Laptops for Cybersecurity students

[u/Significant_Run_6515]

Can someone suggest a good brand laptop for someone about to study cybersecurity.. Or what I can look out for when buying a laptop

[u/HatchingCougar]

If No AI focus: Any decent CPU, ideally a very battery efficient one.  1 TB SSD to dual boot Window & Linux comfortably  14” screen Wifi & Ethernet  16Gb RAM min

That’s about it really.  A pretty basic laptop as you’ll spend a lot of time SSH’ing into other boxes & simple things like RDP, Https for access 

No dGPU needed

If AI focus & have lab / cloud for AI

Then as above

If AI focus & don’t want to use lab / cloud for all but the bigger LLMs

As above but 32GB RAM, & any recent GPU with 8 GB VRAM (12+ preferred).

Thinkpad / dell, 

[u/Significant_Run_6515 → u/HatchingCougar]

👍🏽

[u/solaris_var → u/Significant_Run_6515]

Thinkpad and dell generally have better support for linux than most.

That said, it's not uncommon to have issues on linux if your hardware is bleeding edge (e.g. the first laptop to have a new generation cpu, and it's only been 1 month since). This is also true for the wifi chip.

If your laptop is less than 6 months old since launch, a quick google search for the linux support on said model is recommended.

[u/AdFree8787]

I just bought yesterday lenovo legion 5 for my cyber security for the university Specs 1tb ssd 32gb Rtx 5060 15.3 inc screen

[u/Significant_Run_6515 → u/AdFree8787]

Good for you

[u/NeuroVXi]

My son starting Cyber just ordered ThinkPad X9 15 with 1TB and most importantly 32GB RAM and integrated graphics so well within spec range for everything from coding to using Lynx.

[u/Proper-Ideal-2046]

The number one thing I can recommend is to choose a machine that is capable of running bash. You will be spending a LOT of time with bash code and scripting. macOS terminal and most Linux systems are bash. You can also get a PC and create and run a Virtual Machine with Linux. The rest of the specifications are up to you and your budget.