Computer reviews aren’t my thing, but for this one I had to make an exception. My 3.5 year old laptop, the HP Spectre x360 I had scored as swag at the 2015 Microsoft Build conference, suddenly died a few months ago. I had taken a liking to that thing, so when I had to leave for a conference in early November, and realized I should probably bring a laptop with me, I decided to replace it with the current version of the same model. Fortunately they had one in stock at my neighborhood Best Buy (alas, only the silver one and not the pretty black and gold one), so I was able to pick it right up.

I then had the bad idea to search online for Linux support on the x360 after already having bought it, and was dismayed by what I found. A lot of people reported poor performance, too-hot-to-handle operating temperatures, and very poor battery life. Not having much of a choice at that point, I decided to go ahead anyways and install Fedora 28 on it, the then-current release of my go-to Linux distribution. Long story short: installation was a breeze, everything worked out-of-the-box, performance is great, the laptop runs barely warm, and battery life is awesome (so awesome, in fact, that I initially thought the readings were wrong). In order to provide a counter-narrative to those other reports, this is my experience of installing and running Linux on a 2018 HP Spectre x360. Continue reading →