Which laptop and distro would you recommend for a Linux newb (someone who has never used Linux)? Preferably hardware with decent battery life and isn’t horribly slow.
Update: Walked away with this Dell Inspiron i5 3520 with Best Buy’s black friday deal: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6553026.p
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You could look into getting a second hand Thinkpad on ebay
Any model?
T or X series is really good. Just be careful to get an IPS panel, the TN film models are really bad.
If the computer worked that three year span in a corporate environment without breaking, it’ll last for years.
Also none of the 500 nit privacy guard, and the 400 nit low power is generally much preferable to the 300 nit. Not just for brightness, but color reproduction and uniformity are far better.
I believe the T480s and T490s are in the sweet spot right now. Most companies seem to be moving to 4 or 5 year lifecycles, so we don’t seem to be seeing many T14s g1 coming off lease yet.
Rly depends, there’s plenty of models out there. Search for one that has all your absolutely non-negotiable specs and stay grounded to your budget. I usually start by making a minimum desired spec list and a maximum budget. Go on ebay, look for currently listed ThinkPads and look through their specs and pricing, find something that isn’t too expensive but is quality enough for you.
I hear the e14 is nice.
It is, although it doesn’t have water spilling protection as older models do. The quality of assembling isn’t as good, some parts feel quite weak and easy to break (this hasn’t actually happened to me, though)
Series T, P and X (except X1).
What budget?
You should specify your budget, “cheaper” is relative
get an old dell latitude or thinkpad. They’re good performing laptops for the price you pay (somewhere around 50-100 usd) and the hardware’s old enough that any built in peripherals such as a microphone, webcam, or trackpad should just work. As for a distro, it depends. If you don’t want to learn anything or a bare minimum amount about your computer to use it, use linux mint*. If you want the freedom to turn your desktop into anything you want and don’t mind learning a thing or two, use arch.
*xfce will perform the best, but any version will work just fine.
Yeah Thinkpads are obviously a popular suggestion here. I’d check out System76 too (their cheapest stuff may or may not fit your definition of “cheap”).
I’m looking at them system76s right now thanks to you, you bastard! (Just kidding, I’m looking to get basically exactly what they’ve got, little expensive for me but it “exists” so that’s fine lol).
Real question though, are they as great as they look? I’ll immediately be ditching the OS in favor of Fedora, SUSE, straight debian no buntu, or something that likes KDE (if desktop. I actually like gnome on laptops a lot), but otherwise this seems to be pretty damn good. Anything I should know before I buy? And is there anything I should look at as a direct competitor, or is this one pretty much the one in the genre?
I haven’t used any of them, but there are Tuxedo, Slimbook (with official KDE collab) and Starlabs as well. Framework claim good Linux compatibility too.
Thank you, I’ll check all these out!
I had a Thinkpad T440s that had a ridiculous battery life. I think I picked I picked it up on eBay for like $300 4 or 5 years ago. I tinkered with it and ended up breaking it and didn’t have time to put it back together/fixed up but that thing was a dream. I have a “desktop replacement” PC that’s huge and unwieldly and I wish I just kept my T440s with an upgraded display and like 4 days of battery life.
ThinkPad T420 (I’m kidding a bit, bit you can consider it if you find one extremely cheap)
Eh, mine runs fine. Only thing that bothers me is the crap display.
Also the battery life is not great, but you can buy a bigger battery (i didn’t try it). For basic use it’s a great little laptop if you put an SSD in it.
Oh yeah, mine lasts 30 minutes max, but for a home laptop that’s fine.
I got an aftermarket 9 cell battery on Amazon for like $30, mine has 8 hours of battery life at idle now in Mint with the brightness all the way up. Highly recommended. Three SSDs, 16GB of RAM, but otherwise stock T420.
I’m on my second battery, this has been my main personal computer (gaming aside) for over ten years. Maybe it deserves one more extension on life… I’ll think about it!
Consinder buying USB 3.0 ExpressCard expansion
Everything is telling me that this is obviously fake and there’s no way it could exist, but there’s a small part of me saying “there’s someone out there that would do this…” Like a 25 pin serial to USB adapter.
Pretty much any thinkpad is a good go. Age doesn’t really matter either. I’ve got a T23 from 2001 that’s running fresh and good. I’d say maybe 2012 is as far back as you might want to go for regular use though.
What’s the best recent “old” thinkpad you can recommend?
Typically go for the model coming off business leases, with the slim T model or 13" X model being very popular and well built. The X1 series tends to have cooling issues, so I’d avoid them without a lot of research into the specific model. The P series tends to get run harder, so I’d be a bit hesitant there as well. It seems a lot of companies extended to a 4 or even 5 year lifecycle, so normally I’d be saying to start looking for the T14s g1, of which the AMD models started being very good. But you’d probably be looking more towards the T480s and T490s, still, and I think you’ll probably want to stick with Intel for those. But if you find a good deal on a T14s, particular the AMD model, I’d say jump on it.
In recent models, target the 400nit low power IPS screens. Avoid the 500nit privacy guard screen, which basically behaves like a TN panel as far as viewing angles. The 300nit screen has color reproduction and uniformity issues, but I do have one on my work T14s g3, and it’s not horrible. I have the 400nit on my P14s g4, and it is substantially better.
Thinkpads aren’t as upgradable as they used to be, so be mindful of the RAM in particular.
T440p
These are great for the money. This one is out of stock, but there are plenty more.
I agree with the other guy, the T440P is great. My top 3 are the T400, T440P, and T480.
T400 - great keyboard and form factor, but heavy
440P - LOTS of ports, easily fixable, last one with replaceable cpu
T480 - very lightweight and thin, good modern cpu, usb c fast charging.
My cheap Acer with 4500u ryzen is pretty nice and fast. Try checking capability lists https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Category:Laptops
Dell’s current lineup is not to expensive (≈400) and runs Linux well
I see your update. I question if worst buy has better deals than micro center or newegg. I would check them too if you’re buying new.
“Worst buy”, fucking lol
While it might not be an issue anymore, just make sure you look up driver support for wireless for whatever laptop you choose.
2 of the laptops I had in the past used a broadcom driver that was just a nightmare to setup on Linux
There’s a good chance it’s not really a big deal anymore, but if you’re new to linux just double check that it’s not something you’ll run into.
I went with Ubuntu when I did my first Linux install about 5 years ago. I still use it and have been super happy with it.
Everything has just worked. With a bit of googling, I’ve been able to easily do everything I’ve needed to.
I’m a user, not a programmer. I tried Linux because I was fed up with Windows. I’d been using Windows since 3.1 and hated how they changed basic functionality every revision. I just wanted a fucking OS that worked and made sense m
I’m so happy I switched!
I have a dell latitude e7250 which is really cheap, i run fedora KDE on it without any issue, however the battery doesn’t last more than 2 and a half hours, maybe 3 if you really want to stretch it.
Depends on the distro. I got an old vista machine
I’d go with an old MacBook Air
It’s a pain to get anything but MacOS to run on those damn things.
