Not the same person as parent but I wouldn't recommend System 76 personally. I got caught up in the hype and got a Lemur 14" but the build quality is pretty poor and I had awful keyboard issues (since fixed I believe). If you want something that runs Linux well I have stuck with ThinkPad's. You really can't beat them in terms of performance, reliability and Linux support.

We have ~2 year old Gazelle's and the build quality is so bad. The stats are great, but the cases are creaky cheap plastic, the screens scratch/fade easily, the door over the ethernet port breaks easily, the keyboard and trackpad are subpar.

By the numbers I'd go for System 76 again, but if the chassis isn't any better these days I'd probably go back to Lenovo.

Thinkpenguin makes very good stuff. I don't have any experience with the current models, but in terms of build quality and bang for the buck, I think they blow System 76 away.

Admittedly, I use a Thinkpad t430 and a MacBook Air myself, but if I didn't have more laptops than I knew what to do with, I'd be considering Thinkpenguin (though, I'm of the same mind as Linus Torvalds, http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvalds... , so I'd be likely to get a refurb'd MacBook Air).

Edit: link to Thinkpenguin site: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/

I'm still on a T420s. Other than the rather crap panel it is a great machine still. I have been holding out for a decent fanless machine. Something with the same sort of power as a 3rd or 4th gen i5/7, M.2 SSD, 1080p or better 14" IPS, etc.

They are getting very close. I work in very quiet environments and I hate fan noise. Also no moving parts!

Thinkpads ceased to be Thinkpads in all but name, ever since Lenovo acquired the division. Unless you are talking about old IBM Thinkpads?

I kind of agree, they are not as awesome as they used to be but I don't know if that is totally Lenovo's fault. Back when ThinkPad's where an IBM product laptops were bit and chunky, then we had ultrabooks and Lenovo had to compete. I believe IBM would have had to compete in the same way just like Dell and HP have had to. The Latitude series isn't as great as it was 5+ years ago. As they get thinner and lighter with less removable components they become less end-user friendly.

I recently got a thinkpad L440, I chose the bad wifi chipset (I did some research first, nowhere would have had read about that issue), and that chipset is not supported.

I installed some backport which seems to turn off/on at times.

I don't think there are decent brands for linux, or it might require deeper pockets. That's the cost of not working with microsoft.

My main machine is still a T420s and it runs every Linux version I through at it without fail. I haven't heard any bad things about more modern T series (or W series) with Linux, not sure about the L series though sorry.

I bought a System76 years ago. It was great as long as I was running Ubuntu, but requires proprietary drivers which have been extremely flaky under Debian. Now I recommend zareason to folks who ask. Typing this comment on a zareason system right now, and I'm extremely happy with it.

Yeah it looks like the consensus is that the System 76s aren't worth it. I'll look into Zareason and Thinkpenguin, thank you very much!

I'm using a very old Macbook White (MB 5,2 model) running Ubuntu 14.04 natively with no OSX in it [0]. Everything runs great but need to install the driver for iSight (easy to do).

I'm very happy with the setup.

Something worth to consider :)

[0] http://bit.ly/1Quv2uY

Getting 16gb of RAM in a laptop (without having to add any yourself) is fantastic. As I said below, by the numbers System76s are fantastic.

Just make sure their chassis/build quality is better than it was a couple years ago. Otherwise in a year you'll have broken bits and a faded scratched screen.

I have the puri.sm librem 13" and really like it. The only issue I have so far is that I have to build a custom kernel if I want to use the more advanced touchpad features on a stock debian install.