Best laptop for Qubes OS 4.1, 64 GB RAM, in 2023

User Support Hardware Issues
1

I have a good laptop that meets well the hardware requirements, but still I can’t install qubes os on it. The installation screen shows up initially but is stuck early on with never ending timeout messages.

I don’t have Nvidia or any other discrete GPU. I have full hardware virtualization support enabled in BIOS. Turned off secure boot, and played around with tuning off hyper-threading and other UEFI BIOS settings. No legacy boot support to try that out. I saw a few IO messages about the NVMe, maybe the drive is not supported.

I want to buy a second hand laptop, to try out Qubes. I don’t want waste money though, with Qubes not installing/working on the new one also. Any suggestion for a cheap laptop for Qubes 4.1 , that can be upgraded to 64 GB RAM?

The HCL mentions few expensive laptop with small amount of RAM. Why are these even mentioned? They don’t have enough RAM for few VMs (OK, they support Coreboot, but useless without min 16GB RAM). There is a community HCL, but it’s mostly for old versions of Qubes.

What’s is the best laptop for the latest version of Qubes in 2023?

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off-topic

Did you try to run Qubes OS installer with kernel-latest entry from installer GRUB menu? kernel-latest may be required to run Qubes OS on new hardware.

3

Cheap is used Thnikpad P52 (128GB RAM)

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4

The best is probably the NovaCustom NV41, and the cheapest is probably the T480

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5

Quick question. P51 and P52 are recommended in this forums, but both have NVIDIA Quadro GPUs. How come GPUs are mentioned to be causing problems, yet these laptops are suggested?

Also, for the upgrads, is the type of RAM and NVMe important?

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You can find 1080p without quadro based on integrated intel graphics model (but Quadro in dom0 works good and driver installation is straightforward, example is here - GitHub - dhn/qubes-thinkpad-x1-extreme-gen3: Files and notes to install/run Qubes 4.1 on a ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen3)
Basic x4 32gb ram sodimm and basic nvme (samsung , for example)

7

What’s your laptop’s spec? Does it have a Ryzen 6000s processor? I don’t think it very difficult to get Qubes running on any laptop that only has iGPU.

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Intel Core i5, Intel integrated graphics (no discrete graphics), full virtualization support with Intel VT-x with EPT and Intel VT-d, UEFi bios, 16GB DDD4 RAM.

It checks all boxes in the hardware requirements. But it’s still stuck early on in installation.

9

I copied the image file to a USB (and once via a USB image creator), and boot the machine up via USB.

That’s how I install any operating system.

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Intel Core i5, Intel integrated graphics (no discrete graphics), full virtualization support with Intel VT-x with EPT and Intel VT-d, UEFi bios, 16GB DDD4 RAM.

It checks all boxes in the hardware requirements. But it’s still stuck early on in installation.

11
off-topic

There is a separate menu entry for using kernel-latest in Qubes OS installer.

kernel-latest
kernel-latest1280×800 4.79 KB

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I see what you mean now. Good point!

No. I will repeat the process today with this option see if that works!

14

Thinkpad P50 can do 64gb.

I have had one going very strong for several years. The machine is a tank, cheap, and runs Qubes amazing well.

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