Laptops for linux

Why would you need to spend 900?

Because that's what a laptop with decent future parts supply costs right now. Decent consumer kit is still about 700 anyway.

Pretty much any Lenovo but particularly Thinkpads have a significant following in non-Windows circles and usually get good support.

Well the definition of "decent" is subjective. Someone else can come along and claim you need a 2k laptop for the same reasons.

The OP could get something for 500 quid which would do him grand.

Give me a 15 year laptop which boots up and I'll put a lightweight distro on it and likely be able to do everything I need to do with it

8 Gig of RAM (soldered ... but 8 should be enough to do for the foreseeable future with linux). intel chip. maybe not top of the top, but compare it to top of the top for 5 years ago.

Comes shipped with Windows so if it can run that (even if it struggles a bit) it will have no problem with the OP throwing whatever he needs under an Arch install or even go with something like Mint if he wants a more beginner-friendly set-up. 256GB SSD is well big enough to have a dual boot set up on it as well in case he need to fire up MS.

less than 500 quid

I didn't put any effort into searching for that. Just went to lenovo. I'm sure there are plenty of other better options. Just using this example to show you can get something for less than 500 handily enough

Got a decent Asus recently for the OH for under 500 euro.

15.6" full HD screen, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe, Intel Core i3. Most of what she'll be doing is Excel so a decent size and resolution screen is important, processor and RAM are perfectly adequate and there's a free RAM slot.

I stuck openSUSE on it when I was waiting for my own Dell to be replaced under warranty. Perfectly fine although I didn't try editing any videos or anything 😁

I'd regard 16GB RAM / 1TB SSD and a Core i5 / Ryzen 5 as a minimum for myself but for some reason you pay crazy money these days for anything with 16GB RAM on board, as opposed to something expandable to 16GB.

It's getting to the point now where ESD is too risky for the average user to fiddle with the insides of a laptop. This may or may not have been the reason for the warranty replacement, and yeah I have a wrist strap...

Prices have finally improved a bit in the half a year since that post (had to wonder what this thread was when I saw the notification!)

My 2007 Macbook suffered catastrophic failures of nearly everything (top chassis, twice; camera, battery, charger, hard drive) but I think its shoved in a corner somewhere still... I've also fought a 64 bit OS on to 32 bit UEFI before, not fun

Does any business actually sell Linux laptops, with the O/S installed? As a total newbie, I'd prefer not to be doing the installation myself.

It's as easy as falling off a log. Shrink the Windows partition to whatever you deem acceptable (settings - storage), stick in a USB, reboot, hit whatever the magic function key is on your laptop, and off you go.

openSUSE has never let me down and I first installed it 19 years ago.

Installing GNU/Linux is much easier these days.

Any idea what this means in practice?

Tastaur-Layout nicht standardmäßig, wurde jedoch mit Stickern adaptiert

Keyboard layout not standard, but has been adapted with stickers

Tuxedo Computers in Germany do this. Never tried them myself but have heard good things.

Thanks, not much sign of cost savings there.

Scandinavian keyboard! So I'd need to budget for a keyboard replacement at my local laptop shop - €100 maybe?

Windows costs bugger all to vendors these days and the effort in setting up Linux configuration is written off over less units, so you'll find it near impossible to find a cost saving on a consumer laptop

Business kit sold with FreeDOS installed (to justify that it has an OS and is a complete computer for some countries tax or tarrif rules; nothing else) can be cheaper; but you still need to install Linux yourself then.

If you are absolutely certain you can't install it yourself, that 100 you're budgeting to replace a keyboard (which may not be anywhere near enough on a new unibody laptop - you need to wait until there are second hand parts available) will pay someone to install it for you.

If you want something that's going to have good Linux hardware support, the best machine is always a two year old high end Lenovo. They're the default machine the developers of most non-Windows OSs use, and hence have good driver support - after a while anyway.

The only time I had a "problem" was 3 laptops ago - a Dell with a then fairly new Intel CPU - the hardware function keys didn't work with the "stable" kernel (kernel was too old) but installing the rolling release kernel fixed it.

Since then I got another new Dell - no problems - and a fairly high spec Asus Vivobook recently and again everything "just works".

You can get some great deals on ebay, or maybe I was lucky :)

I had to buy a new battery though, €40 euro.

Had Win/linux on it but now Win/Android!

The last new Laptop I bought yonks ago was a Samsung for €650. Garbage build quality.

This Dell Business lappy has excellent build quality, a great quality matt screen, very solid.

I've seen this model in some of the tech stores in the city but with much lower specs.

I love you can use a smartphone style charger with it via the PD port.

Can't see myself ever paying over €300 for a laptop ever again.

Greetings from Ubuntu-land! I got a cracking Lenovo Thinkpad from a German seller. It came with a Swedish keyboard, so I ordered a replacement UK keyboard from China. I got the lad in the local phone shop to swap the keyboard in today, and I'm left with a fairly cracking machine.

The power lead/connection is a bit different to what I've seen on previous Thinkpads - it looks like a USB-A shape.

The mains plug was European, so I used an adaptor socket. Can I just use any local Thinkpad laptop mains lead instead, or are they different specs at all?

I'm finding my way around Ubuntu. I tried OpenShot for video editing, but had a couple of inconsistencies. I'm trying Hotshot now, so we'll see how that goes. There one strange inconsistency, where the file manager shows a folder on my USB drive to be empty, but when I search for a particular file name, the actual files show up - which is a slight PITA.

Thanks all for the inputs that brought me along the road. It certainly seems like a relief to get away from intrusive MSFT environments.

Thanks, it's the mickey mouse plug at present. I think there's a few lying round in the graveyard in work, so I'll see if I can grab one.

Any advice on the whether antivirus is necessary for an Ubuntu home laptop please? I'm seeing conflicting messages online.