1000 high
> > performance computer, instead of installing Ubuntu, install Lubuntu,
> > which is Ubuntu using the lightweight LXDE wm/de.  Install dmenu and
> > run your apps from there.
>
> Strongly concur.  Heavyweight DEs are a much bigger performance hog than
> newcomers are aware of -- thus the odd conviction in many of them that
> they need formidable hardware just to run a basic work environment.
>
>
>
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-- 
Robert Freiberger
510-936-1210

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