My perfect laptop
3 min read
The computer I use the most is my couch laptop. It's a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) running Debian 13 and sits on a little roller table thing that I can pull up to me while I'm sitting or push out of the way and the top of it tilts up; it's a pretty nice setup.
Day-to-day, I'm doing normal web browsing, reading my RSS feed, checking social media in a web browser, typing up blog posts with Typora and interacting with Claude Code via VS Code to work on my various personal projects like this website and my Home Assistant automations and dashboards.
The MacBook works fine in this role. It has to remain plugged in because the battery is shot. It's swelling some as the bottom of the laptop bulges out slightly. I ordered a generic 3rd-party replacement, and I have some thermal grease and some canned air. The plan being, when I replace the battery, reapply the thermal grease on the CPU and blow out the dust. The internet says this is a good way to restore some performance because the computer is probably self-throttling based on CPU temps as the thermal grease degrades and I need to reapply it.
It's fun to daydream about a new laptop even though computer prices are elevated. This is what I'd prioritize if I were buying something new today. This is in no particular order; it's just as I thought of them.
- Very strong Linux support: I use Debian Linux, so I'd want everything to just work straight from the jump.
- 16- or 17-inch form factor: It sits on the table and I don't commute with it or anything. It literally just sits on the sofa table, plugged in, so portability is not important for this computer. A larger screen would be nice.
- Nicer keyboard: I love my System76 Launch Heavy keyboard. They're expensive but I love it so much I have two. One for my work computer in my office and another for my personal computer upstairs. This old Mac laptop keyboard just doesn't have a good feel in comparison. Would any laptop keyboard? Probably not, but surely there has to be something better.
- AMD CPU/GPU: I feel that AMD has done a lot to support Linux and that means a lot to me. I'd prefer AMD for both.
- Repairable: This might be the last laptop I ever buy, so my hope is that it'll last for a long time. As such, I want to be able to replace parts as needed, either because they broke or I'm upgrading.
- Hardware specs: I don't have any strong preferences these days. 32 gigs of RAM and whatever the sweet spot is for disks. Other than that, just whatever the latest generation is.
What's your perfect laptop and why?
Thread
Michael asks:
I just downgraded to a Thinkpad X250, released in 2015. The reasons why I like it:
The hardware is old, so it's well supported on NetBSD, OpenBSD, and 9Front.
It's still powerful enough for what I need: a terminal with nvi, ssh, mutt, lynx, amfora, gforth, as well as Dillo and Firefox. It even has 16GB of RAM!
It was cheap ($99 on eBay), so I don't have to worry about replacing it if it breaks or gets stolen.
It's small and portable. Turns out I didn't need a bigger laptop with a 16" screen, I just needed glasses.
It has a 4G modem, so I can pop in a SIM chip and have internet anywhere I go without having to connect to WiFi or tether from my phone.
D Dale Mellorʼs Blog via khleedril.org
I need my laptop to travel everywhere with me, so small, thin and light is my primary requirement. My current machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad T460 running Debian.
The keyboard on this thing is great. The Linux support is great. (A 16" version is available.) Maintainability is great. Other than a little heavy and lacking USB-c ports, it is close to perfect. Would be nice if the ports could be swapped, like a Framework.