On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 08:37:58AM +0100, lina wrote:
> Which laptop option is friendly with Debian,
> The purpose is related to work, not game.
>
> Mainly for computation, R and some bioinformatic analysis,
>
> Ideally at least > 16 cores, decent memory.
At work we use both Tuxedo laptops, as well as HP ZBooks. I got a
ZBook and it more or less is supported flawlessly in Debian. My
model reports as:
Product Name: HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 Mobile Workstation PC
but older and newer machines work just as well. The newest ones need a
backport kernel from bookworm-backports for working WiFi and BT.
Support is so good, that when I go into "Software" in the Gnome
applications menu, It will show me if a new firmware for the Thunderbolt
dock is available, and suggest to install it. It is a much more pleasant
process than doing the same task in Windows.
I can say nothing bad about this machine except that it is *really* large
and heavy, and for that reason alone I would not buy it with my own
money. And (hardware problem, same thing under Windows) there is no
hardware reset button, if power management becomes stuck I have seen
people disconnect the built in battery to get the machine to reset, not me
luckily yet.
This probably is a good "desktop replacement" choice, that stays on the
desk 95% of the time.
The Tuxedo laptops also work fine, I've got less experience with them
though.
My private machine is a Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, which is also
supported very well, everything except for the touchscreen works out of
the box with Debian unstable (have not tried stable on this device), and
even the touchscreen can be made working with a custom kernel. As I
found out I do not use a touchscreen with Gnome, I just use stock
Debian. This is a much lighter, slicker machine, that works better for
me for actually carrying around. It is strange having this machine
boot Debian with the Windows Logo hardcoded in UEFI on boot ;)
All in all I have had very little problems in the last decade to get
Laptops working in Debian, and I have tried it on many cheap devices
or old thrown out corporate machines.
/ralph
