I disagree with it, but the premise is that they cant be upgraded so they are stuck at a set spec, they struggle with heating and dust issues, they make a lot of sacrifices due to needing to fit into a laptop size, and they basically need to be plugged in 24/7 which bites at the portability.
All valid points, but also all acceptable trade offs if you need a portable and flexible machine.
Upgrading or cleaning a laptop means opening up the laptop. Anyone who has opened a tower and a laptop will attest, the laptop is a nightmare to deal with and the tower is much simpler.
Depends on the laptop. For some it’s just unscrewing the bottom. Gaming notebooks aren’t the super slim ones. They tend to be easier to open than their ultrabook cousins.
Even on a lot of non-gaming laptops. I can’t say that I’ve loved the dells I’ve had, but I can’t fault them for their repairability. Cleaning out the fans, swapping memory, storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards, all just a dozen screws to remove the bottom panel and access all of that.
But you can’t upgrade the two most important components: CPU and GPU. So if your gaming laptop isn’t cutting it, you need to buy a new one, you can’t just upgrade the component that’s causing bottlenecks.
So a gaming laptop is likely to be much more expensive than a non-gaming laptop. My E-series Lenovo ThinkPad cost $400-500, which is about half the cost compared to entry gaming laptops. I haven’t once cleaned the fan, and it’s still doing well a few years later (my kids play Lego games and Minecraft on it).
So for my money, I go with a Steam Deck for games and an inexpensive laptop with integrated graphics for everything else. Total cost is ~$1k.
I have both a steam deck and a slim gaming laptop like the ones that company sells. It’s different, while I mostly game on my deck some games just aren’t good with a controller, and since I’ll be taking a laptop with me anyways why not take one that can also play games?
Mostly because battery life tends to suck. I can still play games like Minecraft and most indie games on my iGPU (esp if you go AMD), so it’s not like there aren’t options, I just won’t be playing larger AAA games on it.
I haven’t shopped too much either, but in the past, gaming laptops were significantly more expensive and often had quality issues vs business-style laptops. I quickly checked prices online, and “inexpensive” gaming laptops seem to start around $1k for a 4060 tier GPU. That’s the price of a decent business laptop (should last 5+ years) and a Steam Deck. You’ll probably want to upgrade the Steam Deck way before the business laptop, so it should help with costs longer term (and by then you’ll probably want a desktop PC anyway).
Anyway, that’s my take. I personally don’t see a point to gaming laptops, for the game money, I’d rather have two dedicated devices.
Actually battery life of gaming laptops is really good, because it’s made to hold a discrete GPU which can usually be turned off, I used to get around 6h of battery for day-to-day stuff in my gaming laptop when I recently bought it, I haven’t used it outside of a plug for a while so I assume the battery would be in a bad state today.
I get the point of having to upgrade the whole system every few years, and that they’re more expensive, but if you need portability a desktop is not viable, e.g. I moved countries a few years ago and I’ll move again in a short while, a desktop is just not practical for me. Plus I’ve had my laptop for 4 years, which is much longer than my deck.
So if I want to play games that I have issues with playing on my deck, like Doom or Cities Skylines I play them on the laptop. Granted, I could plug a keyboard and mouse to my deck, but like I mentioned I already had the laptop for years when the deck came out.
It’s only good if you have a massive battery, which means increased weight and size. I can get that same 6+ hours in a much smaller, cheaper package.
portability
I can see that.
That said, if the concern is only moving, a SFFPC can be very easy to pack. Monitors can be a pain, so if I knew I was going to move, I’d just sell those and buy new wherever I was moving. It’s just not worth the hassle unless they’re really nice.
It used to be more interesting back when LAN parties were a common thing, but AFAIK, most kids have moved to online. When I was younger, LAN parties had already switched to retro games w/o servers like OG Doom and Quake with mods, and those can run on a potato.
But honestly, my go-to is a highly portable laptop and a handheld gaming system, either a Switch or Steam Deck. That combo should be cheaper than a gaming laptop and more ergonomic. If you want to play games those systems can’t handle, a desktop PC + portable laptop should be competitive in price (like $1500-2000 combined), and should be cheaper long term.
That said, use what you have. I’m just saying that a Linux gaming laptop is kind of silly since it’s not going to handle many different games than a Steam Deck, and it’s going to be less comfortable to use than a more portable laptop and a handheld PC.
Obviously get what you want, I just don’t see much of a point these days when we have more options.
Yeah, but they’re sometimes the best option anyway. I wouldn’t use one for any length of time for gaming, but I have the luxury of not having to leave home much, and almost never for extended time. Back when I was still able to work, a laptop for gaming would have made sense on the long overnight shifts (the job has lots of downtime, and limited limitations on how it was filled).
Folks that travel a lot are in a similar boat.
Folks that can only have one PC and need it to be portable are reliant on laptops totally.
Yeah, even the best of them aren’t ideal, but they’re sensible for various use cases.
I’m pretty sure an inexpensive laptop + Steam Deck would be about the same price (or less!) as a gaming laptop.
I got my E-series ThinkPad a few years ago for $400-500 (E495, first AMD ThinkPad E series), and my Steam Deck for $530. So I paid about $1k for the pair. Gaming laptops start around $1k and go up from there.
It works well for me, but then I don’t need a GPU for my non-gaming laptop use, so I can get away with it. YMMV depending on what you need the laptop to do.
Lol, funny you mention that, because that’s pretty much my setup: A steamdeck and an XPS 15 that I got used like 5 years ago. The only problem is that I don’t really like single player games, so between steam-Xbox cross play and anticheat it’s hard to find things to play with my Xbox friends. But yeah the steamdeck is an insane bang for your buck
It absolutely makes sense. For us who want to game but also need a computer to do day to day work and meetings. I’m not buying two computers, so what I buy for work is what I have to game with.
Cuz they’re crazy expensive, not very powerful, power through batteries in a matter of minutes, and they require you to carry GIANT power supplies, which makes them poor for portability anyway.
The whole setup makes no sense with Linux in mind and screams of a rebadged Windows notebook. Just go with an AMD-exclusive system, perhaps with an Intel WiFi module.
Agreed with Linux gaming AMD all the way. For laptops if you don’t wanna go dedicated GPU they make some wonderful budget friendly performance APUs (CPU plus GPU like Intel integrated graphics but more capable for light gaming :) IMO of course
As far as I can tell, there isn’t a single Linux laptop with an AMD GPU. Admittedly, even in the Windows world AMD laptops are a lot rarer than Nvidia ones, but there are still a few. None of them come with Linux out-of-the-box, though.
Well, then those Linux notebook makers do a crappy job. Radeon is the best supported gaming GPU on Linux as of now. That’s just fact. Any notebook manufacturer would look which vendors Valve uses for Steam Deck and pick whatever is the latest component from that vendor because all the driver improvements made by Valve also benefit the newer, more powerful GPU.
Taking an obvious Windows notebook and just rebadging it isn’t a real Linux notebook anyway. If I were to buy a new notebook, it would be the Framework 16. Sure, there is no option for it to ship with Linux but the DIY edition ships without Windows.
Yeah but consider the following: CUDA. I don’t even game that much (and I was okay with older games that can be played on a Ryzen APU) but I had to get a laptop with a 3050 for GPGPU shenanigans. It is definitely a downgrade in terms of Linux compatibility compared to my older laptop (the machine doesn’t go to sleep properly unless you are running Ubuntu 20.04, which I discovered accidentally)
Not doing a great job running basic modern desktop environments with Wayland, though, where workarounds are required everywhere to make shoddy Nvidia drivers work. Very recently (I think is was just last week) I’ve read that the developers need to give Nvidia special treatment just to make the cursor work. That’s just fucked up.
A house build on shortcuts and workarounds is not on a strong foundation. It’ll break down on the user at some point.
A “Linux gaming laptop” is just any “gaming” laptop you install Linux on. Ideally use AMD graphics, but even NVIDIA should work fine if you set up the graphics switching properly.
Honestly though, I don’t see a point in a “gaming” laptop these days, just get a Steam Deck and a business class laptop and be done with it. My ThinkPad E495 is still going strong years later, and it might outlive my Steam Deck. I’d much rather replace a cheaper Steam Deck instead of a gaming laptop when it stops keeping up with games.
I’m saying two devices can be cheaper than one, like in my specific example of a simple laptop ($500) and a Steam Deck ($500) vs a gaming laptop ($1k+). The simple laptop will also remain viable longer than the gaming laptop since it only needs to handle simple use cases, so you’d save money over time.
If you need games that don’t work on the Steam Deck (e.g. MP games with anti-cheat), then look into the rest of the handheld PC market. You should be able to use Steam Link to play from the laptop, or just connect it to a USB hub and play on a monitor for KB+mouse usage. I rarely play MP games, handheld mode works for most games.
This keeps the laptop light and inexpensive, which is fantastic for my primary use of my laptop, to get work done on the go.
Nice to see Slimbook here. It’s a Spanish company. I bought slimbook zero some years ago and it’s working really well. I would thinking about getting proper laptop/dekstop from them but in the end I went with Vant, another Spanish company. Vant is not as pretty but has better prices.
Had a issue with my zero just recently (motherboard battery run out), I posted on their forum and had a replay in a matter of hours with a link to disassembly video. I talked to them in Spanish but from what I see they reply in English without issues.
Last time i used slim laptop for gaming it’s generate heat too much like i want to melt iceberg in north pole with it & climate activist start protesting arround me
I don’t say it’s bad but it’s not for me, in the end it’s nice for some people that need lightweight portable laptops especially if you work on long shift
Are there any distro besides steamis (and by extension chimera) that’s support hdr? Or do you just need to launch the game in full screen so it takes over?
I built a couple of HTPCs like 7 years ago or something. Kaby Lake iGPU had support for 4k HDR so I figured I would use the i3 7100T and Linux would add HDR support soon (I was using LibreELEC which was a minimal Linux that just boots into Kodi). Welp still waiting…
Damn, I was hoping to migrate my last windows PC to Linux using Bazzite-nvidia. I guess I won’t. My main rig (AMD) is running Manjaro, my Homelab is on Fedora Server, but I have a 3080TI on Windows 10… damn.
I tried this specifically to get Alan Wake 2 to work (with the 3080ti) and it is a less than spectacular experience as most of the effects on the game (shadowy figures, screen distortions, Ray Tracing) do not work properly in comparison to running on windows.
In bazzite-nvidia’s defense, it does just “work” but only to the extent that the Nvidia driver works. This is still more of nvidias issue and less bazzite-nvidia. Regular Bazzite with a 5700xt worked very well.
Performance is worse than alternatives, and there are some features that work on Windows but they have said they won’t support them on Linux. So, AMD is still unrivaled on Linux.
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