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As stated in the "introduce yourself" topic, I not currently a Linux user.
However, I'm planning to buy a gaming laptop in the next few months. With the latest Valve announcement, I'm really thinking of buying a linux friendly laptop.
The MSI laptops look interesting, as you can buy them without any OS. But since the hardware on those laptops differs from what is usually found on regular PC's, I wonder wether or not the laptop specific features (for instance, the glowing keyboard) will be supported with a Linux OS (ubuntu or steamOS probably, since I'm looking something beginner-friendly).
I hope some of you experimented this and will be able to help me join the linux gaming community !
Bernardo,
Cheers
So, if you can, get a laptop with just a discrete Nvidia GPU, preferrably not the latest generation. Intels are also okay but you won't be doing much 3D gaming on them, as they are pretty weak.
Now I'm not sure about these special laptop features, such as glowing keyboards. All of my keyboards are boring non-glowing ones so I can't really comment on that. I imagine there is some level of support for those though.
First, I live in France and usually buy my hardware components at www.ldlc.com or www.materiel.net.
The glowing keyboard is not the main concern actually ;)
What you say about those hybrid graphics worries me a lot because I was interested in laptops from the GS70 and GT72 series by MSI. I like the GT72 because there is room for extra memory and SSD. Unfortunately, the GT72 use this hybrid graphics technology...
I am testing out a laptop from http://www.entroware.com at the moment, and they are great (review will be up soon).
View PC info
Of course it requires a bit of tweaks as for the bumblebee and primus driver to support the Optimus Nvidia technology, but once it's done, it works great!
View PC info
I had good experience with Asus laptops for Linux gaming, but I can't speak for the current generation. My early 2012 asus laptop with Intel + nvidia works great with Ubuntu.
My experience with Acer is that the build quality is very low, but again slightly outdated experience with them on my side.
View PC info
Make sure you get a recent distribution (wait of Ubuntu 15.04 or anything based on that like the upcoming kubintu or Linux mint releases) as the GPU is only supported by very recent nvidia drivers and these can be a bit of a hassle to install on older distribution like the last Ubuntu LTS release or Debian.
View PC info
For the £1500 you spend on a laptop, you could get an amazing gaming rig for £1000 with much, much better performance than the laptop, and then also get a very solid laptop for £500. I still think the price-to-performance ratio isn't there yet for gaming laptops and won't be for a long time.
Just to give an example, I spent £400 on a laptop about 2 years ago (which broke a couple of months ago and is irreparable since the GPU is soldered to the CPU) and a year later spent £400 on a decent gaming PC which has easily 3x the gaming performance. I really regret not having spent £200 on the laptop (which I'd just use for browsing and work uni stuff) and spent the £200 I'd saved getting a more powerful GPU like the GTX 970.
I know that's not the kind of advice you're expecting and that it's probably pretty useless to you, but just giving my opinion nonetheless. If you're still going with the laptop though, I can recommend Novatech - they have a pretty good range of gaming laptops and they all come without Windows so you can save yourself a bit of money there. The people I know who bought from them have had good experiences and they have good customer service.
I know it's an expensive choice, but in this specific situation it's not that crazy.
However I still have a few months before I buy it, so I'm still interested in any kind of advice. I will have a look at Novatech products, customer service quality is essential to me.
Julius > good to know that.