Working on the assumption that Win10 being EOL is going to cause an influx of old hardware becoming available, I was thinking it might be a good time to start looking for a good deal on a laptop for travel. It doesn’t HAVE to be an old unsupported laptop, but saving something from e-waste is a bonus. Here’s the kind of thing I’m looking for.
- Something small-ish, around a 13" screen.
- Can install Linux. Generally a given, I know. But I think not always an option with Chromebooks? I’m OK with a Chromebook as long as I can replace ChromeOS with Linux.
- X86_64 preferred. For games, though obviously not a great platform for that. Not opposed to ARM, but the PineBook Pro is compelling as a small low-cost ARM laptop, it’d have to be a better deal than that.
- Somewhat serviceable. I’d like to have the option to replace the batteries, storage, and memory. Being able to replace the wireless card would be nice.
- Durable would be a bonus. It probably won’t see a lot of use, but it’ll get tossed around in a backpack or in luggage.
- Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.
All of that might be too much of a unicorn, but if I can find a good deal that mostly fits, I’ll be happy.
Thinkpads were basically made for Linux, depending on your Budget you can get a Thinkpad X220, X230, T420 or T430 for small money - perfectly usesble machines and Linux (my experience is CachyOS & Arch) work out of the box.
For a bigger budget i could recomment the T480, it’s still upgradeable.
And for a bigger budget i’d recommend a T14 GEN2
Are the T14’s easily upgraded too?
unfortunately not, power wise it only lets you upgrade the RAM.
but those CPU´s are vastly superior to those 2nd and 3rd Gen i7´s you can put into a t420/t430
the german website https://thinkwiki.de/ has detailed information about possible upgrades of every model :)
I never came across that site before. Thank you for the useful info.
glad i could help :)
If you are super cheap like me, but enjoy well made machines try out an ancient macbook pro. I have a 2011 macbook pro 13" with the first gen (I think?) I5 CPU and 4gb ram. Got it from eBay, it used to belong to a school and someone ground the engraving off the lid, but there is a vinyl skin covering the damage.
It only cost me $40 Canadian, the battery lasts like new, and it came with a new charger. I installed arch Linux, on a new sata ssd, and its been great! WiFi was harder to get setup, but I figured it out. Can’t get Bluetooth working…
I love that it has a DVD drive, many ports including Ethernet, SD card, enough USB.
Its slow, but keeps up with everything I do… Mainly use it for watching YouTube, watching my jellyfin library, listening to music, using telegram, light python projects, some web site development with Hugo, and I ssh into my main PC with it.
Look for dell latitudes with 7th and maybe 8th gen Intel CPUs. Those are solid machines that aren’t considered upgradable to win11. They also have removable RAM (DDR4 IIRC) so many can be upgraded to 32GB max.
eBay Thinkpad all the way. T460-480 are what I usually go for. Easily less than 200 bucks.
I like my Panasonic CF-RZ6 a lot, it has i5-7y57 with 8GB ram and mSATA 512GB SSD. 10" size and 1920x1200 display about ~700g, also has many USB3, RJ45, 3.5mm jack, HDMI and DSUB(!). Sadly the battery life is mediocre, parts are impossible to find. And it’s generally hard as hell to find outside japan. I’m not in Japan but was very lucky to find one for about 150$USD in second hand market.
I don’t have any specific recommendations for you, but I will say that
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pretty much every modern Chromebook will be able to have Linux installed over ChromeOS. You might have to open it up and remove a write-protect screw.
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Linux is a surprisingly good platform for games these days, actually. Steam has done a lot of work to get it there.
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If you’re wanting lightweight specs, you’re probably going to find the best bang for your buck in an old Chromebook; however, I don’t know if you’ll see as many of those coming on the market, and you’ll want to watch out for old school devices. Those things get worked over pretty hard.
• pretty much every modern Chromebook will be able to have Linux installed over ChromeOS. You might have to open it up and remove a write-protect screw.
I did exactly that. That thing with the screw is only for older models. I did it on a somewhat newer model and I had to open it up and disconnect the battery. Newer models need a SuzyQ cable to switch from ChromeOS to Linux. All of them need to run the MrChromebox script after disabling write protection. Well, except ARM Chromebooks. They are not compatible with the script. For some of these devices PostmarketOS is the way to go.
ARM Chromebook running non-chrome is, afaik, barely functional to get to a terminal. Don’t think of running anything Linux on them unless you really like hardware development.
SOME models do work pretty good with PostmarketOS. Very few with all hardware features working, some with nearly all features working. Mostly classical laptop devices. Convertibles and tablets on the other hand work generally less good. Well of course there’s a gigantic shitload of devices that don’t even have a functional display and a even bigger pile that’s not even booting.
Interesting. Some of them are just dip switches, too. I hadn’t heard about needing a cable, that’s an interesting wrinkle.
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For under $200 you can either get a used thinkpad t series or a dell business notebook. You can also get an Intel mac for around that price. The difference in serviceability is often what can be done by you with a screwdriver set and guitar pick versus needing a hair dryer and plastic putty knife.
You could try to get a dell xps 13”. I currently have fedora installed on my xps 15 that’s about 11 years old and it’s been working pretty well. I’ve replaced the battery and changed storage on mine so they’re fairly serviceable. Built pretty sturdy and have great keyboards and trackpads. Good screens too.
I recently got a think pad from the prior generation, so like 2-3 years old. It’s been good for most things, but I’m not trying to play the latest graphics heavy game on it either.
The Pinebook Pro is unfortunately not a very good laptop. It’s very slow, has a weird storage setup, and the hardware isnt 100% supported by any distro even now, years later. The battery also takes forever to charge and doesnt last all that long.
I get better performance on a Raspberry Pi 4 and even that is too slow for me
It was a cool idea and if the software support was there it might have become a very compelling laptop, but as it currently exists the PBP is not worth what it costs
Check thrift shops.
I’ve seen plenty of Chromebooks and older Windows laptops for $10-25.
MX is my preferred distro to put on them, though there are plenty of good, small distros.
Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.
web browsers are pretty fucking heavy these days, I think the minimum spec for an “ok” experience is a 3rd gen quad core “mobile” chip like the 3612qm or an 8th gen quad core “ultrabook” chip like the 8650u
I got two laptops from local electronics recycling this past month. One of them is 2020 spec and just needed a charger and some dents smoothed out. Can’t beat rescuing something that’s going in the trash, sustainability wise. If you’re going on the actual used market, Thinkpad like everyone else said.
How does one actually get laptops from local electronics recycling? I keep reading about getting EOL equipment but details on how to actually get one’s hands on such equipment are scant.
I love the Panasonic toughbooks. Most of them have a handle so they’re great to carry around like a briefcase. Had mine in the boot during driver safety training, it got knocked around voilently, not a single scratch. Also put a SSD in, running it with pop OS since many years.
Thinkpad X1 Nano. Great specs, approx. 920 grams, super lightweight. Decent CPU and RAM (I did some light video editing on mine and it’s great), and a 2k screen (13 inch).
I’m using Debian on mine, works out of the box (like all Thinkpads, in my experience).
A quick search suggests all X1 Nano models can run Windows 11, so they won’t be ultra-cheap because of that.
I just bought one used (Gen1) for 450 EUR, I’d consider that cheap for this kind of hardware.
Alternatively look for Thinkpad X13 (Ryzen), slightly bigger, great hardware and value.
