New, performant, light laptop advice

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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Well, preinstalling qubes isn’t available in their options but they still are one of the best choices because they offer to disable the Intel ME. If you wish I can walk you through the steps to install qubes yourself… (download iso, flash, boot, click through menu, let it install, done). Also neither hybernate nor sleep works, but the system has enough ressources to boot up in a few seconds so it hardly matters and shutdown is far more secure anyways :slight_smile:

Strongly disagree here:

If you are mitigating physical access, don’t forget to use AEM/Heads with a hardware key…

All the options he mentioned offer the ability to disable Intel ME not just Tuxedo but also StarLabs, System76, and Purism.

Unfortunately all the above use the same method that Intel itself provides manufacturers so I wouldn’t really rely on that if ME is a deciding factor.

AFAIK only way to truly be free from ME is with disable + neutralize which is impossible to do on newer laptops.

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Sure, but then I’d recommend you simply use awesomeWM and add every config you want(like automatically starting certain windows and moving them to certain screens) to the lua.rc. That allows you to keep everything sorted while still benefiting from the shutdown… AEM sadly isn’t supported on this laptop yet, as it has TPM2.0

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How about using disposable VMs for logging into various services like this forum? Will awesomeWM also do that?

I guess Heads also is not supported? In this case, shutdown may just give a false sense of security.

Sure. You’re programming in lua, you can do whatever you want :slight_smile: it should be as simple as running a qvm-run to start a dispvm with the command that firefox should open a specific site… that doesn’t solve the problem of getting the login details into the dispvm but that’s handled by split-keepass anyways.

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So after all I settled for an XPG Xenia 14, same as Tuxedo Infinity Pro 14 but doesn’t offer a 3K screen and rtx3050 gpu options. But base version XPG - i5-1135, 16gb ram and 512gb PCIe4 is $950 vs $1384 for same configuration Tuxedo. So looks like my search succesfully finalized.

Edit: i will add ram to 32 at least.
And is there any good reason to spend 15% more for the i7-1165 ($1050) ?

Also worth mentioning a $1280 Lenovo T14S Gen 2 amd 5850U 32 ram, 2K screen 500 brightness that I found on amazon. This amd is way superior on paper, but how significant would it be in real world use?

Would the Lenovo’s cpu outweigh the bulkier design, trackpad with buttons, thick bezels, 30% more weight?

long whistle

Alrighty, I ordered XPG Xenia 14, will have it on Saturday. Yes your further advice on installation will be helpful. I installed qubes on the surface pro 4, so familiar with the process, but now I would like to do a more fundamental setup, such as keep the windows that will be there already so I can have dual boot. Also kernel and intel me removal instructions would be helpful!

you should create a new thread for that

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Hi everyone, I would like to follow up on the original question with a question of my own. Which laptop would the community recommend if the requirements were as follows?

If there was no requirement for a new laptop, the Nitropad T430 would probably be the most suitable choice. But what is the recommendation if there is a requirement for the laptop to be new?

Sorry for the possibly stupid question, I’ve studied a lot of forum articles and certified HW as well as coreboot compatible HW (status report for coreboot boards), but it’s still not clear to me what devices the community would recommend. Respectively what devices are used by for example Qubes administrators and programmers?

Thank you very much!

The hardware hotfix (not a third-party modification) was needed in the first batch due to some problem at the factory. Current batch already comes with everything flawless: Estimate your Librem 14 shipping - #328 by SteadyOn - Hardware - Purism community.

AFAIK Librem 14 is the only new laptop in the list of Community-recommended hardware.

Thank you @fsflover , yes, Librem 14 looks the best, but I’m not sure if purism can be trusted or if it is just a marketing success.

See also: Hardware brands which you trust to run Qubes.

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trust:D

guys my xpg xenia 14 came pls help instqll 1ubes prqllel 2ith stock
win