I am looking for a cheap, light, tough, relatively fast laptop to replace my decade-old lenovo. It will be my daily computer for browsing, documents and occasional photo editing. I will install eitherUbuntu or Mint.
I am looking at thinkpad x13 gen 1. It looks like the processor has an impact on the way it will be running, with different performances between ARM AMD and Intel.
Can I buy either one or I there a real compatibility issue with intel?
I would stay away from ARM, you’ll have much more compatibility with an x64 cpu from AMD or Intel.
In Sweden Lenovo are currently having a clearance sale 50% on the P14s AMD Gen 5 with 8840HS, if you have the same in your country it’s great value.
https://www.lenovo.com/se/sv/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/lenovo-thinkpad-p14s-gen-5-14-inch-amd-mobile-workstation/21me002xmxWow, seems great. They sell those in my country too, without any OS. However, I am trying to stay away from new stuff. That’s why I was looking for an older by capable laptop
Aight, I would try to grab myself an AMD Ryzen with Radeon 780m igpu or at least 680m igpu to get relative strong graphics at a low power draw. The 780m is a beast of an igpu.
AMD is generally better but compatibility wise both should be fine.
I’m in a similar situation atm and have also been looking at Thinkpad x13 as well as x390 and older Dell XPS models. I’m a bit afraid that 8gb of RAM might be not enough in the future (afaik most of these have soldered RAM) but so far I did not run into problems with 8gb on my current laptop. Generally Thinkpads and XPS have very good Linux compatibility from what I heard.
ARM and Intel should both work well, I think (this might change for newer computers in the future since Intel let go a lot of their Linux devs in 2025 iirc).
Love my OG Lenovo Legion Go. I use it for everything.
The Dell outlet store also often has some truly kickass deals on certified refurbished laptops.
I don’t know anything about the specific computer you’re talking about, but usually the issues are with ARM.
Yes, I meant AMD… Thanks though
You don’t really need a fast laptop for this, anything that goes over 10000 points on the Passmark CPU test, is enough (and with an integrated Intel cpu, if you want the best support for video codecs).
In Europe, the cheapest way is to get a DELL that comes with Linux. They’re 99.9% compatible, with firmware updates supported via fwupd on linux, the only thing is hit or miss is palm rejection on the touchpad. Everything else works. In Greece these start at 600 euros with 16 GB of RAM, 750 euros for 32 GB of RAM. I bought one myself recently, with an intel cpu at 15k points on passmark. Plenty fast. Only thing that doesn’t work accelerated is Blender (it works in cpu mode only), as it requires non-integrated GPUs. Resolve works now with intel gpus on linux too, and so is kdenlive.
OK, thanks for the tip. I might buy a new laptop or no laptop at all (I’ve been battling for two hours a canon printer that won’t print anything but blank pages with my Ubuntu distro)…
Which model canon exactly? I personally use an epson and it works out of the box.
It’s the LBP510dw. Ubuntu uses a generic driver that sends the printing command to the printer but only blank pages and/or one line of gibrish are printed. I installed CUPS but I get a “cups_handleerror” message printed upon switch on
I think you mistyped your model, it’s 151, not 510. These are the drivers for linux that work in conjuction to CUPS: https://www.usa.canon.com/support/p/imageclass-lbp151dw After installation, if it doesn’t work, it’s because these drivers haven’t been updated since forever… The blame is on Canon.
Hurrah!!! It works!!! (Although it works better after I installed Synaptic; I am new to this…)
Yes, that’s the one. I’ll try installing said driver and will keep you posted. Thanks
Just get anything with 16 gigs or more of RAM and 512 gigs of storage.
