[HN Gopher] Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729
___________________________________________________________________
Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729
Author : ibobev
Score : 152 points
Date : 2025-11-15 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (borretti.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (borretti.me)
| maelito wrote:
| Is there a good linux ARM laptop, fanless ?
| imwally wrote:
| I'd be interested in this as well. I want a quiet machine with
| a decent display and a long battery life. Right now the MacBook
| Air checks those boxes but I'd be very interested in an
| alternative that I can throw Linux / OpenBSD on.
| maelito wrote:
| My Ryzen framework 13 is silent almost all the times, except
| gaming and processing map tiles.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| While I personally want a fan and see it as price to pay
| for better thermals, the disadvantages aren't just noise.
|
| The most critical issue would be the fans still spinning to
| cool down the machine when it was sent to sleep. That
| creates the vicious cycle when bagged right after sleep,
| where the fan try to lower the temp, but their running in a
| closed environment warms the confined air, which pushes the
| fan to run faster yet.
|
| That's the recipe for a hot and dead battery when you take
| it out of the bag.
|
| I had that with MacBooks and Windows laptops alike.
| cromka wrote:
| Have a look at X1E devicetree in Linux kernel source (https://g
| ithub.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/arch/arm64/boo... all the
| way to the bottom). There are some models that have a very
| active development and an almost complete support by now, with
| Thinkpad T14s probably the most active.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| MacBook Air M1. Find one with max ram (Facebook marketplace,
| $400), have storage upgraded to 2TB (IYKYK), Linux support is
| good.
| cromka wrote:
| Sorry, but no: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-
| support/m1/#tab...
|
| Can't even drive an external display over the DP.
|
| Linux support on Apple hardware is subpar compared to ARM
| Thinkpads.
| fulafel wrote:
| I guess it's the physical HDMI port that's needed, as Minis
| and the Pro laptops have working monitor HDMI monitor
| support?
| jack_tripper wrote:
| How did you upgrade the soldered storage?
| baq wrote:
| Take it to a shop which cnc mills the original one off and
| solders a compatible new one on. Maybe you can desolder the
| old one, but why bother.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Sounds easy. Why bother getting a laptop with replaceable
| storage anyway?
| baq wrote:
| Apple doesn't sell one for any price, so if you want
| Apple hardware, that's what you get. They objectively
| make the best laptop hardware package unless you value
| upgradeability over performance or build quality, which
| most people also very objectively don't.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Removable SSDs aren't just for upgradability but for
| repairability. To ensure your shiny expensive laptop
| doesn't become e-waste the minute your SSD NAND (which is
| a wearable part) inevitably dies.
| baq wrote:
| I agree 100%, I'm just saying if you want Apple, you
| can't have that regardless how much you're willing to pay
| (though if you paid them $10B they'd probably bend and
| design it this way, everybody has a number.)
| dmitrygr wrote:
| There's a guy who offers it for a very reasonable fee in
| USA. I've used his services a few times with great success!
| Email me, I wouldn't want to post someone else's contact
| info publicly.
| bigyabai wrote:
| This is exhibit A in why Apple needs to adopt 2230 NVMe
| drives and stop this ridiculous soldered flash storage
| scam.
| Zak wrote:
| Apple doesn't need that. Apple is very happy selling
| storage for 2-4x market rates.
| haunter wrote:
| You won't find anything like the Macbook Air M1 in build
| quality, display, and battery life
|
| Thinkpad X13s and T14s (both with Snapdragon) are the best
| closest alternative.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The M1 Air display being 2560x1600, it isn't that high of a
| bar to cross.
|
| Surface Pro are 2880x1920, Asus' pz13 series will be in the
| same ballpark. Getting Linux on them will be a bit more of a
| PITA, but you get the touchscreen and form factor to balance.
| Build quality will be basically on par with Apple, battery
| life should be taking a more serious hit (linux + smaller
| battery from the start)
| danans wrote:
| A Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 has a M2 equivalent ARM CPU/GPU
| (Mediatek Kompanio Ultra/Mali Immortalis G925), and comes with
| an arm64 Linux VM (Debian Bookworm) ready to go out of the box
| that supports most regular Linux apps built for ARM (including
| VSCode, Cursor, Claude code, etc). I use it for my software
| development daily driver. Battery life is amazing as you'd
| expect.
|
| I've even run local LLMs and have gotten 30 tok/sec with
| smaller Gemma models (had to install mesa vulkan drivers from
| debian-backports for GPU support in the VM).
|
| If ChromeOS's Linux VM doesn't suit you, you can replace
| ChromeOS with Linux with a bit of work:
|
| https://askubuntu.com/questions/1506894/how-to-install-ubunt...
|
| Another Chromebook with the same setup is the Acer Chromebook
| Plus Spin 514.
| lukan wrote:
| "If ChromeOS's Linux VM doesn't suit you, you can replace
| ChromeOS with Linux with a bit of work:"
|
| "Installing ubuntu on arm laptops is usually not easy, and
| the GPU drivers are unavailable in most cases (so, the
| performance is not great unless you use XFCE/LXDE/LxQt)"
|
| I do like to use the GPU, though.
| danans wrote:
| The built-in Linux VM supports the GPU (you can enable it
| in chrome:flags), and Linux GUI apps work fine.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| ChromeOS with the Linux VM is a surprisingly nice setup, I
| bought a Thinkpad Duet 3 so I could use Linux apps on a
| tablet and it seriously has me considering getting a
| Chromebook for my next laptop. Everything integrates so
| seamlessly and effortlessly that it does not even seem like
| a VM other than having to start up the VM. The Chrome
| keyboard has also really grown on me, even with the small
| and very cheap keyboard of the Duet 3. Battery life and
| performance is amazing and touch works completely as
| expected. Not sure if I can actually make the leap and give
| up Linux after 20 years of nothing but, but I am
| considering it.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Whenever Microsoft makes me make an account and I cannot bypass
| it I just make an throwaway with not so pleasant words in the
| email. Followed by installing EndeavourOS.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| I really hope this still works forever. Unfortunately I
| suspect, that one day they'll require a phone verification or
| similar, like many services do nowadays.
| jjice wrote:
| Tossing Linux on used enterprise laptops is maybe the best bang
| for your buck machine you can get. They're often time a great
| value and within three years old. Used multiple Thinkpads and
| Dells over the years that were fantastic and gotten sub $400.
|
| Things I learned to look out for:
|
| - Locked BIOS
|
| - Look into the manufacturer's repairability reputation. I
| replaced the entire keyboard on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon and it was
| perfectly fine. It was a pain to get to, but no problems. On a
| Dell Latitude, it refused to charge my non-OEM battery
| replacement. My fault - I should've done some research.
|
| In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware
| support. I don't know about other manufacturers, but I hope that
| that's also the case now too.
| Avamander wrote:
| > Things I learned to look out for:
|
| Don't buy any recent Intels. Some Intel ThinkPads have
| accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion
| when it moves. Basically unusable in any moving vehicle such as
| a train. It's basically anti-portability baked-in.
|
| When it doesn't throttle, it just has abysmal battery life
| compared to AMD Ryzen ThinkPads of the same generation. Both
| lose horribly to Apple's ARM chips though.
|
| They also tend to have soldered WiFi modules, making it
| impossible to upgrade later when newer and better WiFi
| iterations come out. If that had been the case with a few of
| the older models I still have, they would be unusable at this
| point.
|
| There are plenty of firmware bugs as well. For example plenty
| of Lenovo (especially Intel as far as I've seen) models have
| stuttery and freezing touchpads. Though the touchpads tend to
| be horrible anyways.
|
| I'd say the older (5+ years old) generations might have had
| slightly better driver support or they're finally fixed at this
| point. But there's _nothing_ I 'd spend my money on if I can
| just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.
| eptcyka wrote:
| M1 and M2. But those are in an entirely different price
| bracket. I'd go so far as to say those are not comparable.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| You can buy refurb M1s for $379 at Walmart.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Has a proprietary bootloader that Apple can lock in an
| OTA update. Also doesn't support Linux as well as Intel
| or AMD chipsets, unfortunately.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Last I heard asahi ran pretty well on M1/M2. Is that not
| the case?
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| It runs well but battery life is quite a bit worse than
| on macos.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i don't think either of those is really true?
|
| https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/open-os-interop/
| bigyabai wrote:
| Literally the first step of the boot overview depends on
| a proprietary and irreplaceable Apple-controlled blob:
| iBoot2 loads the custom kernel, which is a build of m1n1
|
| Apple decides whether or not m1n1 ever loads.
| eptcyka wrote:
| M1 mac minis or macbooks?
| geoffpado wrote:
| MacBook Air, though the $379 price does seem to be a
| Black Friday deal: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Restored-
| Apple-MacBook-Air-13-Lap...
| gear54rus wrote:
| > Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to
| throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves
|
| Wtf? That sounds crazy, any sources?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| They don't want you to burn your testicles when keeping it
| in your lap.
|
| https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/pubs/x1e_p1_gen5/html/ht
| m...
|
| > The Cool and Quiet on lap feature helps cool down your
| computer when it becomes hot. Any extended contact with
| your body, even through clothing, could cause discomfort.
| If you prefer using your computer on the lap, it is
| recommended that you enable the Cool and Quiet on lap
| feature in UEFI BIOS:
|
| (it can be disabled on this laptop)
|
| more: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1416567/disable-lap-
| mode-on-...
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Honestly, I wasn't to say this is ridiculous but I've got
| a i7 13" laptop which I bought to do practically
| everything (personal coding projects, a bit of gaming,
| video editing, 3d modeling etc). I do find the heat of it
| is quite uncomfortable after a short period of time on my
| lap. I was thinking about getting a M series MacBook for
| messing around on the couch and building a desktop for
| many of those other tasks.
|
| My work MacBook Pro on the other hand could do with the
| opposite some times. Burn a bit of battery to heat up the
| aluminium case please!
| swinglock wrote:
| This used to be a feature to protect spinning hard drives.
| Why this would exist today and why it would throttle
| anything is bizarre.
| bitwize wrote:
| ThinkPads used to have accelerometers to protect the hard
| drives, so if you dropped the machine or treated it roughly,
| it could park the drive, protecting it from data loss.
|
| People used to write Linux utilities that read these
| accelerometers, allowing for example to switch virtual
| desktops by physically smacking the machine on either side.
| xeonmc wrote:
| That's horrifying.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i think these also existed for macs with HDDs, i recall
| seeing some very fun demos on youtube
| wanderer2323 wrote:
| Look, my setup works for me.
| dcminter wrote:
| ISWYDT https://xkcd.com/1172/
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| HDAPs
|
| Hard drive active protection system parked the heads in
| Ms, fast enough to handle a hard drop off a desk
| ofalkaed wrote:
| In my experience Intel and AMD Thinkpads of that era are
| about the same for battery life but Intel always needs some
| kernel parameters set. Where I notice the biggest difference
| is Intel's integrated graphics gets you better battery life
| over anything AMD if your GPU needs are modest enough to be
| handled by Intel's integrated graphics
| 60Vhipx7b4JL wrote:
| Maybe what you are noticing is the "laptop on lap" detection?
| Check the bios, there was a "cool when on lap detected" mode
| on mine. Turn that off and re-test.
| teo_zero wrote:
| > there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well
| install Asahi on an M-series laptop.
|
| But such laptops don't work 100% with Asahi. Speakers and
| mic, external displays, fingerprint reader, suspend are the
| sore points I've read about, and shorter battery life
| compared to when they run Apple's SO.
| karczex wrote:
| I'm using Linux on some dell precision and camera just don't
| work. It's possible to install some custom kernel to make it
| work, but the pain of maintaining it by myself in comparison to
| IT department supported setup is a no go.
| Teknomadix wrote:
| My daily driver for several years now has been an AMD Ryzen 7
| powered ThinkPad t495. $120 used. After upgrading the RAM to
| 64gb it felt very snappy and usable. I run NixOS / Hyprland
| with rofi/waybar. When an accident happened and the first t495
| was damaged, I bought a second for $80, swapped the parts and
| was back in business. I use it for coding, web research, and a
| bit of CAD design via FreeCAD. Very happy with the hardware!
| skydhash wrote:
| I have a MBA M1 and it is everything you would wish in an
| hardware feature wise (except the keyboard as I like lot of
| travel). But the OS is abysmal, unless you like to use your
| device with only apps. Anything else out of the straight path
| is a pain. And the last years, it seems that the allowed path
| is closer to mobile OS than a computer to do work.
|
| So, my daily driver is an oldish dell latitude (8th gen
| intel) running openbsd. Not for the faint of heart, but for a
| tinkerer, it's a dream.
| kroaton wrote:
| You can install Linux on an M1/M2. It's not perfect, but it
| does work pretty well.
| skaragianis wrote:
| Possibly 40gb, but not 64gb. The T495 has 8gb soldered and
| one DDR4 slot. Concur great hardware, particularly the
| keyboard.
| as1mov wrote:
| +1
|
| This is my go to way of buying a new laptop. I've gone through
| 2 machines in the last 8 years (Dell 7270 and 7330). Both
| bought for <$400. Linux works ootb, though I haven't tried any
| of the more obscure distros.
|
| Though now manufacturers are doubling down on soldered
| components, so buying a cheap machine and upgrading the
| components yourself is not really possible :(
| jll29 wrote:
| Yep, same experience here, very good results with DELL
| Latitude E7240, E7260 and similar. Very rugged and Linux
| works like a breeze - on eBay from $179 (just checked again).
|
| One is well advised to upgrade them to 16 GB RAM and put in a
| 1 TB SSD, and possibly a new battery. My better half wanted
| one of those again after I gifted her a brand new MacBook
| Air, so used she got to the DELL and Ubuntu running on it.
| dcminter wrote:
| I swapped the keyboard on my wife's X1 and man, they are so
| fiddly to get to these days. It used to be a 2 minute job but I
| think this took me nearly 2 hours! I had to remove practically
| everything to get to it.
|
| Still happy with the result and I agree that 2nd hand business
| machines give great bang-for-buck. I adore my beater Dell
| Latitude for example.
| bArray wrote:
| Can back this. Many years ago I purchased a Dell Latitude from
| eBay. After messing around with a 3D printer, there was a short
| of mains voltage onto the USB line, frying the laptop and
| tripping the house electrics. I contacted Dell asking for a
| schematic of the PCBs thinking that I had blown some
| components, but they informed me that the laptop was still
| under warranty thanks to the original business purchaser (by
| just a few weeks).
|
| They shipped a box and allowed me to swap out a hard drive for
| a spare (I had study data on there), I then used the box to
| ship the laptop to them. A few weeks later the laptop gets
| shipped back with a parts replacement list, which was
| essentially every single PCB in the laptop and I asked them to
| replace the keyboard too because one key was sticking. Brand
| new parts in a slightly cracked chassis.
|
| If Dell still has customer service like that, it's double
| thumbs up from me.
|
| I'm currently using a Lenovo laptop which has been solid so
| far. I do want my next laptop to be open to repairability (even
| if I have to create it myself).
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Dell customer service is whatever someone wants to pay for.
|
| I bought a new Dell laptop 20-ish years ago along with
| whatever the super-duper coverage was called at that time
| (Complete Care, maybe?). IIRC, it only excluded deliberate
| damage (and "hammer marks" was used as an example).
|
| But they had no trouble sending me parts. Power brick soaked
| in a flood? No big deal; a new one is on the way. Dropped a
| screwdriver on the screen at work? They sent a whole person
| over to replace it.
|
| It was very expensive coverage -- it cost more by itself than
| the used/refurb laptops we're discussing. It was sold
| separately. It did not, by my estimation around that time,
| ultimately pay for itself.
|
| But if you score it for "free" with a used machine, then
| sure! Bargain!
|
| (A person can check the warranty/service status of an
| unmolested Dell machine here:
| https://www.dell.com/support/contractservices/en-us )
| nullbyte808 wrote:
| I really don't care for repairability as I average maybe 2
| years before getting a new laptop.
| thisisabore wrote:
| In terms of strain on natural resources, that's insane.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Only if they throw it away. If someone else uses it,
| what's the issue?
|
| Or do you not want people of less means, having used
| laptops?
| defanor wrote:
| > In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux
| hardware support.
|
| I have tried just one cheap Dell laptop, Vostro 3515, which
| works mostly fine with Linux (it came with Ubuntu, I have
| installed Debian), but the touchpad becomes unreponsive
| sometimes (probably after a sleep), and at some point it
| refused to charge, which required an UEFI firmware update to
| fix, which in turn required Windows (I had to use Windows PE)
| to install, as the direct update (from the UEFI itself) was
| failing, and there is no Linux option.
|
| Could have been worse, but now considering a Lenovo ThinkPad as
| a future replacement.
| storus wrote:
| With the recent Intel layoffs many Linux drivers are no longer
| maintained and as a consequence some older laptops don't boot
| anymore.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Did upstream disable hardware.. I didnt see the memo for
| disabling anything boot related.
|
| Can you tell me what you found breaking as I will have to
| deal with that.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| If you want portability on something premium, I can't recommend
| enough the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Specwise I've got the one with the
| Core ultra 5 125h. It also has an option with the 155h, but it
| battery and thermals can take a hit that I don't think it's worth
| it. It's got 16gb spread across 8x2gb modules and 512gb of ssd,
| both soldered, both extremely fast.
|
| Build quality that rivals MacBooks, but with superior keyboard,
| very nice battery life and an oled screen on top of it.
|
| The problem I had with the oled screen is that I thought it
| oversaturate reds out of the box on Linux, which I corrected
| using hyprshade:
| https://github.com/gchamon/archie/blob/main/hypr/shaders/vib....
| I am looking for a better solution because the filters get picked
| on screenshots and washes out the colours. I need to find an ICE
| profile or export one from Windows.
|
| The camera also behaves a bit weirdly. It has noticeable quality
| difference when using chromium and other browsers, the latter
| with perceptible quality degradation.
|
| Other than that, a very good mobile linux driver, snappy, cool,
| quiet, charges fast and a joy to use.
| aruggirello wrote:
| > it oversaturate reds out of the box on Linux, which I
| corrected using hyprshade
|
| Another option would be Redshift, which has a nice widget
| (Redshift Control plasmoid) for KDE Plasma. It doesn't affect
| grabbed screenshots or stuff like simplescreenrecorder, BTW
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Will give it a try, thanks!
| user_7832 wrote:
| Do you know what the oled screen resolution is on your device?
| One of my family members has what I believe is the same laptop,
| and while I appreciate the build quality, the OLED clearly
| isn't RGB (in its subpixel arrangement - or some other such
| major aspect), because the 1080p screen looks so bad for text I
| initially thought it was broken.
| Nab443 wrote:
| Oled pc screens have a terrible reputation for text. Some
| more than others, but it seems it's better to stick to lcd if
| you happen to read or write a lot.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| 1920x1200
|
| It's awesome for text though. The only issue I found was the
| overblown reds.
| vachina wrote:
| 16gigs soldered seems like obsolete on arrival for a windows
| PC.
|
| I briefly owned a Slim 7 32gigs but sold it because it felt too
| heavy for a 14incher. Got an M1 instead.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Windows itself is obsolete. My yoga is pretty slick and
| light.
| cryzinger wrote:
| I have an old Yoga that I've considered throwing Linux onto...
| are there any particular distros you've used that play nice
| with the touchscreen?
| fwipsy wrote:
| Default Ubuntu seems pretty touch-friendly these days with
| large icons etc.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| The one I have doesn't have a touchscreen and I don't have
| any workflow that would benefit from it, so I can't help you
| there, sorry
| rcarmo wrote:
| If you have an old Intel MacBook Air, they work beautifully with
| Linux as well: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/11/05/2200
| jebarker wrote:
| I did this with the 11", which was one of the greatest sized
| laptops for travel IMO, just had to replace the explody looking
| battery!
| incanus77 wrote:
| Same, I have a 2013. It's such a good size.
| w0m wrote:
| I'm down to ~10m of battery life on my i7 11" - any pointers
| on battery replacement? Laptop worked great otherwwise
| (retired it last year due to battery life)
| bxparks wrote:
| I tried eBay like 4 times. But they were all fake or
| defective. At least one of them was dead on arrival.
|
| I finally bought one from iFixit.com. Far more expensive
| than eBay, but the battery actually worked great for about
| a year. Then about a month after the 1-year warranty
| expired, it degraded noticeably (maybe to 80%) with only
| about 100-200 charge cycles. Even iFixIt cannot source a
| battery as good as the original Apple.
|
| Right now, it's at 65% capacity after 584 charge cycles,
| after 4.5 years of service. I will probably go back to
| iFixIt. At least I'll get one year of full capacity from
| them, instead of the fake or DOA ones from eBay.
| jll29 wrote:
| 11" is a great size - especiall if one has to work on a plane
| occasionally (economy class - not your own jet).
| haunter wrote:
| This is what I want to do as well but the 8GB RAM version was
| CTO, eveywhere I look people are only selling the 4GB models
| bxparks wrote:
| The last time I tried this in 2022, I encountered a bunch of
| rough edges. I tried Ubuntu or Mint on a MBA 11 (2013 or 2015
| models). Maybe Linux has gotten better since then?
|
| For example, the fan did not work out of the box. I had to
| install something called 'macfanctld'.
|
| Sleep did not work, it would wake up as soon as it went to
| sleep. I had to install something called a 'suspend-
| fix.service' hack.
|
| Brightness control was flaky. It would always wake up at the
| lowest brightness setting. Disabling auto-dimming caused it to
| wake up at the highest brightness.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > install Windows 11. This came with the laptop. And the
| installation makes installing Linux feel easy: I had to do so
| many weird tricks to avoid having to create an account with
| Microsoft during the installation.
|
| The way secure boot evolved is disgusting. Specially because, at
| the time it was becoming popular, people we're warned that was
| more a tool of control than for security. Having to install a
| proprietary OS to install another should be forbidden.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| But what happened doesn't make sense even. Why would upgrading
| the BIOS suddenly restore the option to toggle Secure Boot? If
| the previous owner (assuming, some company) disabled this, why
| would it be so trivial (comparatively) to work around it?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If the company fully managed the previous windows install,
| they'd have control on the upgrades to the BIOS as well and
| could just block them. These restrictions disappear with
| standard windows install.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've seen laptops stuck in weird state. Most likely, Fujitsu
| didn't bother to test turning off secure boot once they
| received the BIOS they bought, and fixed the toggle in a
| firmware update.
|
| Linux boots fine using standard secure boot, so if it refused
| it's either NixOS using an unsigned bootloader (which is
| surprising to me) or secure boot just being bugged to hell.
|
| Another option is that NixOS uses secure boot but uses a
| signature that's _too_ recent: one of the secure boot CAs is
| expiring soon, and an old BIOS may not carry the new key if
| NixOS opts to sign their bootloader with the latest key. This
| issue doesn 't just affect Linux, certain Windows images
| won't boot on older devices either if this mismatch happens.
|
| My bet is on NVRAM getting into a weird state or a buggy
| BIOS. That's the most obvious thing that would get fixed by
| updating the BIOS.
| varispeed wrote:
| In my opinion, touching anything made by Fujitsu is not ethical.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| michaelg7x wrote:
| This was my first thought as well.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| The OA was describing the use of a _refurbished_ laptop made by
| Fujitsu Japan (so 50% owned by Lenovo since 2017). No profit
| goes to Fujitsu UK (a subsidiary). And the Horizon system has a
| complex history [1].
|
| But still, perhaps no, simply in solidarity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_accounting_system
| forinti wrote:
| Yes, Fujitsu did some nasty things, but half the world would
| have reasons not to do business with the UK.
|
| Plus, the Post Office Scandal had a lot of input from the PO
| itself and the British legal system.
|
| It was a very British failure overall.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| I would say buying used Fujitsu from a third party seller is
| still better than letting it become e-waste. It's not like
| Fujitsu is getting any of that money.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| TL;DR: When in doubt, update the BIOS before doing anything else.
| qrobit wrote:
| Unless there is some vulnerability in the current version that
| you want to take advantage of. See e.g. mediatek exploit to
| unlock bootloaders without authorization by OEM or hacking PS4.
| internet2000 wrote:
| > But the thing that got me, in all honesty, was the brand.
| "Fujitsu laptop" sounds like colour in a William Gibson novel:
| "crawling into the avionics bay, Case took out a battered Fujitsu
| refurb, and stuck a JTAG port in the flight computer--".
|
| It's kind of hard to take this opinion seriously after that.
| Ezhik wrote:
| This website is called Hacker News.
| ireflect wrote:
| Suit yourself. I think a little whimsy is refreshing.
| bitwize wrote:
| I actually find this rather interesting.
|
| Gibson knew dick about computers in 1984, which makes his early
| cyberpunk works more interesting because so much of the
| technical stuff is pure imagination and guesswork. He peppered
| his 1980s prose with Japanese-sounding brand names because he
| assumed that the Japanese would dominate computing the way they
| dominated electronics for things people like William Gibson do
| --things like listening to music. And it didn't quite work out
| that way, because Japanese computer manufacturers tailored
| their output to peculiar Japanese needs (specifically, needing
| high resolution displays and lots of memory in order to draw
| kanji well and needing Japanese language support in the OS)
| rather than hewing to emerging industry standards. This kept
| prices of NEC, Epson, and Sharp gear high, and allowed American
| manufacturers like IBM, Dell, HP, and especially Apple to get a
| significant foothold in the emerging industry worldwide.
| Toshiba emerged as an early leader in laptops, but laptops
| wouldn't really find their market niche until the mid-90s or
| so. So these days, you go to like Den-Den Town in Osaka, and
| you will find Dells and HPs for sale, and of course all the
| pretty Japanese girls are all about their Apple gear, just like
| here. Even so, Japanese buyers tend to prefer Japanese brands,
| followed by other Asian brands, and Western brands (except for
| Apple) third. So I can totally see a Japanese executive rocking
| a Fujitsu laptop, but I haven't seen Westerners in possession
| of one.
| wuhhh wrote:
| I came here to quote that section for the opposite reason, what
| a lovely, romantic reason to be drawn to a laptop; made me
| smile :)
| sunneyx wrote:
| It's kinda old though
| the_plus_one wrote:
| Is that necessarily a bad thing? I have older laptops than the
| U729 that still see some use. If you're not locally compiling a
| big codebase, running some AI/LLM thing, playing GPU-intensive
| games, etc., you really don't need much.
| chem83 wrote:
| For something portable with a dGPU, I recommend the Asus ProArt
| px13. Works very well with Linux, including NixOS with the right
| config, with the community asusctl and supergfxctl. AMD, OLED
| screen, nVidia 4070 (4060 in the US, maybe we'll get 50xx next
| year). Downsides: the keyboard is not amazing, it comes with
| MediaTek WiFi, but is replaceable, and the SSD is 2230, which
| limits capacity. I haven't been able to fine-tune touchpad
| sensitivity in Wayland and I do get some screen flickering
| despite fiddling with some boot params and being on 6.17.x. Fewer
| constraints if you're willing to go 14-inch with the Zephyrus.
| javaunsafe2019 wrote:
| I also went this route but was disappointed by: - bad speakers -
| poor battery life - inferior screen quality
|
| Nowadays where you can get a MacBook Air 16gb m2 for around
| 600EUR this would be my pick if I'd have to find a new machine
| for travel and casual use.
| goranmoomin wrote:
| This article just pushed me over to retry Linux on my laptop, and
| I've been spending the last 2 hours on a Linux desktop. I would
| love to use it as my main driver (will try the next week), but it
| still feels like a thousand paper cuts and realize why I was
| stuck on macOS for the last 10 years. Ugh :(
| bartvk wrote:
| What kind of hardware did you install it on? And what hardware
| wasn't supported? Or was it the software that caused the
| papercuts?
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Curious what the cuts are? I'm forced to use MBP at $JOB and it
| sucks compared to Linux at home. Maybe I'm just used to Linux,
| don't know? But I love the fact that I can configure it the way
| I like, especially all the keyboard shortcuts. On MacOS this
| has proven to be difficult.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Lenovo Z13 Gen 2 with 64GB RAM and AMD 7840u is what I daily
| drive. It's 13.3 Inch, premium build with glas and aluminum. It's
| my favorite laptop by a wide margin, and runs Linux perfectly.
| Unfortunately Lenovo stopped producing the Z13/Z16, no idea what
| I will do afterwards.
| kombine wrote:
| I run T14s Gen 3 AMD, it's a perfect laptop and it got an
| update this year.
| nullbyte808 wrote:
| Dear god its ugly.
| killerstorm wrote:
| ~12 years ago I installed Linux on Fujitsu UH572.
|
| As an "ultrabook" it came with 16GB of fast SSD which could be
| used as a cache via some Windows-specific Intel feature, while
| main storage was a slower spinning disk.
|
| As Linux did not support cache feature, I thought I can just
| format it as ext4 and use as a storage for things which can
| benefit from more iops, e.g. running DB tests. And as SSD
| technology was still rather new at that time, I started with
| running some IO benchmarks.
|
| Well, it survived formatting into ext4 and few minutes of that IO
| benchmark, then it became permanently unresponsive.
|
| My guess is that wear-leveling algorithm was designed
| specifically for the FS originally had (some version of FAT?),
| and different FS caused it to corrupt some internal data
| structure, so SSD's controller firmware went into panic on each
| boot.
|
| Unfortunately, this added few minutes delay to boot as Linux
| tried to communicate with unresponsive SSD controller, but
| otherwise laptop worked fine...
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