Laptops for linux

You’d run linux on a ps1

why are you looking to spend 900 blip 🤷🏻‍♂️

Dell still do Linux laptops and the XPS 13 is a very nice machine indeed, albeit my work laptop is getting long in the tooth at this stage. The official Linux laptops are above your budget however. That said, a lot of Dells hardware will quite happily run Linux, there's a decent resource page here https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-ie/000138246/linux-on-dell-desktops-and-laptops As others have said, Lenovos have a good rep for being Linux friendly, and I've heard positive things about HP as well. I haven't tried to run Linux on either personally, so can't vouch.

Then there are the custom Linux laptops. I got my personal laptop (fairly high end at the time) from a prior form of these guys https://bestware.com/en/laptop (I had a good experience at the time, but they look like they might have been bought, so I'd do a bit of due dilligence), and Tuxedo https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en Nice thing about these is that you have a fair degree of freedom in choosing spec

There really isn't much for 500 quid out there. Celeron powered or with eMMC storage mostly; or hefty 15.6" Ryzens with tiny amounts of RAM.

Right now I wouldn't spent less than 700 for a personal machine I expected to last more than a year, and 900+ for business.

A 15 year old laptop that's still on spinning rust is going to be next to useless these days. If you rebuild it with an SSD you may find that it can only use 2 or 4GB RAM - not enough for normal web browsing anymore, somehow (I used to use the early "web 2.0" on a machine with 256MB perfectly well, the bloat is disgraceful) or is 32 bit only. While there's still 32 bit builds of nearly everything, try find a browser with a 32 bit Javascript JIT or similar - they aren't being maintained so you either have slug speeds or no modern websites. Bit like using 16 bit IE5 compared to 32 bit IE5 if you can remember that era!

That's quite a good deal, I'll give you that. But it is a special offer from the manufacturer for a 700-quid class machine!

My previous laptop was a touchscreen 14" i5 Ideapad (branded as Yoga in Ireland though) which took five years of significant abuse before the board failed; but it had socketed RAM so I'd gone to 16GB.

Personally I hate 15.6" laptops as being too big and bulky, but its the majority of the market these days so clearly that's not a popular opinion.

Hey there :)

If you prefer ( just like I do ) to be able to open and see what's "under the hood" -> Framework Laptop ( 100% modular ).

Now, I don't want to make any kind of ads, or whatever... they just provide what we all need - The right to repair.

I do believe you can order a machine with Libreboot / Coreboot pre-installed ( if you say that in an e-mail for example, before you order ). Just like Tux ( by Tuxedo computers )

Basically, you decide and choose what to put inside.

Also, they can install whatever distro you want, or no OS at all.

Worth to check =)

I bought a plastic Macbook in 2007 (don't worry, I put Linux on it from day one) and got ten years of daily use out of it. What killed it in the end was the inability to boot 64-bit bootloaders, so stuck with older OSes (although it ran 64-bit just fine) but mostly the inability to have more than 3GB of RAM. I still have it, it still works, it's got a FireWire port and I keep saying that I must transfer my 16 year old DV tapes over before either they or it dies for good...

Firefox is such a hoor for RAM usage it's unreal. When my laptop was off being "fixed" (6 weeks to realise they couldn't) and before the wife bought her Asus, I was running a Raspberry Pi 3 for a while, Chromium was OK but you couldn't have more than 2 tabs open in Firefox before running out of the 1GB RAM.

Look up some youtube videos for the Lenovo T440p. You can sometimes pick up a refurbished one cheap(even after paying import VAT). Very good linux laptop with lots of upgrade options(has a CPU socket)

Any Dell laptop will willingly accept Linux, especially ubuntu which dell generally test on. Dell publish support profiles against UBUNTU versions so you can check before buying.

EBay has some really good business machine refurbishers at great prices and they are generally near mint. Germany is a good source with no duties to pay. Got a nice laptop for my wife this way and I have a Dell Rugged which unfortunately is about dead after three years hard use.

Watch out for encryted SSD which can make the install tricky and ensure you have the bios password or you are screwed. If you do your due diligence install is a breeze and takes about half an hour.

Thanks, looks like some interesting options on ebay at costs that won't be a total disaster, even if it doesn't work out for me, €200-€400.

My key requirements are access to USB drives (camera) and basic video editing.

The processors tend to be a bit off the pace on the recons so go for the highest spec CPU you can find, also a dedicated graphics card might be a good idea but that will limit your options since it's not standard on most business machines.

Yes there are a few odd keys on a German keyboard which can be adapted with stickers ( never bothered myself). It's also noteworthy that German keyboards are based off American layout not British.

I wonder what they mean by 'foreign keyboard layout'.

Good point about swapping out the keyboard.

So these could well be UK or UK keyboards, stickered to match German layout? With stickers that can be removed presumably?

I would contact the seller and tell them your requirements.