Using a Linux Laptop in 2026
After graduation, I joined a startup and was lucky enough to convince the company to let me use Linux instead of macOS for work. They bought me a Dell XPS 14, which was the only available option with an Intel Ultra X7 Panther Lake chip in stock.
Since I already use NixOS on my personal desktop, I decided to install it on my laptop as well. I wanted to document my experience using a Linux laptop for daily work in 2026.
Installing NixOS went smoothly, and the laptop booted with a beautiful fastfetch output. But getting it ready for work took more effort than that.
I immediately noticed that neither the camera nor the microphone worked. Since the laptop was so new, even the latest kernel does not ship all drivers. Even more interesting, there are always conflicting requirements. The latest ipu-7 driver, which the camera needs, only supports Linux 7.0, while the speakers and microphone need Linux 7.1. To get all of them working, I need to patch ipu-7 and build and install the driver myself.
Even once everything works, a kernel upgrade can break things again. With hardware this new, I can’t assume my exact laptop has been tested before each release.
AI tools have made finding the right drivers for my laptop much easier in 2026. What used to involve tedious searches and trial and error now takes far less manual effort.
Switching to NixOS has been another huge help. It lets me manage configurations, drivers, and patches declaratively in one place, making it easier to track changes, review AI-generated edits, and revert them when needed. Since Nix is also a build system, I can write a local package for an open-source driver (e.g., ipu-7 driver and intel-lpmd) even if it isn’t packaged in NixOS.
Battery life hasn’t lived up to expectations. I read this thread before purchasing my laptop and had high hopes. Despite trying everything I could, I’m still getting around 4–7 hours on a charge. That’s usable, but still far from what a MacBook offers these days. (All that battery troubleshooting did convince me to buy some Apple stock 😂.)
Screen sharing, of course, is still a nightmare. It drains the battery much faster, gets painfully laggy, and doesn’t always let me select the window I want to share. I’ve ended up using Firefox whenever I need to join a video call or share my screen. For whatever reason, I need to use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Google Meet for my work. In my experience, Microsoft Teams has the worst Linux support of the bunch.
One thing I still find lacking in the open-source community is help with bug triage. For example, I recently noticed a refresh rate issue on my display. Claude Code and I went through several rounds of investigation to figure out whether to report the bug to Niri, Smithay, the Linux kernel, or the xe kernel driver maintainers. Getting a laptop working involves several projects, but users are left to coordinate the investigation themselves. If I were using macOS, I’d just click “Report a Bug.”
Getting fixes reviewed for newer laptop hardware can also be slow. Since relatively few people use Linux laptops, especially those with the latest hardware, related contributions can struggle to get attention. I’ve seen several PRs in the nixpkgs repository left waiting for review or follow-up, including this one, this one, and this one.
Overall, my experience using a Linux laptop in 2026 is much better than it was with the XPS I bought five years ago, thanks to AI and NixOS. Still, I wouldn’t recommend switching to a Linux laptop for daily work if your job goes beyond coding.