Business laptops such as Lenovo Thinkpad, HP EliteBook, and Dell Latitude already have great support, cheap parts if something breaks and 3rd party support is so good you can install coreboot on them due to hackers who ported them out of passion. This guide is for the x230 (I don’t recommend it due to the TN screens sucking, and the replacement batteries both their replacement is expensive). https://steemit.com/tutorial/@joeyd/run-don-t-walk-from-the-...

https://doc.coreboot.org/distributions.html

> All ChromeOS devices (Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, Chromebit, etc) released from 2012 onward use coreboot for their main system firmware. Additionally, starting with the 2013 Chromebook Pixel, the firmware running on the Embedded Controller (EC) – a small microcontroller which provides functions like battery management, keyboard support, and sensor interfacing – is open source as well.

Wow awesome, if you want good cheap OEM coreboot support, getting native ChromeOS laptops is the easiest.

I agree that good cheap chromebooks exist - however what I want doesn't really fall under the "business notebook", "gaming notebook" or "good cheap chromebook" category. I prefer what would typically be offered in a macbook or surface laptop form factor. While I can install linux on a macbook, razer, or surface laptop - it's not exactly a "clean" experience.

In fact, even on an expensive "linux" laptop from dell I'm likely to still have a windows key! or non-functional windows hello sensors. Why shouldn't there be built for linux machines? Why should linux users need a tutorial to get their os running?

They don’t need a tutorial for most devices, Windows doesn’t work as well out of box either and has tons of hacks to make it run better, so it’s not harder compared to the norm, it’s actually easier.

Besides it’s desktop Linux, it wasn’t “just works” for a long time but it’s that way if you do light research on a supported device, then everything works out of box. Linux is designed to support as much hardware as possible so what’s the purpose of buying more expensive hardware with less features if better hardware exists?

You don’t need a tutorial, mostly if not all everything out of box works on Linux for every laptop and desktop I used (I don’t buy hardware newer than a few years for price and compatibility reasons) and setup is easier since there’s (almost) no drivers (fuck you Nvidia). It’s just a meta key with a different logo if it bothers you just put a sticker over it. I’d never complain about extra keys or an extra sensor (that can be supported later) and I’m not sure why it’s a problem in the first place. The tutorial linked was just if you wanted coreboot.

The surface pro 3 I used had everything working out of box with Ubuntu (Gnome was great on touchscreen). It was very clean. I also love OSX, it is just like Linux for the most part except I can use more software and use the same CLI stuff I’d use on Linux. I don’t care to install it over OSX on a MacBook, is there something you find lacking on it?

I've used Linux professionally and as a hobbyist for 10+ years. While I've had forays with chrome OS and osx, I recently found that I both wanted the dev environment of Linux and I required 64GB of ram and an NVidia GPU for the development I was looking to use the machine for. Throwing an additional wrinkle into the mix, the nvidia gpus have made huge strides in mobile power consumption over the last 4 years. Interestingly Linux on the above machine now also has broader gaming support than OSX as well.

Have you heard of VFIO? It’s able to emulate the GPU through the Windows driver virtually so you’ll have even more gaming support on Linux.

Unfortunately the competitiveness of x86 for desktop is completely lost now. Apple has destroyed x86.

If only Apple had a decent API for GPGPU programming!