HP Dev One Linux Laptop Review: The Best for Linux

This isn't just an HP Elitebook 845 with Linux slapped on it, it's something else. The keyboard has been changed to make it look like it's called Super.

It's nice that the Dev One has a big, bright screen. I didn't like the idea of going from 4K to1080p, but this one is great. I would love to see a 4K option, but given the battery life, it's probably not going to happen.

The screen is good for Linux. Sometimes I have to deal with scaling on my 4K screen, but there's no issues with it. It's easy to work outside. The screen brightness is usually reduced to 50 percent or less to conserve battery.

One of the best things I have ever done is use the trackpad. It's made of glass and supports a lot of gestures. There is more on that in a second. The keyboard is very good. The keys for the Dev One have a good bit of height and travel to them, but they don't have the same style. This is not a butterfly keyboard. Points to HP for sticking a nub in the trackpad.

The battery life is okay. It took me seven hours to do light work in a text editor and browser. It's close, but not as close as HP says. The battery life drops when the screen brightness is turned up. Whenever I had to do something, I averaged 3.5 hours. Dropping in a bigger battery is one thing I could change.

There is a place where the development one shines. It is a full time job. It crunched through everything I threw at it. The integrated graphics power ofAMD is better than what you get with Intel. It is more than enough power for most people. Most people won't do that, but I had to do it to see it wasn't good.

When you close the lid and reopen the laptop, HP and System 76 will make sure that it stops functioning properly. Suspend and resume don't seem to work when I install Linux on machines from the company. The changes that System 76 and HP made were contributed back to the upstream, so if you have an AMD machine with this chip, you should be able to suspend and restart your Linux distribution whenever it's updated. I'm happy to see HP contributing to the open source community as well as System 76.