Ask HN: Is there a System76 alternative in the UK

5 points by mbackson 5 years ago | 2 comments

I'm on a mission to find a good quality laptop that ideally comes preloaded with Linux (or at least with good support for it), but it is proving much more difficult than I first imagined.

The biggest player in bringing relatively cheap, good quality, and upgradeable laptops to the market seems to be System76. They seem to be doing good making sure all the hardware works as smoothly as possible. However, they are only really worthwhile if you're ordering in the US.

I know of a couple UK Clevo resellers such as PC Specialist and Entroware. But Entroware seems to be eternally out of stock and PC Specialist doesn't offer Linux and seems to have issues running it on their hardware.

johndoe0815 5 years ago |

Not in the UK, but there's Tuxedo in Germany (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com) and Slimbook in Spain (https://slimbook.es/en/), both of which sell notebooks with Linux preinstalled.

However, I don't think these offer notebooks with advanced privacy features such as disabled intel management engine or coreboot as firmware.

mbackson 5 years ago | |

I actually came across Tuxedo when first searching about - and when I first learnt about Clevo resellers. But unfortunately they still have the same hurdle as having to pay import tax.