My old laptop finally died , it ran every disto I threw at it .Anyone recommend something that will run linux out of the box for around 900 ish.
Why would you need to spend 900?
You’d run linux on a ps1
why are you looking to spend 900 blip 🤷🏻♂️
I know 900 is over the top for a linux machine ,I`m using a dell inspiron 1525 running linux lite (an old college machine 2008)and it not too bad .But I need a new machine and I was wondering whats out there now that I could use for five or six years.
Thanks for the replies
Much appreciated
No , I`m addicted to distro hopping .
Because that's what a laptop with decent future parts supply costs right now. Decent consumer kit is still about 700 anyway.
Pretty much any Lenovo but particularly Thinkpads have a significant following in non-Windows circles and usually get good support.
Dell still do Linux laptops and the XPS 13 is a very nice machine indeed, albeit my work laptop is getting long in the tooth at this stage. The official Linux laptops are above your budget however. That said, a lot of Dells hardware will quite happily run Linux, there's a decent resource page here https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-ie/000138246/linux-on-dell-desktops-and-laptops As others have said, Lenovos have a good rep for being Linux friendly, and I've heard positive things about HP as well. I haven't tried to run Linux on either personally, so can't vouch.
Then there are the custom Linux laptops. I got my personal laptop (fairly high end at the time) from a prior form of these guys https://bestware.com/en/laptop (I had a good experience at the time, but they look like they might have been bought, so I'd do a bit of due dilligence), and Tuxedo https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en Nice thing about these is that you have a fair degree of freedom in choosing spec
Well the definition of "decent" is subjective. Someone else can come along and claim you need a 2k laptop for the same reasons.
The OP could get something for 500 quid which would do him grand.
Give me a 15 year laptop which boots up and I'll put a lightweight distro on it and likely be able to do everything I need to do with it
There really isn't much for 500 quid out there. Celeron powered or with eMMC storage mostly; or hefty 15.6" Ryzens with tiny amounts of RAM.
Right now I wouldn't spent less than 700 for a personal machine I expected to last more than a year, and 900+ for business.
A 15 year old laptop that's still on spinning rust is going to be next to useless these days. If you rebuild it with an SSD you may find that it can only use 2 or 4GB RAM - not enough for normal web browsing anymore, somehow (I used to use the early "web 2.0" on a machine with 256MB perfectly well, the bloat is disgraceful) or is 32 bit only. While there's still 32 bit builds of nearly everything, try find a browser with a 32 bit Javascript JIT or similar - they aren't being maintained so you either have slug speeds or no modern websites. Bit like using 16 bit IE5 compared to 32 bit IE5 if you can remember that era!
8 Gig of RAM (soldered ... but 8 should be enough to do for the foreseeable future with linux). intel chip. maybe not top of the top, but compare it to top of the top for 5 years ago.
Comes shipped with Windows so if it can run that (even if it struggles a bit) it will have no problem with the OP throwing whatever he needs under an Arch install or even go with something like Mint if he wants a more beginner-friendly set-up. 256GB SSD is well big enough to have a dual boot set up on it as well in case he need to fire up MS.
less than 500 quid
I didn't put any effort into searching for that. Just went to lenovo. I'm sure there are plenty of other better options. Just using this example to show you can get something for less than 500 handily enough
That's quite a good deal, I'll give you that. But it is a special offer from the manufacturer for a 700-quid class machine!
My previous laptop was a touchscreen 14" i5 Ideapad (branded as Yoga in Ireland though) which took five years of significant abuse before the board failed; but it had socketed RAM so I'd gone to 16GB.
Personally I hate 15.6" laptops as being too big and bulky, but its the majority of the market these days so clearly that's not a popular opinion.
Thanks for all the suggestions ,I bought a Dell Latitude 3520 i5 with 8 gigs of ram . Very straight forward removing windows and installing Ubuntu .I will use Ubuntu for a bit and then onto something else.
Hey there :)
If you prefer ( just like I do ) to be able to open and see what's "under the hood" -> Framework Laptop ( 100% modular ).
Now, I don't want to make any kind of ads, or whatever... they just provide what we all need - The right to repair.
I do believe you can order a machine with Libreboot / Coreboot pre-installed ( if you say that in an e-mail for example, before you order ). Just like Tux ( by Tuxedo computers )
Basically, you decide and choose what to put inside.
Also, they can install whatever distro you want, or no OS at all.
Worth to check =)
Got a decent Asus recently for the OH for under 500 euro.
15.6" full HD screen, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe, Intel Core i3. Most of what she'll be doing is Excel so a decent size and resolution screen is important, processor and RAM are perfectly adequate and there's a free RAM slot.
I stuck openSUSE on it when I was waiting for my own Dell to be replaced under warranty. Perfectly fine although I didn't try editing any videos or anything 😁
I'd regard 16GB RAM / 1TB SSD and a Core i5 / Ryzen 5 as a minimum for myself but for some reason you pay crazy money these days for anything with 16GB RAM on board, as opposed to something expandable to 16GB.
It's getting to the point now where ESD is too risky for the average user to fiddle with the insides of a laptop. This may or may not have been the reason for the warranty replacement, and yeah I have a wrist strap...
I bought a plastic Macbook in 2007 (don't worry, I put Linux on it from day one) and got ten years of daily use out of it. What killed it in the end was the inability to boot 64-bit bootloaders, so stuck with older OSes (although it ran 64-bit just fine) but mostly the inability to have more than 3GB of RAM. I still have it, it still works, it's got a FireWire port and I keep saying that I must transfer my 16 year old DV tapes over before either they or it dies for good...
Firefox is such a hoor for RAM usage it's unreal. When my laptop was off being "fixed" (6 weeks to realise they couldn't) and before the wife bought her Asus, I was running a Raspberry Pi 3 for a while, Chromium was OK but you couldn't have more than 2 tabs open in Firefox before running out of the 1GB RAM.
Prices have finally improved a bit in the half a year since that post (had to wonder what this thread was when I saw the notification!)
My 2007 Macbook suffered catastrophic failures of nearly everything (top chassis, twice; camera, battery, charger, hard drive) but I think its shoved in a corner somewhere still... I've also fought a 64 bit OS on to 32 bit UEFI before, not fun
Look up some youtube videos for the Lenovo T440p. You can sometimes pick up a refurbished one cheap(even after paying import VAT). Very good linux laptop with lots of upgrade options(has a CPU socket)
Does any business actually sell Linux laptops, with the O/S installed? As a total newbie, I'd prefer not to be doing the installation myself.
Any Dell laptop will willingly accept Linux, especially ubuntu which dell generally test on. Dell publish support profiles against UBUNTU versions so you can check before buying.
EBay has some really good business machine refurbishers at great prices and they are generally near mint. Germany is a good source with no duties to pay. Got a nice laptop for my wife this way and I have a Dell Rugged which unfortunately is about dead after three years hard use.
Watch out for encryted SSD which can make the install tricky and ensure you have the bios password or you are screwed. If you do your due diligence install is a breeze and takes about half an hour.
It's as easy as falling off a log. Shrink the Windows partition to whatever you deem acceptable (settings - storage), stick in a USB, reboot, hit whatever the magic function key is on your laptop, and off you go.
openSUSE has never let me down and I first installed it 19 years ago.
Thanks, looks like some interesting options on ebay at costs that won't be a total disaster, even if it doesn't work out for me, €200-€400.
My key requirements are access to USB drives (camera) and basic video editing.
Installing GNU/Linux is much easier these days.
The processors tend to be a bit off the pace on the recons so go for the highest spec CPU you can find, also a dedicated graphics card might be a good idea but that will limit your options since it's not standard on most business machines.
Any idea what this means in practice?
Tastaur-Layout nicht standardmäßig, wurde jedoch mit Stickern adaptiert
Keyboard layout not standard, but has been adapted with stickers
Yes there are a few odd keys on a German keyboard which can be adapted with stickers ( never bothered myself). It's also noteworthy that German keyboards are based off American layout not British.
My son got his top of the range Laptop direct from Dell as a refurbished new unit, don't know how much he paid but it was quite a saving and he had a decent guarantee.
I wonder what they mean by 'foreign keyboard layout'.
Just to note, the German companies don't just deal in German stock. They have a lot of American stock as well, less so British.
Also at a pinch if the keyboard was the only thing holding you back - they can be changed out.
It's my experience that the Irish refurbers are at least half as expensive again and they tend to have older stock.
Good point about swapping out the keyboard.
So these could well be UK or UK keyboards, stickered to match German layout? With stickers that can be removed presumably?
Tuxedo Computers in Germany do this. Never tried them myself but have heard good things.
I would contact the seller and tell them your requirements.
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