Linux

Old ThinkPads

If you haven’t already bought something:

What do you have now?

I would generally recommend against chromebooks. They’re often aimed at the lowest end of the market and have esoteric processors and boot processes that will make you frustrated.

I would generally recommend against small laptop manufacturers like framework etc. because of parts availability. People will say that you can get parts from the manufacturer but for how long? People will say you can make the parts themselves because the design is open source but I have a board etching setup, hot air station and injection molding machine and I don’t do that.

Obviously if you just want to “vote with your dollars” the above doesn’t matter.

If you want to get a laptop that’s gonna run linux well and last a long time get a used business class machine. There will always be a huge market for parts and they have almost always had someone put the effort in to document getting their distro to work right on their work assigned computer.

The black sheep option is to get a mac. Parts are everywhere for cheap and every microsoldering and computer repair shop will work on them because so many people have them and want to get them fixed. Obviously do your research first, but asahi is coming along and you’ve always got a Unix system to fall back on if it isn’t working out.

Used thinkpad is an easy choice. If you want new, I've been very happy with the framework 13

You have plenty GNU/Linux compatible OOTB laptop manufacturers like:

Tuxedo

Slimbook

System76

Purism

Framework

StarLabs

Also check this for buying preinstalled libreboot laptops (some of the upper ones already do) minifree.org and here how to do yourself if you feel confident libreboot.org

Also you can consider buying a Dell laptop or Lenovo Thinkpad

I strongly recommend buying a laptop with AMD graphics, either integrated or external, for getting the best compatible machine for GNU/Linux, and avoid Nvidia, and Intel too if possible

My daily driver is a 10yo Dell business laptop. Before that I ran a similarly aged Lenovo. I run mint.

In my experience, the amount of ram and an SSD are the biggest contributors to how good the performance feels. Running mint on 4G is possible, but performance is comprised. 8G is perfectly fine most of the time. 16G (my current setup) is peachy keen. I'm astounded what I can do in blender on a 10yo machine.

That said, if you can afford one (and they operate in your country - they don't here), then grab a framework, like others have said. If that's not an option, then add some ram and an SSD.

My 2c.

I just sold my Framework 13 after daily driving it for a year. The HiDPI display bugs and workarounds just got too annoying.

I went back to my old Dell XPS 13 9310 and I'm loving it.

I've been enjoying my Thinkpad E16 1st gen AMD on Debian 12. You do have to run a newer kernel to get it working. I ran into a bit of Wi-Fi trouble because I accidentally got a Realtek model, but I've long since fixed the issue entirely - I've posted the solution elsewhere here.

On another note, maybe we should just have a yearly hardware recommendations post pinned on this forum - it feels like we get a question like this every week or so and they sort of clutter the forum, no offense intended to OP.

Edit: Here's my Linux Hardware probe from when I first got the laptop https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=1e50fb1862

How about a "native" Linux laptop such as the Tuxedo Infinity Book Pro 14, or a similar model? That should provide more than enough power for the tasks you mentioned. There is also Slimbook, who make different Linux laptops though they are a little lesser known I think.

Framework. Check the refurbs shop and get a great deal.

Stay away from Chromebook anything unless you get it for free.

Frameworks are the best modern laptop by far imo.

I've shopped around for a 12+ hour Linux laptop, I think you should wait a little while to pull that trigger, Qualcomm isn't exactly great /w Linux, RISC is currently tripping on its own laces and people just aren't interested in making this kind of thing exactly, yet.

I'm guessing that in a few years a lot is going to change with low power laptops that can still compute efficiently.

I have a 5 year old laptop that when I set it to highest efficiency can get almost 4 hours as long as I'm not doing 200 things, which is fine most of the time.

Plus I've read in a bunch of places that putting standard Linux on Chromebooks is way more complicated than it ought to be, so I'm not sure I'd pull the trigger on that without first researching the specific laptop you're looking into.

Not that I've tried personally, just the Internets.