Ask HN: Best Windows/Linux developer laptop in 2025

62 points by edtech_dev 1 year ago | 74 comments

Requirements:

* Macbook is not an option

* I go through phases and switch between Windows and Linux as my primary OS.

* Want to be able to mess around with some local LLMs.

* I travel frequently, so portability is somewhat important. Currently own a 13 inch, but 14 inch should work too I think.

Notes:

* My current laptop is a 6yr old Dell XPS. It has generally served me well.

* I bought an Asus Zenbook for a family member and I have been impressed with how well it has worked out. Anyone with any recent experience with Asus laptops for development?

* I have had bad experiences with Lenovo twice, which makes me wary of Thinkpads, but willing to consider it if it makes the most sense.

* Framework look very appealing but I have heard mixed reviews.

FlyingAvatar 1 year ago |

You have two requirements that are at odds:

* Macbook is not an option

* Want to be able to mess around with some local LLMs.

Your choices for a Window laptop that can run a local LLM is either to get a large amount of system RAM and have it be abysmally slow, or to run a very tiny model on a discrete GPU which will (a) not be very good due to its small size and high quantization and (b) evaporate your battery life.

If you want to run local LLMs on a laptop and actually have them be useful, a Mac is currently the only real choice.

That said, with the money you save buying a Linux laptop instead, you can pay for a lot of tokens for whatever hosted LLM you want and it will be higher quality than what you could potentially run locally on a Mac.

specproc 1 year ago | |

OP notes they switch between Linux and Windows.

I've not tried local LLMs on Windows, but I do loads with 'em on a three-year-old Legion running Arch.

That said, whilst small local models are nice for some use-cases, I'm leaning more towards APIs these days. I like the better selection of models and the ability to use them without bringing my machine to a halt.

kokada 1 year ago | |

> You have two requirements that are at odds:

Not really now that we have the AMD Strix Halo: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/review-asus-rog-flow....

The only available SKU right now is the above one that is a weird gaming tablet/laptop that seems to not be good in either (too heavy for a tablet, too cramped for laptop usage), but the performance is definitely there (similar performance of RTX 4060 for laptop, using a similar TDP of only the GPU for the whole APU) and you also have 32GB of unified memory for LLMs. Also, the chipset itself supports up to 128GB of RAM, so technically in future we could have an even better SKUs for LLMs (but nothing announced yet AFAIK).

FlyingAvatar 1 year ago | | |

Cool, I will keep an eye on this.

antifa 1 year ago | |

I'm going to second this, hard. You're much better off doing anybody's $10/month github copilot/codey/cursor plan, spend less to get a laptop that does everything else better, then in a year or 2 ask again to see if localLLMs have gotten better or if x86 laptops have gotten better.

What I can do with localLLM on my MacBook is not worth paying extra for an x86 laptop that be heavier, hotter, louder, and less battery (especially if you're not going to play games).

johann8384 1 year ago | |

PocketAI can be helpful:

https://www.adlinktech.com/en/pocket-ai-with-nvidia-rtx-a500...

edtech_dev 1 year ago | |

Running LLMs is more of a nice to have. If I can run something like DeepSeek-Coder-V2 even if it's a bit slow, I'll be happy.

hn92726819 1 year ago | | |

If you have a powerful computer at home, you can also offload your ai work to it. It's still local in the sense it's your computer, but it would require network access.

giantg2 1 year ago | |

You have the third option of getting a USB processing unit, such as a Coral TPU.

calmbell 1 year ago |

The great thing about Framework is that you can bring your own RAM and SSD. If you need/want a lot of RAM (>= 32 GB) and or SSD (>= 2 TB), you can save a lot of money.

d3Xt3r 1 year ago |

I second @jamesliudotcc's suggestion (ASUS ROG Flow Z13). One of the key differentiators vs other laptops is the 128GB unified RAM which runs at 8000 MT/s, which should be excellent for LLMs - I'm not aware of any laptop that can do better, in this form-factor and this level of portability.

Specs aside, this machine can also run Linux well [1], which makes it worth buying, IMO. And if it can run Linux well, then using it for development should be a breeze.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8_hSzuJlSU

juujian 1 year ago | |

Except AMD still has not figured out how to deliver on LLM acceleration on Linux.

d3Xt3r 1 year ago | | |

Not sure what you mean by that, but ROCm works just fine. I'm using a patched ollama (for APU support) [1] and I can run models like llama3.1:8b and deepseek-r1:14b just fine on my Radeon 780M iGPU, on Arch (btw).

[1] https://github.com/rjmalagon/ollama-linux-amd-apu

jamesliudotcc 1 year ago |

Asus makes a gaming tablet with a 13 inch screen with a 128GB of unified RAM on the new AMD Strix Point.

I agree that MacBook is not an option. I have a work MacBook and it has better silicon, ok, but I hate being on a Mac. Just not for me.

I'd wait until more manufacturers announce what they will do with that AMD SOC.

LorenDB 1 year ago | |

+1 for Strix Halo. It's probably the best mobile CPU out there for AI stuff that isn't Apple silicon. Of course, the Snapdragon chips are supposed to be able to perform well in AI, but I'm not sure how well you'd get along with Linux on those.

j45 1 year ago |

- Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) is a very interesting form factor. https://www.asus.com/ca-en/laptops/for-home/zenbook/asus-zen...

- Framework reviews are important to figure out the current generation. I tried one out and it had few issues other than me not having the time to tweak it how I wanted. Hardware was great, battery wasn't great at that time (needed simple software optimizations), but Framework now has larger batteries too that seem to have resolved that. The folks I know with them have mostly switched from Mac or X1 Carbons to Frameworks and quite happy with it.

- Specifically for travel, the recently announced Framework 12" looks really inviting if travel looks like the way to go.

To run an LLM on either, some amount of extra ram might help, depending on the model... if you want something heavier it might be cheaper to run a model privately in the cloud as needed, or use an eGPU and plug it in when you want. Local LLM use seems to be fun, but having something at home running it so it's accessible seems serviceable too.

jscohn85 1 year ago | |

I have an Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Coming from a Surface Laptop Go 2, and a Surface Pro 8 before that, the build quality on the Zenbook Duo feels worse. Even a Zenbook 14 OLED (2024) that I purchased around the same time seems like it has better quality at half the price.

The Bluetooth is finicky, it has no Miracast support, and the wireless keyboard battery seems to have degraded considerably in just a couple of months, to name a few issues.

There’s also questionable design choices, like not making the pop-out stand run edge-to-edge the way Surface does, and not including any way for the keyboard’s top portion to anchor itself when placed on the secondary screen, among others.

It’s like a beta product at a premium price, but the form factor is definitely what appealed to me. Sadly, there’s not many other choices in that area, except for the Yoga Book 9i and maybe a MacBook with an iPad anchored atop the screen.

linuxhansl 1 year ago |

I like the Lenovo P16 gen2.

It's not cheap and rather heavy, but very powerful. You can get it with lots of RAM, a powerful graphics card (for LLMs), and a CPU with 24 cores (32 threads). And you can get it shipped with Fedora or Ubuntu (although wiped it immediately and installed my own Fedora).

Curious what the bad Lenovo experience was. I've had various Thinkpads since the early 2000's and they all worked for me.

shae 1 year ago | |

I have this laptop, with 192 GB of RAM and an ADA 4000 GPU. I haven't tried LLMs but it's an amazingly powerful laptop.

attendant3446 1 year ago |

I will be buying a new laptop soon and have been researching this topic recently. I agree that MacBook is not a great option as a dev machine (great laptop, just not for devs, pretty much just because of that ridiculous OS).

Since I'm in the EU, I ended up with 2 possible options: ThinkPad T14 (non-s model), Gen.5 or newer. Or Framework 13 AMD.

System76 also make some interesting laptops, but it's just too expensive to get one in Europe.

mariusor 1 year ago | |

In Europe you can have a look at Tuxedo computers. They have some sweet configurations with the previous AMD CPU generation for reasonable prices. Full disclosure however, I had one of their Pulse 13 laptops (2 generation ago I think), on which I had to change the battery once every 2 years, and recently the screen started to behave like it's on its last legs. (After about 4 years)

attendant3446 1 year ago | | |

I know about Tuxedo but they have not been up-to-date for a long time. I checked their website and I can finally see the improvement in their newer laptops. But for a long time there were no laptops with USB 4 (e.g. Thunderbolt), only ISO keyboard layouts (bleh) and many other obvious and annoying drawbacks.

Also, Tuxedo still feels like brand of white label products. I know System76 is sort of the same, but somehow their products feel like products. But maybe it's just the marketing.

gerdesj 1 year ago |

I suggest that you get a backend box to run LLMs etc and get a laptop that suits you. Fiddle up a VPN to connect them.

Your backend box can be as ugly as you like whilst your front end laptop is good enough for normal usage.

beala 1 year ago | |

I've been using my MacBook mostly as a thin client. I use VSCode's ssh feature to remote in to a much beefier Linux machine. First, VSCode's ssh feature is well designed, and it's pretty seamless. Second, it lets me optimize my laptop for portability and backend box for performance. Finally, I prefer coding in a Linux environment because it better matches production. If you want a portable gaming rig, this ain't it, but it's great setup for coding.

breadwinner 1 year ago |

If you're willing to consider Arm64 this laptop is pretty good: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-slim-series...

mlacks 1 year ago |

There is no configuration that meets both high-quality local LLM performance and excellent portability. A robust discrete GPU in a thin, portable laptop does not offer enough memory bandwidth or thermals for full-scale models, and a laptop with abundant DDR5 memory and high-end CPU power isn’t designed for the throughput that local LLM inference demands. The practical solution is to use a Linux laptop optimized for everyday development and use hosted LLM services when you need more power.

matteotom 1 year ago |

Were your Lenovo experiences with Thinkpads or something else? I've heard that their non-Thinkpad laptops are not up to the same quality as Thinkpads - personally except for a couple years using a MacBook Pro, I've had great experiences with top of the line Thinkpads (x-series mostly) over the past 15 years. My current x13 (gen 5) w/ 32GB of memory can handle local LLMs (not terribly quickly, but it works).

giantg2 1 year ago | |

Lenovo got bought out years ago and quality gas suffered. Their non-thinkpads are low quality, but also low price. I wouldn't want to do any coding on them.

edtech_dev 1 year ago | |

One of the issues was with a Thinkpad and another was with an Ideapad.

MattPalmer1086 1 year ago | | |

Even the ThinkPad range has a lot of variation in it and there are lots of build customisation options. I have never had a major issue with ThinkPads on Linux. I tend to spec them quite highly and keep them for many years.

I just bought a new T16 a month ago and it's great (32Gb RAM, sRGB screen, 2Tb SSD, Ryzen 7 processor). Installed PopOS in about 20 mins and everything just works.

However, as others in this thread have observed, I don't really see the point of trying to run local LLMs on a laptop, unless you want to just play a little. If you want to really play with LLMs wouldn't a separate larger box be more effective rather than trying to do it on a mobile device?

cod3rboy 1 year ago |

Buy any laptop with following specs - 1. 32GB RAM (stock) + Extra slot with >= 32GB support (higher freq. = better perf.) 2. SSD 1TB 3. AMD Ryzen CPU (6x2 or 8x2 threads) 4. Nvidia RTX series GPU with atleast 8GB VRAM (not sure if 12GB VRAM comes with any laptop).

Quantized LLMs upto 8b parameters can be easily run on above specs. Quantized models are getting better and better. I use them for code suggestion and code gen.

jensens 1 year ago |

I can personally recommend the "Tuxedo Infinity Book 14 Pro" maxed out on options with Linux/Windows Dual Boot preinstalled. AMD and Intel are offered both (personally I would choose Intel, because it comes with Thunderbolt 4). Also: up to 96GB RAM and PCIe4 SSDs.

Instead of Dual Boot they also offer a preinstalled VM with a licensed Windows. Tuxedo OS Linux is a slightly modified Ubuntu optimized for their Hardware.

caleblloyd 1 year ago |

I just upgraded from a 7-year old XPS 15 - technically it was a Precision 5520 from when Dell still had a Developer Edition that would ship with Ubuntu but it was hands down the best Linux laptop I had. The things I loved about that one was:

  - 45W TDP processor - none of the U series 15W slowness
  - 4K screen that scaled to 1080P perfectly at 200% scaling - so X11 and XWayland apps still looked good.  Also the screen quality was amazing
  - Integrated Graphics - no messing around with NVIDIA drivers

I searched high and low for something similar but could not find anything on the market. So made some compromises and went with System76 Pangolin (pang15). Here are my notes on the machine

  Pros:
  - 45W TDP processor is fast
  - They let you load it up with memory and disk for reasonable prices unlike most mainstream manufacturers
  - 2nd M2 slot is nice for copying over old SSD
  - They provide Windows Drivers in a GitHub repo
  Cons:
  - Battery life is pretty bad but I stay plugged in most of the time so not a huge issue for me
  - Fans spin up pretty often
  - USB-C charging only.  There is an A/C Adapter barrel jack but they don't ship a charger and I can't find a suitable aftermarket charger.  I worry about wear and tear on the USB-C port damaging it one day and that will be the end of the laptop effectively if I can't plug in.
  - The screen needs around 133% fractional scaling which is not even an option.  So I have to use a combination of 125% scaling and tweaks.  XWayland apps look terrible so had to go through and force Wayland on all Electron apps and JetBrains and as you can probably guess there are random odd bugs
  - Random issue (rarely) where I power it on and it does not start up, then I have to close the lid, hold the power button, etc before it starts up.  Support told me to try booting with one memory stick but it's so hard to recreate I don't think I'll be messing around with it unless the issue starts cropping up more.

Now given all of the complaints, the increased speed over a 7-year old laptop is still nice so I am keeping it. Too bad Dell seemingly abandoned their Developer Edition program. The new XPS's force discrete graphics for good screen options and it's a roll of the dice whether WiFi or peripherals work properly with Linux. I've heard Lenovo has good Linux support for certain things but they also seem to be pushing discrete graphics for high screen resolutions.

annguyenfoss 1 year ago |

You would want a laptop with RTX 4090 or RTX 5090. Anything under 16GB VRAM is going to be too limited for playing around with local LLMs.

Franework is nice but no Nvidia option which is a no-go for LLM.

Thinkpad P1 Gen 6 with RTX 4090 is a solid one. Older generation but Thinkpad seems like no longer slapping top GPU into its notebook.

Other laptops with 4090/5090 are too huge (Titan, Raider, Vector, Strix Scar 18,…)

I’m using Arch on the Thinkpad above.

Hope this helps

alsobrsp 1 year ago | |

I have a Thinkpad P1 Gen 4i with a RTX 3080 16GB running Debian. I run ollama and it works quite well.

gjsman-1000 1 year ago |

These requirements and history just remind me of a thread earlier today bemoaning why MacBook competitors are so badly outmatched. There was plenty of discussion of the alternatives and their weaknesses.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269129

ivcha 1 year ago |

A laptop with Ada 5000 or 3500 seems pretty good in terms of value/price ratio for this use case. Dell and Lenovo have decent offerings.

I was just researching this for my own use.

jckahn 1 year ago |

Framework 13 (AMD). It’s not even a question. I’ve had mine for a year and it’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned.

e-brake 1 year ago |

So many ultrabooks and even some high-end productivity laptops cap out at 32GB of soldered RAM, while portable gaming devices are packing 64GB of upgradeable RAM. I feel like that dam is going to break soon.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1 year ago |

Some thing to consider: physical home/end/page up/page down buttons. I certainly miss them on my current one, not even a "function" key variant for them.

adabyron 1 year ago |

I prefer laptops to be great at being mobile devices.

Running LLMs on a local mobile device doesn't make sense to me. Sure it sounds great but at what cost & what trade-offs? This goes for laptops & phones.

You can have the best of both worlds by setting up a separate computer in your local network or rent one on the cloud if data privacy & messing around with LLMs is important to you. Then you don't sacrifice the mobile advantage of a great laptop. It'll be cheaper & can be more focused too.

edtech_dev 1 year ago | |

I mentioned this another comment, but the LLM requirement is more of a nice to have. What's more important is the overall experience: linux support, good trackpad, nice keyboard, battery life, screen, customer support experience, etc.

poisonborz 1 year ago |

Asus ROG Z13, X13 (not your size, but also X16). You should consider getting used, tremendous value. There are some of the usual gaming laptop quirks (normal usbc chargers cant keep it charged on full load, QA issues like squeaky touchpad) but the versatility is unmatched.

Thinkpads are reliable and great QA/support, but the HW is underwhelming, bad thermals, dim screens, and just too expensive.

diddid 1 year ago |

ASUS Proart P16 with the 4070/64gb configuration. Has usb a and c, hdmi, sd card reader, and can be powered over usb c though if you are using the 4070 you’ll want the ac adapter. The build quality is only matched by the screen which is awesome. Battery life is also excellent. If I was to have a laptop for 6 years this is the one I’d invest in.

ofcourse2025 1 year ago |

Easy choices with system76: https://system76.com/

gjsman-1000 1 year ago | |

System76 laptops are rebranded Clevo devices (a Taiwanese white-label ODM). Even by non-Mac laptop standards, they are known for subpar build quality, reliability, and battery life.

I would pick a Framework over a Clevo, any day. And Framework has tons of paper cut issues - I’m not leaving my MacBook for high security work with Framework’s track record for firmware updates.

ofcourse2025 1 year ago | | |

My lemur easily runs ollama, huggingface locally. No problems. Long battery life. Really thin. Rarely reboot. I don't have anything bad to say about it.

spookie 1 year ago | | |

I have a clevo, it is still in one piece and runs. Then I bought a msi. That one went bananas on suspend once and melted itself.

Clevos ain't bad really.

stmw 1 year ago | | |

Really? I had no ideal System76 was a rebrand..

nwah1 1 year ago |

I have been having good experiences with Windows on ARM. Better performance, lower power, thinner, and cheaper at the same time.

gjsman-1000 1 year ago | |

No Linux support; and you’re certainly not doing LLMs of any kind. The GPU is weaker than either Intel or AMD integrated graphics.

nwah1 1 year ago | | |

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2025/01/29/runnin...

animex 1 year ago |

Where Lenovo is unbeatable for me, is the extended warranty cost. You can get (usually on discount) full 4 year coverage next-day in-home with accident protection for only a couple hundred bucks. I like a company that can stand behind their product in that manner.

dismalaf 1 year ago |

Framework with AMD HX "Ai" APU (Strix point) and a ton of ram.

bo1024 1 year ago |

My framework experience has been great (3.5 years). Would never go back to dell or Lenovo.

tombh 1 year ago |

Why is Macbook not an option? Even if it's running Asahi Linux?

mmh0000 1 year ago | |

Please provide instructions on how to boot Windows on the MacBook.

And, while I applaud all the efforts of the Asahi developers, many hardware components do not yet work(1)

Macs are great if you can live happily within the confines of Apple’s expensive walled garden. But leave that garden and soon the moats, mines or sniper towers will get you.

(1) https://asahilinux.org/docs/M2-Series-Feature-Support/#m2-pr...

MRMsys 1 year ago | | |

Do you need to boot Windows? Have you run Windows in a VM on Mac before? It’s sad that the fastest Windows laptop these days is… a Mac. I just use Parallels to run windows whenever necessary. Yes it’s a $100/year subscription but it works flawlessly and comes with Parallels Toolbox apps for Mac, many of which are actually useful. So I’m willing to pay for that. Oh and Windows laptops still can’t do low power states right, so good luck taking it out of your backpack after two days and attempting to use it.

devilsdata 1 year ago |

Why is the Macbook not an option? They are the best at making laptop hardware, and to my knowledge you can run what you like on it. Mac OS is good, but I also like Fedora's Atomic distros, such as Bluefin-dx.

LorenDB 1 year ago | |

OP said Windows support is a requirement. Also, Macs have that stupid control/option/command keyboard layout thing.

MRMsys 1 year ago | | |

Run Windows in Parallels, it’s actually faster than a real Windows based laptop. Sad really.

devilsdata 1 year ago | | |

Ah didn't realise you couldn't dual boot Windows on a Mac, sorry.

aboardRat4 1 year ago |

A new Dell.

carlosjobim 1 year ago |

You could buy a MacBook and scratch away the logo, then replace it with a logo of your preferred brand.

LorenDB 1 year ago | |

That won't fix Windows compatibility or the stupid keyboard layout (i.e. control/option/command instead of the normal control/meta/alt).

carlosjobim 1 year ago | | |

You can easily pry off the keys and change them around to suit your own layout.

grigio 1 year ago |

HP zbook ultra G1A

- 45W TDP processor - none of the U series 15W slowness - 4K screen that scaled to 1080P perfectly at 200% scaling - so X11 and XWayland apps still looked good. Also the screen quality was amazing - Integrated Graphics - no messing around with NVIDIA drivers

Pros: - 45W TDP processor is fast - They let you load it up with memory and disk for reasonable prices unlike most mainstream manufacturers - 2nd M2 slot is nice for copying over old SSD - They provide Windows Drivers in a GitHub repo Cons: - Battery life is pretty bad but I stay plugged in most of the time so not a huge issue for me - Fans spin up pretty often - USB-C charging only. There is an A/C Adapter barrel jack but they don't ship a charger and I can't find a suitable aftermarket charger. I worry about wear and tear on the USB-C port damaging it one day and that will be the end of the laptop effectively if I can't plug in. - The screen needs around 133% fractional scaling which is not even an option. So I have to use a combination of 125% scaling and tweaks. XWayland apps look terrible so had to go through and force Wayland on all Electron apps and JetBrains and as you can probably guess there are random odd bugs - Random issue (rarely) where I power it on and it does not start up, then I have to close the lid, hold the power button, etc before it starts up. Support told me to try booting with one memory stick but it's so hard to recreate I don't think I'll be messing around with it unless the issue starts cropping up more.