I had bought an MSI laptop from Costco. Even though I was happy with the performance and with CachyOS I had to return it. Lucky for me that Costco has such a generous return window, 90 days. My main issues were that it lacked adequate cooling for the X7 358H, had no UEFI support from MSI on their website, and the build quality was atrocious.

I was looking at the System76 Lemur Pro, but I can’t seem to find any reviews on the newer models. Build quality and performance is really important to me as my daily driver for the last several years has been a MBP14 with an M1 Pro.

I’m not buying anything from Frame.Work as I’ve had two issues with them already which prompted me to cancel both orders, once for the desktop and once for the 13 Pro. Their customer service is lacking in my humble opinion.

EDIT: I mostly use my rig to code, game, and to tinker with private local models. In the US currently.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 hours ago

    I guess then I would add to my advice that people should do a quick check to see whether others are having good results with a given model before purchase. I thought we were past that with Thinkpads.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
        1·
        58 minutes ago

        Any of the following are likely to work:

        • Web search for “[model name] linux” and see if there are any results describing actual experience. A handful mentioning using it with none mentioning compatibility issues is usually good to go.
        • Check forums for existing threads. Good options include https://forum.thinkpads.com/ and r/thinkpad. Less populous possibilities are [email protected] and [email protected].
        • Make your own post on any of those places and ask about the model and distro you’re interested in.
        • Use an LLM-based tool, but check its sources to make sure they say what the LLM claims they say and the author shows signs of knowing what they’re talking about. LLMs are bullshit machines.
    • Guiorgy@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Yeah, that and avoid very new things when using Linux are the morals of my story. But I can’t help it, I am a human and hate all Thinkpads now :P