Too many choices to help narrow it down for you. But you need to keep your own workflow in mind when picking out your CPU and GPU, for the software compatibility.

I use Davinci Resolve for my video editing, one of the few Professional NLE officially supported on Linux. Intel’s iGPU is incompatible with the software at this time. There are hacks and unofficial patches which are pointed out on the arch wiki, but the work required isn’t easy.

If you are using Adobe software you might need more power so you can run Windows in a VM, or has up-gradable storage so you can comfortably dual boot.

Good Battery is an cross x86 issue. While Intel and AMD are now trying to compete with Apple Silicon in terms of power and battery life. Stand by battery drain is still an issue. Google “Windows Modern Standby” if you want to get informed. If I remember correctly the laptop needs to have S3 Sleep enabled on it, and it’s usually not specified on a spec sheet.

Another battery saving tool is a CPU limiter like Slimbook Battery. My Laptop has a terrible fan curve and I need to throttle the CPU back, else the machine overheats. But it’s also good for the battery life too.

Software support is down to the Package Manager. Flatpak is your friend for most of this, but if you wanna dive into the deep end, so is the AUR if you installed Arch.

USB-C Charging is down to the laptop manufacturer. Here is a good infographic on the ones you need to look for. Intel Laptops are a safe bet.

As someone who frequents the laptop market, I’ll throw in my two-cents.

If you’re looking for value, don’t compromise on performance, buy refurbished.

While I’m certain it is definitely different from country to country, a refurbished laptop typically has more life to give in them.

I’d recommend business laptops, such as the Dell Latitudes or the Lenovo Thinkpads, but an M1 MacBook Air provides an absolutely shocking amount of performance for the price.

Checking sites like eBay or the pages of hardware resellers rather than big box stores is definitely where I’d go.

Tuxedo computers could be a good fit I think? It’s like system76, but from Germany. You can pick from a few OS including an Ubuntu fork they made ( tuxedo os ). You can tweak the laptop yourself ( different you/CPUs/disk sizes/… ) to fit your use case.

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com

Personally I’ve never bought there, but a friend of mine has and he’s happy with his purchase.

Note: I do not work for them, or am affiliated with them in any way.

Gaming is not important if you do video editing. Hardware doesnt need to be very powerful if you dont do 4K or something, which tbh is not needed.

I would say look for a Clevo NV41 laptop as they are supported with Coreboot by 3mdeb, Novacustom, System76, Nitrokey etc. But flashing coreboot requires some knowledge and a hardware programmer.

I cant recommend other brands really. Thinkpads are just a name, good Linux support but their support is nonexistent if you dont pay, and the software updates are not long.

You may want AMD graphics, but I have had bad experience with amd mobile CPUs.

You will want to use

• tlp
• system76-scheduler (or this power management thing)
• autocpufreq

Either one of these.

As a Distro I highly recommend ublue.it they are supporting many models with custom setups like Razer etc, but also main (intel, amd, no extras) or nvidia (proprietary drivers).

Especially if you go with an NVIDIA card, which has advantages, I recommend the system76 tool for switching between internal GPU and dedicated one. And I also recommend only ublue’s *-nvidia images, as you can rollback if an update with the drivers breaks something.