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?
It comes down to price. You can buy used ThinkPads and replacement parts for them quite cheap a lot of the time.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at devices from places like System 76 but if I recall correctly they are still over a thousand dollars when a used ThinkPad T440P for example can be found for around two hundred dollars.
Framework laptops are interesting and I hope eventually the modularity allows the components to go down in price. Right now I was looking at a 16 (which all sold out within 3 hours of pre-order launch) but it comes out to easily over 3k CAD for a disassembled kit, skimping on RAM and an SSD.
yoo I didn’t know about used/refurbished Thinkpads being that cheap, I just checked and indeed you can find a T480 with 16GB of RAM for $248 on Amazon!
T480 is solid as hell, had one as new in my last job, a bit heavier but very serviceable, would recommend.
You can find them for much cheaper than that on eBay. I just got my wife a T490 for $125 on eBay. No SSD, but I had one sitting around.
Would also recommend the T480. Got mine for around €280 total (including shipping from ebay).
If youre looking definitely try them out
I can confirm this with personal experience. Wife has T470 (if memory serves, something around that) for 100€. That was from previous work and they offered my old laptop for cheap, so it doesn’t really count as average, but not uncommon either at least around here. I got myself T495 a while ago for 299€ from “public” market and have been purchasing couple years old thinkpads for decades now. There’s plenty of those available, they work just fine for the workload we have for laptops (I got a separate desktop for more power hungry applications) and they’ve proven to be pretty reliable workhorses since the brand was owned by IBM.
Framework specially is really interesting approach and I’d love to test to their hardware, but they don’t have Finnish keyboard available just yet and I can get several used thinkpads for the price of one framework, so as long as I’m using my own hard earned money I rather spend it on a known brand where I already know what I’m getting into and spend considerably less money while doing so.
Also with linux thinkpads tend to work just fine or at least there’s documentation and howtos to get everything working.
Where did you find a t495 for that price of you don’t mind me asking?
Taitonetti.fi. Local shop which refurbishes and sells previously leased computers, so their selection varies quite a bit, but I’ve been a happy customer for years and they have frequent sales for the ‘last of the batch’ computers where mine came as well. However I think they don’t ship to outside of Finland, so it might not be so helpful for you.
I also agree with this sentiment. I got a used t440p which I used for years in school before upgrading to the framework 13. I still love my old thinkpad, but its now my cheap in home media server. I would agree that old thinkpad are easy to find and a cheap (but still very useable and still to some extent repairable) option for work and school.
T440P is cheap for a reason. Personally I don’t want a 6 pound laptop with a decade old CPU and a crappy TN screen. Something like a used T480 is reasonable though I guess
I use an early 2010s Thinkpad, with Ubuntu, and I can play Minecraft pretty well on it. It’s great. I don’t often carry it places, it’s a desk laptop, but I don’t know of any other affordable laptop that would have such a long useful lifespan. If you know of any, please tell me, but my experiences has made me quite the Lenovo loyalist.
Replacement parts are a bitch though. At least when it comes to batteries. The only battery I’ve seen with any positive reviews are Green Cell which is European, so shipping is absurd, and Duracell which no longer produces thinkpad batteries.
Those linux laptops are too expensive and they are not available in some countries
Used thinkpad is much cheaper
Maybe there’s a better place for this question, but how do you make sure a used laptop is safe? Or would removing Windows and installing Linux be enough?
I want to buy a laptop for Linux, and would buy a used one so that it’s cheaper but I have to admit I worry about it. I know one could be worried even about new laptops and what manufacturers could be up to, but I feel like the unknown arbitrariness of a used laptop gets to me.
You could look into a Libreboot compatible model. When buying a used laptop for Linux the big thing you need to be careful of is a locked BIOS
this is what Im going through right now haha, found a old laptop in our ewaste but the bios is locked, watching a few videos on how to reset the bios I have to take the whole thing apart to short out two pins, might be worth it but it is definitely a project for another day
Depending on the model you might want to take a look and see if something like coreboot is available while you’re at it
Whoa thank you I’ll have to check it out, looks like skulls would work for my w530
That is a good point about the locked BIOS that I hadn’t thought about. Thanks for bringing that up!
You should be fine if you just wipe the drive and install the OS of your choice. That’ll get rid of whatever they may have installed on it.
Because of better accessibility. How so?
Because not everyone has the money to afford these new and expensive laptops designed for a niche market. They are still enthusiast-grade products, the prices speak for themselves.
Because not everyone comes from Europe / US can easily find these with affordable shipping.
Because these laptops are only normally offered new, which, for responsible and personal ownership, is excessive. There are thousands of used hardware lying around, why not put some life back into them instead?
It comes down to price, availability and ethical concerns. Unless money doesn’t mean anything to you, why do you need a $1000 laptop when someone wants a device for higher education or personal casual use? The world doesn’t need more rampant marketing of niche, hyped-up tech. While a fully-FOSS system may be the ideal machine for every Linux enthusiast, we live in a material world with finite resources and chasing after some unicorn laptop is unsustainable.
Cause thinkpads are cheap and easy to come by
Source: i work in ewaste
Exactly this. Second hand thinkpads are stupidly cheap – I’m currently typing on my $180AUD laptop. I never buy new.
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
On what marketplace Are they sold? And can I buy a quantity of 1?
very rarely sell in quantities of one, but usually some of the end clients are resellers. If you’re ever like on Amazon and find refurbished dell desktops, or any laptop in general (including apple products), there’s a decent chance it came from an e-waste organization first before being bought by a reseller in bulk. There are some companies who “bling” old desktops and resell them in the market place.
How much product do you move? I know there are enthusiasts buying old thinkpads, but I eidnt imagine it’s enough that a whole company can sell a bunch of them with ease
i cant give specific numbers of course, but in the hundreds/low thousands typically per order.
Yes, exactly this. The alternatives would cost close to $1k as starter.
Because not one of those laptops have a TrackPoint style mouse.
You mean the nipple mouse?
Could be worse.
https://xkcd.com/243/I always called it a nub. I haven’t used one as an adult but I could definitely see myself calling it the clit mouse.
Nub is correct, also nubs are best laptop mouse once you get to know them.
Edit, Lenovo now calls them “Caps” and that is lame.
What makes them the best? I find them very difficult to use effectively.
A few benefits:
- You turn off the touch pad and then you can type without hitting the mouse
- Using the laptop in awkward positions (crammed behind a rack for example) is a lot easier
- Minimal movement needed to use, not going to yeet a coffee over.
- Once you get the hang of them they seem more responsive then a touch pad and a bit more precise (opinion I know)
Same. I had a couple of Thinkpads ages ago and just couldn’t get used to it. Not enough control over acceleration and deceleration. I guess it is nice to not have to relocate your hand from the kbd all the time but…yeah.
the nippleclit
In France I’ve always call this a clit or clito since they exist (80s? 90s?)
In the Netherlands, I’ve always known it as “the clit”, the same goes for my dad who’s been in the IT since the 80s.
Are you suggesting that the nub is a good thing? When I still bought laptops I would dismiss any that had the red nub.
I love clits and nipples but I always found that nub so weird.
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A few years ago I bought a librem 13 and it was the biggest piece of trash I’ve ever had the displeasure of owning.
I’m curious. why?
The biggest issue was the phone - Librem 5 - many customers waited 4 (or 5?) years and what they got was underwhelming. Purism originally provided “refund anytime” policy, but once customers started using that they lied they didn’t promise that (disproven with wayback machine). The only reliable way to get the money back is to sue them in small court. They also had some other shady stuff.
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I know nothing, why is Purism a scam?
Louis Rossmann did [a video exposing their behavior] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s) ,which was confirmed by others in the purism subreddit. They’re acting super scummy and shady, leading people on for months and years about getting refunds and then ghosting them.
Also @ derbolle@feddit.de
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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Scam is too strong of a word. I’ve got a Librem 5 and it works. I had to wait several years to get it, yeah, but that’s about what I expected. Can’t comment on their laptops, but I still doubt that scam is the right word.
sham, maybe? like a scam but it’s just REALLY not worth it and it not actively malicious, just incompetent
They can be found cheap as shit. I got a great t480 for less than $150 and another $50 I upgraded my RAM and battery. It’s a really nice laptop and only cost me a couple hundred.
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.
Wish i had access to such cheap hardware. Companies in my country use them till it gets junked and most refurbishers sell for maybe 20% less than brand new but with significanly reduced warranty.
Cost.
Older Thinkpads remain extremely capable and (crucially) highly repairable. The T series in particular is also better built (read: more solid chassis) than many others, including some on this list.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to support these alternatives given the absolute shock difference in cost. $300 bucks for a used T series gets you a lot from a customizability, repairability, and reliability standpoint.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to support these alternatives given the absolute shock difference in cost. $300 bucks for a used T series gets you a lot from a customizability, repairability, and reliability standpoint.
- bios updates leaves you at the mercy of the manufacturer;
- not every bios and distro works w lenovo’s bios update utility;
- and your battery life & performance has a big dependency on your bios so using something that it’s not designed to handle (eg anything that’s not windows) will result in less than optimal results. 3.5) same goes for hardware eg nvidia
I’ve had 4-5 such systems running Linux and never experienced any issues with BIOS.
Obviously you shouldn’t get a model using nvidia if you want to run Linux on it (unless you are aware of the extra time it takes to set up and the other pitfalls). I do actually have a T440p with a 730m in it – and it’s fine, I just run the open-source driver.
This is just fear mongering and wrong.
If you’re a FOSS enthusiast, might as well buy one of the models that are supported by Libreboot
Cost and availability.
Most of those laptops cost over 1000€ if not even closer to 2000. And they don’t seem to ship to all countries.
While you can get a good used Thinkpad for 500€ everywhere in the world.
And that’s with shipping included.
And the CPU + RAM upgrade.
The only good system on that list is the framework and it’s $2800 for my ideal version.
Last year’s Thinkpad P-series goes for around $400 on eBay.
Also, at least on the British Lenovo site, you can order one without Windows, which saves you £90 (115USD).
First of all I wouldn’t use a pre-installed OS (I would always wipe and install my own for security reasons).
Secondly: Thinkpads (at least when I bought mine, last year) let you buy them without an OS and don’t charge you for it.
Thirdly: the linked manufacturers above tend to be either US-centric and/or more expensive than Thinkpads.
I usually grab a 3-4 year old Thinkpad every year or so for anywhere from free to 300 bucks. I pick them up from old corporate liquidation lots. Usually grab one that is a little dirty or beat up and then just clean it up and install my own SSD and upgrade ram from my stockpile.
I like some of the others on that list, but with how cheaply and easily I can get a Thinkpad, I just can’t be bothered to spend more. I use my laptop mainly for code, and I do a lot of low-level programming so performance is usually way more than enough. The programs I write are extremely small and very efficient. Any processor from the last 20+ years will run what I am usually working on.
When I want to spend big bucks on a computer, I put that money towards my desktop where I do more gaming and some digital artwork.
Where do you buy them from?
I usually look for corporate office liquidations in the paper or on social media. Other than that, I stop into colleges and businesses and ask them if they have hardware they need to recycle. Companies usually pay for recycling, so sometimes they will just give you stuff to lower their recycling cost.
And lastly, ebay if all else fails.
None of them are available in my country
Even if they’ll sell one to you internationally, you’re probably shit out of luck if something breaks and needs to be fixed under warranty.
I yearn for a starfighter and they send to my country but my government has an astronomical tax on anything priced over 200 dollars.
Price. You can find second hand Thinkpad’s whereas new laptops are very expensive.
