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Buy a used Thinkpad. Their compatibility is superb, as many major Linux vendors develop on them. Better to buy older higher-end models than spend the money on n

Buy a used Thinkpad. Their compatibility is superb, as many major Linux vendors develop on them. Better to buy older higher-end models than spend the money on newer models. Buy the highest-end model you can afford. Don't use an ideologically-motivated distro that omits drivers and firmware because they are not Free enough. Use something fairly mainstream, like Ubuntu or Mint. Update its firmware before you install. Shrink the Windows partition but keep it, for things like firmware updates. Nuke the recovery partitions, though; they're junk. Max out the RAM. Have 2 SSDs if they'll fit. OS on one, data on a physically separate one. Used RAM is cheap. Buy matched memory modules. Avoid wireless anything if you can. Wired peripherals, wired network, wired audio. Wired stuff just works.

ahoka 1y ago
Not just Thinkpads work fine (Latitudes are also awesome), what you describe is wisdom from the 2000s. You can just use fwupd to have regular firmware updates, no need to keep Windows just for that. Wireless also works very nice, especially Intel. What can be tricky are fingerprint readers, but some have binary drivers.
- Davidbrcz 1y ago
  Wireless is a gamble, wired works.
- lproven 1y ago
  > Latitudes are also awesome They are OK, but no better than OK and definitely not awesome. IMHO, the build quality is inferior, the keyboards are inferior, the upgradability is inferior, and the pointing devices are inferior. I don't want gestures, but I very much want 3 mouse buttons: I middle-click things hundreds of times a day. I have 2 Latitudes in my "fleet" but neither is a machine I especially like.
ofalkaed 1y ago
Many modern Thinkpads have superb compatibility as well these days, they sell linux laptops and many of their non-linux laptops are fully linux compatible. From what I saw when I was last laptop shopping much of their lineup works out of the box with linux as long as you use a recent kernel. Just search their support forums for the models you are interested in, there generally will be threads on installing linux on them and Lenovo staff will generally be there providing solutions.

ahoka 1y ago

Not just Thinkpads work fine (Latitudes are also awesome), what you describe is wisdom from the 2000s. You can just use fwupd to have regular firmware updates, no need to keep Windows just for that. Wireless also works very nice, especially Intel. What can be tricky are fingerprint readers, but some have binary drivers.

Davidbrcz 1y ago
Wireless is a gamble, wired works.
lproven 1y ago
> Latitudes are also awesome They are OK, but no better than OK and definitely not awesome. IMHO, the build quality is inferior, the keyboards are inferior, the upgradability is inferior, and the pointing devices are inferior. I don't want gestures, but I very much want 3 mouse buttons: I middle-click things hundreds of times a day. I have 2 Latitudes in my "fleet" but neither is a machine I especially like.

ofalkaed 1y ago

Many modern Thinkpads have superb compatibility as well these days, they sell linux laptops and many of their non-linux laptops are fully linux compatible. From what I saw when I was last laptop shopping much of their lineup works out of the box with linux as long as you use a recent kernel. Just search their support forums for the models you are interested in, there generally will be threads on installing linux on them and Lenovo staff will generally be there providing solutions.