Re: Subnotebook?

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 07/02/2025 20:43, Carl Fink wrote:

Anyone have a recommendation for a Linux-installed, or second-best
Linux-compatible subnotebook? I'm defining a subnote as having a 10" or
smaller screen, and I'm looking to buy new, not refurb or used.
 

 
I've never found much point in pre-installed Linux systems - they never
have the distro or setup I want.  But that might be just me.  So I tend
to get the hardware I want, then install the Linux I want, ignoring the
"pre-installed" Windows.
 
Generally, most hardware works out of the box with a fairly modern
distro (vastly more than with Windows), but there are some things to
watch out for if you get a very new design.  The most common issue, I
think, is new laptops or notebooks with Wifi chips that are not
supported by the kernel versions that come as standard with a mainstream
distro like Mint or Ubuntu.  That means upgrading the kernel, which can
be a pain without a working network - and these machines often don't
have Ethernet.  So make sure you have a USB C docking station or
Ethernet adaptor handy for putting it all together.

There are a couple of troubles:

1.  Peripheral components that don't have Linux drivers.  Webcams, SD
readers, pens/touchscreens, fingerprint readers.  Usually because the vendor
went to the bargain barrel and found some obscure chip.  Nowadays a lot of
thing stuff is USB which tends to avoid the problem if they use standard USB
device classes, but sometimes they're 'special'.

2.  A new breaking change for hardware, eg Intel introduces a new standard
for doing audio, and the FOSS drivers haven't caught up.  Often Intel is
good at writing Linux drivers themselves, but that doesn't mean they have
filtered down to the distro you want to use, especially if it means more
non-kernel work (eg somebody needs to write a new subsystem to do software
DSP or whatever).


A strategy is to buy a laptop that is available with pre-installed Linux
(either directly or the Windows version of the same), because you know there
at least extant drivers for all the hardware.  Typically those drivers will
get upstreamed and then filter down to distros, so after maybe a year you
can pick up a distro and everything will work.  You may need to use the
vendor's Linux distro for the first year until all of those bumps have been
sorted out.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about buying any random thing and
running Linux on it, but I'd be prepared in case the pen or the fingerprint
reader didn't work.  I have been caught out by breaking changes with (audio,
networking) before though.

Theo