I agree with the point that modern devices like smartphones ad tables aren't a PC replacement. But having to buy a pre-2012 laptop just to be able to install a

I agree with the point that modern devices like smartphones ad tables aren't a PC replacement. But having to buy a pre-2012 laptop just to be able to install a Linux distro is false: nowadays mayor distros support secure boot and if this isn't the case of your distro or it complicates the install process you can easily disable it in most of the cases. Actually I was unaware of the existence of motherboards preventing you form disabling secure boot before reading this article. AFAIK the only laptops where you could actually have problems installing Linux are MacBooks due to a security chip (it's called T9? But also I'm not informed about MacBooks so maybe there's a way around), on all others you shouldn't encounter actual roadblocks, in the worst case scenario you could have some minor hw incompatibility.