I’ve noticed in the Linux community whenever someone asks for a recommendation on a laptop that runs Linux the answer is always “Get a Thinkpad” yet Lenovo doesn’t seem to be a big Linux contributor or ally. There’s also at least six Linux/FOSS-oriented computer manufacturers now:
So what gives? Why the love for a primarily Windows-oriented laptop when there are better alternatives?
Cause thinkpads are cheap and easy to come by
Source: i work in ewaste
Out of curiosity, do you ever rescue laptops from your work and use or resell them?
yes. Companies goal is to essentially take in e-waste and used stuff, sort through it and pull out decent laptops/desktops wipe(or destroy) hard drive based on instructions, and resell. The company that gives us the goods gets a cutback of what’s being sold. everything else that is junk is then sorted and recycled to their respective correct facilities. Gotta use the second R in the 3 R’s and the third for whatever is considered old. What’s considered old goods is still very desirable to another company, especially companies outside of the U.S where computers may be more expensive, especially when you’re trying to get them in bulk.
the work laptop I use is definitely used goods, in fact relevant to thread as it is a 8th gen Thinkpad T490.
With everything I hear about good stuff going to waste, I highly enjoyed reading that.
Keep doing what you do, your workplace is cool
In the US a lot of business use them. It’s not uncommon to see a pallet of “old” ThinkPads at the swapmeet selling for less than $200. We’re talking x1 Carbons. These machines have upgradable SSDs, Wifi, and battery. For less than $300 you can get a BEAST of a machine that runs Linux very very well.
Price. You can find second hand Thinkpad’s whereas new laptops are very expensive.
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Secret sauce: it’s much easier to get an employer on board with buying you a Thinkpad as part of a bulk order than it is to get them to spring for any of these more obscure models as a one-off.
Thinkpads tend to have excellent build quality, solid firmware and well thought out design. Price to performance on second-hand models is always outstanding and their popularity ensures hardware compatibility with Linux.
Of the brands you named, I just don’t trust the hardware. Tuxedo computers for example uses Tongfang white-label computers that they just slap their logo on. Quality control isn’t as thorough as Lenovo’s, firmware is sketchy, TDP tends to be all over the place and keyboard quality doesn’t come close.
Thinkpads also have-- and I can’t stress the importance of this enough-- a nipple. I don’t really use it, but if you try to take it away from me I’ll bite you.
yeah good luck getting those brand outside of US
Heck, why buy a pre-made laptop anyway, just take this bag of microchips and this spool of solder and compile your own!
Don’t be silly, you also need some chewing gum and bits of string.
I’d say lack of marketing and higher price tags. Money / Performance ratio is also better with a decent Thinkpad.
Some of these options can’t (or not without high markups) be bought and shipped to Canada.
Because it use common hardware and bought “en masse” by enterprises; they tend to be more supported with FOSS than other options.
I’ve been happy with my used T480 so far.
I second price to performance ratio. If I had more money to burn I probably would go all in on some of these Linux-targeted laptops.
I’d also add a lot of them seem overpowered for my needs. I do like me a big screen but I don’t need a powerful GPU to go with it. I have a desktop rig for that. I can always just ssh into it if I need to do GPU heavy calculations.
Same scenario for me! My laptop only serve to have a device when I’m on-the-go, but at home, I use my desktop. It was one of the reason why I went with an older Thinkpad, it’s well supported and with no dedicated GPU, it’s dead silent most of the time. I’d love a 16:10 screen, but the options are pretty expensive and often not as repairable as my T480.
Haha, I think we’re similar people. I also want a 16:10 screen. Maybe someday.
I’d recommend against any lenovo laptop after the T580 and T490. My company switched to dell since the lenovo laptops had so many failures and weird issues that we’d have to keep an extra one in stock for every 10 in use.
But if the older stuff suits your needs, go for it. Lenovo used to make great laptops.
Agree with this. Any Dell Latitude can easily be as good as any Lenovo in terms of Linux support. Our company has moved away from Lenovo and only go with Dell’s.
I bought a Framework once. The build quality was better than System76, but not great. However, Framework is not a Linux laptop. They designed it for Windows and only afterwards they were surprised to find that people wanted it for Linux.
A lot of Linux laptops don’t have HiDPI displays because they’re not really compatible.
Example Framework: https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-state-of-hidpi-on-linux/8301
For years people have been trying to work around Framework’s poor display choice. And they’re still trying.
If you have a regular DPI display, you get to avoid a whole class of bugs and issues.
If you wanna have a good time with Linux, you need some mechanical sympathy.
Btw, tbh, brb, I’ve had good success with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon. System76 build quality was meh.
As someone running a Framework 13 with Fedora 38 with 1.5 fractional scaling using Wayland I cannot say I experienced the same issue. Everything kinda just worked out of the box.
Personally I couldn’t go back from HiDPI screens. The lower resolution just makes stuff look blurry IMO.
Not everyone can spend +1000 dollars on a computer.
Refurbished ThinkPads are awesome!
- Availability - ThinkPads are very popular in corporate environments and are generally replaced every 2-3 years. Although mostly Intel CPUs, there is a wide variety CPU+GPU available from lightweight to high performance.
- Tough + well built + last forever
- Easy to upgrade/repair. They’re very user-accessible and its simple to upgrade RAM or SSD/M.2 drives. Plus, because they are so popular in the corporate environment, replacement parts (from batteries to WiFi+Bluetooth chipsets to trckpads) are very available and cheap.
- Well supported in most (if not all) linux distros. Graphics just work, trackpads just work, WiFi just works.
- Cheap.
Sent from my ThinkPad T580 (with both an internal and removable battery, I get 10+ hours of battery life)
It saddens me to say this, but don’t buy from Purism. My Librem 5, after 2 years, still didn’t arrive.
100% don’t buy from Purism. I had their laptop. Librem 14? 15? And I gave it away to a friend after about a year. I had so many problems with it.
I had pre-ordered the phone but I asked for a refund just a month or so before everyone started saying they stopped giving refunds.
I have 4 pinephones, while they’re not daily driver ready, they’re awesome little devices and I’ve written a couple things for them. I also have 0 complaints about my system 76 laptop.
I opted for the Fir model, knowing version 2 would probably be 5–7 years away. My wife joked that we would have a school-age child before I got it… except it’s slowly becoming not a joke (and we didn’t even have kids when I preordered).
I believe Dell even has some models that come with Linux preinstalled.
Dell, HP and Lenovo can deliver with Linux pre-installed
