Continuing my Quest for the "Perfect" Laptop

So I feel like I've written about this before, but about 2 years ago I moved to a gaming laptop as my primary computer. I tried Linux on it, but eventually gave up because of issues with docks / multiple screens. It crapped out last year, so I had to warranty replace its motherboard. Then it died again this month. Looks like the same thing.

At that point, I was agitated. I'm not going to go through another warranty replacement for this kind of nonsense. So I got a desktop, running linux, and everything is great. Minus the lack of wired NIC support on it till the new kernel comes out. Oh well.

My plan was then to use my ultracheap $200 laptop (Asus Vivobook i3) as my portable system. I upgraded the ram, threw a 1tb NVME in it, and thought I might have a solid solution. Linux ran great on it.

BUT, I didn't take into account that while it's fine for short stints, it is absolutely miserable using a TN screen. My poor eyes did NOT care for it.

So back to the drawing board.

I look for something between 14" and 16", butI light, and not a gaming system. I have a desktop for games. As long as this computer can run some indie stuff on the road, I'm not going to complain. I wanted an IPS screen, with a higher than 60hz refresh rate because easy on the eyes.

And man, that's a hard combo to find.

After a lot of compromising and back and forth, I landed on the Asus Zenbook S 16. It's stupidly thin, and stupidly overpowered. Ryzen 9 with a Radeon 850 I think. 2k OLED screen, 24gb of ram, and a 1tb hard drive.

The reviews were solidly middle, mainly issues with freezes and battery life and heat. And, in true Asus fashion, style over stability. I figured I'd roll the dice and return it if it was a lemon.

Got it home, booted to Windows 11 home [ew], and started doing updates and such. Figured I'd need to run it a bit before I got a pro key and assign an enterprise license to it. Didn't run into any real issues, but the heat was rough doing basic tasks. So I broke out my tried and true "throttle cpu to 50%", and suddenly it was pretty good. No overheating, no fans, etc.

Now it was time to install linux. Me, thinking this is my 4th system that I'm going to throw linux on, how bad can it be? Well, its been a LOT to deal with.

To be Continued!