New, performant, light laptop advice

P51 discontinued, and it’s not light/compact imo.

Librem 14 base price 1570, upgrade to 32 ram (enough?) brings price to 1858 which seems 20% above some competitors such as T14s G2. I assume Librem offers special security features that I’m not looking for and paying for them doesn’t feel right.

Ok, thx.

You can upgrade the RAM later, since this laptop is easily opened. 16 GB should be enough for a good start. You can also buy the lowest RAM and upgrade immediately by yourself for cheaper.

just grab a “gaming” branded laptop if you feel price is expensive.
with the same price as system76 / librem offer, you get additional powerfull gpu.

I did, hcl consists of older devices and I’m looking for fresh one. Like Gigabyte U4 UD or zenbook 14. Any word on these + qubes? 1 concern ram is maxed at 16gb

Intel 11th gen is known have a problem with qubes even the latest 4.1, you could find a workround if you have time to learn.

Take a look at
https://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodetail.asp?id=1378&lang=en
and how to workround

It should fit to you want, but i can’t guarantee.

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Wow this is important, thank you very much!

This year I ran qubes on i5 8gb surface pro - had to switch VMs on and off constantly due to lack of ram, headach all way long, I even started to avoid using the tablet imagine? According to that I won’t risk with 16gb, only 32(stock or upgradable machine)

By the way would an amd r7 or 9 instead of imtel be good and keep me away from such hussle like the one you mentioned with i7 11 gen? Lenovo T14s G2 with amd 5850U and 32ram seems to match all I want if amd if ok with qubes.

By the way since the Librem 14 was brought up, I went through it’s documentation and concluded that it’s main security advantage is superior data protection in case of physical access, am I correct? And the separate physical key to allow hard reset is a headshot feature, i wish it would be available for all digital devices, supercool.

Came across Dell Inspiron 15 amd 5700u 32 ram, 1T nvme, price $1080. A little heavier than I want - 1.6 kg but screen 15.6 so makes sense. Now please someone has tried qubes on this hardware? I’m about to buy it now, lmk folks!

Edit: first search here pops up thread with similar devices and there issues. Waiting for that poster to clarify, but looks like Inspiron with amd 5700U is not compatible at all. T14s G2 with amd 5850U might work but with restrictions so I’ll pass on it too.

So only smooth way is to pick from hcl or librem 14? Someone advised System76, but that device is not available now. Any word on Tuxedo? Starlab? Any other exotic toys? Staying light and compact makes this search so hard… but for on-the-go life style I have to be mobile.

Consider the Lenovo Thinkpad X1E4 or P1G4 or other models in that size and form factor.

There’s also the Thinkpad X13 (Gen2), T14s (Gen2), T14 (Gen2) not to mention the yet to be announced new Lenovo models for 2022.

The HCL doesn’t cover a lot of the very newer hardware so you’ll have to do your own research and digging around.

Yeah, spent couple hours digging the hcl, many machines are outdated and/or far from top configurations. Wondering, why would a weaker option be picked for such heavyweight os? But whatever.

How reliable is the hcl? I saw some thread here stating machine from hcl behaved differently and poster gave up.

X13 parameters are just right for me, thx! Do you have any practical info on it’s compatibility with qubes? And afaik X13 has a 5g module, will it be functional with qubes?

You know the answer: mostly individuals telling their own experience.

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Librem 14 is the best and possibly only choice given your criteria. The built-in kill switches for microphone, camera, wifi & bluetooth are more than just “physical access” protection. The Librem Key offers tamper detection. And dip switches inside the laptop will allow for tamper prevention. Very lightweight. Fast. And very Qubes friendly. I have run Qubes on 6 different machines over the past few years. Easily the best of them all.

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I think you’ll find the slightly older hardware tends to be better supported. A laptop that is 2 - 3 + years old will have most of the QubesOS issues either ironed out or at the least will have been discussed. When you’re going with new hardware, you’ve got to be comfortable with a bit of a risk of not everything working 100% on day #1, but at time rolls on, it gets better.

The HCL is a really good starting point, but you want to combine it with other sources of information as well. So perhaps make a shortlist of a few models that you’re looking at, check the HCL and then check these forums and the Qubes Issues Github section. Also, pick out the CPU that you’re going with and run that through a search separately and see how it stacks up.

Also, make use of some of specific sub-redddits. In the case of the Thinkpads, you’ll want to check sub-reddits for Lenovo, Thinkpad, QubesOS and even find and check general Linux compatibility for the hardware you’re getting.

I recently went through the process and went with a P1G4. Overall I’m happy, but there’s a few things which I still need to work through and investigate. There’s a thread on here with my notes from it.

The X13 (Gen2) is nice and I was closely looking at it, but for me personally, I wanted more RAM (64GB) and TB4.0 support (docking and driving lots of monitors is important for me). No idea about the 5G WWAN sorry. At a guess, I imagine it would present itself as a PCI device similar to onboard Wired/WLAN NICs so it’s just a matter of assigning it to “sys-net” and then as long as the underlying Linux OS for sys-net (Fedora34 or Debian11) supports it, you’re good to go. But you’ll have to check, I’m only guessing here.

The Librem 14 is nice and I really love the hardware switches and onboard NIC. But it was using 10th Gen Intel Processors (I needed 11th gen for TB 4.0 + 8 cores).

Another one I had on my list was the Tongfang PF4NU1F (sounds dodgy, I know; but the specs were good, especially for sustained CPU load on an AMD Octacore). This model is the OEM for Tuxedo Pulse and KDE Slimbooks.

A final thing, if you’re looking at ultra-portable style laptops with lots of cores and compute ability (especially Intel Octacore) make sure you research and read up on any potential thermal throttling issues due to poor heat-dissipation.

Hope that helps.

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I can recommend the TUXEDO InfinityBook S15 Gen 6. Runs qubes smoothly, up to 64 GB RAM, up to a few TB of the latest SSDs (Samsung 980 Pro, I think), no issues except suspend.

https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/tuxedo-infinitybook-s15-gen-6/6418/6

Thank you, the switches is important, i did not take in consideration before.

Amazing sum up, bottom line. Thank you very much!

I know for sure after all advices i got here I will chose one of the exotic brands, that offers pre-installed qubes, it will be a little more expensive but imo its worth to save nerves and time in future. I went closely through Starlab, System76, Tuxedo and Librem - there actually perfect matches for me, just need to learn more on little details like ports built quality and then order.

Are you by any chance aware if any of above mentioned offer a gsm enabled machine? I looked, no luck. Yes, if it’s a PCi than perfect. But using a usb one will be a pain with qubes.

More i learn about Librem more it attracts, now i dont feel wrong paying some 20% more for its extras at all.

Also most of exotics allow ram upgrade which is another big point towards them.

Again now I understand why lots of replys directed me straight to Librem and others, just to save time.

By the way regarding your many-core cpu needs, the xps13 Plus will come out soon with intel gen 12, 12 or 14 cores, check it out.

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Yes, agree.

Yeah, it stands out by some details such as screen. i cant find an option to have qubes pre installed on their website. Do you know if it’s possible?
And for me suspend is not important at all, hybernate works just fine.

There is no hibernate implemented in Qubes (yet): Simulate Hibernation / Suspend-To-Disk · Issue #2414 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub

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