Recommendations for a laptop? (Would like docking & SSHD)

[John Lusk]

So... I'm kinda thinking about getting a laptop and putting Linux on it. I'd like to be able to dock it into a port replicator (not sure ZaReason or System76 can do that), and I'm thinking Linux-managed[1] dual-drive hybrid storage (SSD/HDD) would be better than an integrated SSHD that knows nothing about boot-time requirements vs. runtime requirements. (But what do I know? Corrections/input welcomed.)

Can anybody make some recommendations? (Including: is there a better forum somewhere to post this?) I just took a quick look at Lenovo and Dell, but they don't seem to have dual HDD slots. Should I just give up on that SSD/HDD approach?

I'm happy to pay for quality, but don't really want to past the point of diminishing returns. Would like something that won't require too much fiddling around, since I'd like to do something with the system besides fight config battles.

[1] As opposed to me manually moving files around between an SSD and an HDD.

 

[Splintercat]

The Lenovo Thinkpads can be ordered with a docking station.
I use the X series at work (x220 x230) and they work wonderfully with Linux.

There have been a few studies on hybrid hard drives and they are not significantly better than just a traditional hard drive.

For personal use at home I have a Lenovo that has an mSata SSD and a regular hard drive. I installed my root partition to the SSD and configured my home, tmp, swap, and var partitions to be on the HDD. It's really fast, and you get what you're asking for, which is your OS stuff and your programs are loaded very quickly, and your various files like documents, music, and videos, load a bit slower, but it's honestly fine.

If you want to use an ssd of some type as a cache then use something like bcache, which looks like it won't take too much configuration.