this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Hey all. I've recently swapped to Linux and I've been really enjoying it so far. I'm still pretty new to basically every aspect of it, though, so I'm not super sure what things I should be wary of with regard to hardware, in particular with Mint.

I was looking at buying a newer laptop to keep up with my main game, but it occurred to me that newer hardware may come with either a host of issues or be less supported than older hardware.

Any advice for laptops in this regard?

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[–] a14o@feddit.org 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Lenovo ThinkPads work very nicely with Linux, and there's a large second-hand market. The T and X series are especially great I find.

The usual advice about avoiding soldered RAM holds in general, but right now used laptops are being bought just for stripping RAM. So I think putting up with soldered RAM in second hand devices (I'd go for at least 32G) can be a smart move because it may be a better deal (and often a smaller form factor).

[–] MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 40 minutes ago

Yeah, tell me about it on the price. I'm tempted to just bite the bullet on low framerates to see if prices come down, but this upgrade is already close to a year out anyway, so who knows. Maybe it goes up? Maybe society collapses, haha.

I've never ended up upgrading RAM in a laptop, though. Is soldered versus not soldered really that huge of a deal? I mean, outside of what you mentioned here regarding the price.