I will say that a second-hand ThinkPad is a great option. They can be real cheap, but you can also get a pretty decent new one for your budget.
You can likely find great T480-T495 that fits your needs really well.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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I HIGHLY recommend against the T495. That thing has a great keyboard, fingerprint sensor, okay camera and mics, okay ports. But it is underpowered af, and Thinkpads always have the Thinkpad price.
It has a great chassis, but my coreboot Clevo NV41 has double the performance and kinda same battery life.
I disagree with it being underpowered for regular office use and media consumption. If you can get your hands on a 16 GB RAM one, it should be able to handle just about anything other than gaming.
The RAM doesnt matter, it has 8GB builtin (or is there a 4GB model??) and one slot flexible.
Yes the CPU is okay for regular office stuff. But the AMD linux support was suboptimal, I had regular suspend-resume issues where the lockscreen would freeze and I needed to hard shutdown.
And... for some reason that thing doesnt even boot anymore. Removed the battery, using official charger. Doesnt boot into the BIOS anymore, no idea what I could do honestly.
Maybw the mobo is damaged...
I'm farting around on a T480 for school and light retro gaming. Works great! Super easy to upgrade too
I would vote against getting something like a T490 as it has one memory slot soldered onto the motherboard and it has the same processor as the T480 anyways iirc.
Used ThinkPad or Framework laptop should be a copypasta at this point.
If it were me, I'd first be looking at used Thinkpads (with the caveat to make sure the specific Thinkpad has hardware which is generally supported). I'd also look into Linux-friendly manufacturers, like frame.work or System76.
Ive had great success with their all amd systems, and older machines go on sale often, so you can score a Ryzan 6850 w/ 16GB of RAM for 700-800CAD if little else matters.
System76 or Framework
That depends on where you live.
In europe I recommend Novacustom or 3mdeb if you want coreboot, Starlabs too.
In the US System76.
No Tuxedo?
Tuxedo has coreboot in some of their laptops afaik.
Their chassis' are waay better than the clevo garbage I currently have, but
coreboot >> design
Buy a laptop from a vendor that preinatalls Linux. Not because you need them to do that for you, but because it means its more likely to work on Linux without issues.
I run Qubes, but I think this is a great list of Qubes-certified hardware
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/#qubes-certified-computers
Tldr Amd & amd
Refurbished ThinkPad. The answer is always a refurbished ThinkPad
I've been thinking about this for a while, what's a good place to buy them, ebay? I'd be using it mainly for web browsing and playing sames through moonlight
I'm not sure, I got my current one through our tech guy at work, not sure where he gets them
Depending on your budget, I would suggest tuxedo‘s aura 15 gen 3. starts at around 800 bucks and is linux first and made in germany.
If you have a lower budget I would go used as someone suggested since a new laptop is nice but unnecessary if you have budget constraints.
Wish you tons of fun.
Used/off-lease ThinkPad T-series.
If money wasn't an object I think I'd get a Framework but I've always had a good experience with Lenovo for a more budget-friendly option. My last two laptops have been Lenovos and have both worked super well with Linux.
I would get a Thinkpad, either used or new, with that budget. Generally all the hardware will work out of the box, with the possible exception of the fingerprint reader if it exists. RAM and SSD should be replaceable, so if you purchase new just do the upgrade yourself to save some bucks.
I've just been through the process you've described and bought a laptop. Your budget is way overkill for your use (documents, browsing, video watching).
I recently bought myself a "like new" second hand Dell Latitude (5300, I think), 8th gen i7, 16GB Ram for £150 and it is amazing with OpenSUSE.
I got my wife a new HP Aero 13 (Ryzen) a couple of years ago and even that was £580 brand new and has been great.
Consider the secondhand market. A lot of laptops will meet your criteria.
You're right. I actually bought my current Pixel phone secondhand, so I'll check out the market for computers. Do you know of any red flags to watch out for in secondhand computer ads?
I wouldn’t buy a used MacBook from an individual seller unless I could meet in person to verify there’s no BIOS/TPM lock going on that would prevent me from doing a secure erase and wiping the SSD to start fresh. A laptop with a replaceable ssd is probably less of an issue, but I’d still feel more comfortable having a picture of the BIOS showing no password set or anything, and a picture of it booted to desktop at minimum so you know it isn’t a stolen laptop that has a password no one knows. If you’re buying from like a second hand recycler or something, anyone that sells through significant volume of devices, I’d be much more comfortable just pulling the trigger sight unseen.
I used eBay so I could get a refund if the laptop wasn't as advertised. I spent weeks looking at new listings looking for a good deal. I eventually found an amazing deal from a hospice that was selling excess stock. I've worked in a hospice before and know this would have only ever been used sparingly in an office and be very well looked after.
On eBay I would avoid anyone who hasn't written out a complete description and detailed pictures of condition and specifics. Like the other comment says, the BIOS being unlocked is very important. Read descriptions carefully. People fall victim to buying expensive things that can't be returned because it was mentioned in the listing (e.g. buying a box only for a very expensive price). For any laptop I find, I search for forum posts from other users about how that model works with Linux and videos for a teardown to make sure that RAM, WiFi module, etc can be upgraded. Make sure the charger is included.
Search eBay for "8th Gen 13 inch 16GB", then sort by lowest price for buy-it-now. That's what I did for a number of weeks. Got one for myself and a great one for my dad as well. Good experience both times.
I've had a lot of thinkpads and currently use an ideapad flex 5. I prefer the smaller form factor for a portable machine I take travelling or out to biz meetings etc. The autorotate and touchscreen work great in Debian with gnome-shell out of the box. No pinch-to-zoom but I believe that works on KDE plasma out of the box.
If there's a decent (even online) used market where you live buying a refurbished computer that's just a few years old can be amazing bang for your buck. 9th-11th gen Intel or Ryzen 2-4th gen. Any of the more business focused lines tend to be fairly well-built and are designed to be relatively long lasting while being relatively well-maintained during their service life. HP Elitebooks, Dell Latitudes, Lenovo Thinkpads, etc.
Go team red would be my advice.
Old Intel systems are solid as well. Something 2022 or older
If I had to replace my Linux laptop right now, I'd probably go for a ThinkPad T14 AMD. They also sell them with Snapdragon ARM chips now, which is a very interesting option, though I'm not sure how viable as a daily driver.
You could run Linux on it with no issue ofc, but I wonder how good the support for ARM arch from common Linux software is nowadays...
Get an Apple, thinkpad or dell.
The main thing that determines if a computer can be repaired is parts availability. Those three have great parts availability almost universally.
If you wanna run macOS you need a Mac. The t480 is a good recommendation for thinkpads, but don’t worry about ssds or ram yet, just get the one with the processor and display you want (it’s the midrange 8th gen ones). I don’t know the dell world enough to make a recommendation but someone will do so.
Use the gentoo and arch wikis to check what problems people have out of the box with whatever model you’re looking at.
People will say you need amd. This is either paranoid or based on recent events. Neither apply to you.
People will say to get a framework or some equivalent. They’re expensive and a moral/ethical statement. This doesn’t apply to you.
Get a Librebooted Thinkpad T440p or similar and then upgrade it (SSD, 16gb ram, etc).
Or a normal booted ThinkPad if you don't really care about that (I personally don't) it will be able to run Linux regardless.
Yeah but if a laptop is old enough to support Libreboot that means it was released before Lenovo messed it up
How did they mess up?
Also isn't a laptop from 2014 (?) kinda pushing it when it comes to laptops?
I can't be much more expensive to get a laptop that's much better in pretty much every way.
Unrelated but I really wish modern ThinkPads had a think light.
I'm pretty sure the T440p is the newest one and it's 2013. They messed up in the sense that modern Thinkpads are starting to solder components and overall the build quality is worse.
Maybe the build quality is a bit worse but it's not bad. My x280 is doing great and I would absolutely not replace it with an older machine (even if that machine had a think light)
And I much rather have soldered components from 2018 (or something) than non soldered from a decade ago
But sure, there is nothing wrong with running old machines yourself. I just wouldn't recommend it to people that ask for a laptop unless they specifically request it.
Repairability and upgradability are incredibly important factors, when my computer breaks why should I need to buy a new one? Heck why should it break at all, old computers were built to last.
I agree. I have even replaced the screen on my x280 to a IPS screen (because the old one was a crap TN screen) and the storage.
I wish newer machines were more repairable and I would buy a framework if I could afford it and if they had more ports. Fortunately most machines don't break that often and very rarely is it in a part that couldn't be replaced by a skilled technician (excluding some shitty products like Apple computers). Most business tier laptops like Lenovo ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes (5xxx and 7xxxx series at least) are fairly repairable and durable.
Upgradability is also great but doesn't make a lot of sense to worry about when the machine is a decade old and still crap performance wise even if you gave it a few more GBs of RAM. You can't really upgrade anything beyond storage and ram in any laptops unfortunately.
I wouldn't consider a decade old computer no matter how repairable, durable, or how upgradable it is unless I worked exclusively in a TTY or some shit and I believe most feel the same way.
You do you, but I still don't think it's a good suggestion for someone that just needs a computer. Especially when they want good battery life and compactness. Neither of which computers that old are good at.