I would like to buy myself a second hand and install Linux on it. I was looking into ThinkPad T14 gen1 or gen2 devices because of their maintainability and repairability. I found one where I live with a Ryzen processor but it has the wrong keyboard. How easy and expensive would it be to swap this with US English? Are there any good alternatives to the ThinkPads? I fancy the X1 but don’t like the fact that I cannot change or swap anything on it. The T14 looks very bulky and unattractive but at least can have the RAM upgraded and the battery changed.

I fancy the Framework laptops, but don’t want to spend so much on a laptop. Especially the latest 16 inch with Ryzen AI CPUs.

The T14 G1 is at least cheap, like 350€ with the 400 nits low power display and the battery is at 99%. I guess with tlp installed and autocpugfreq I can get 5-6 hours out of it.

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    Thinkpads and Framework are top tier. Then there’s the “Linux first brands” like System76 and Tuxedo. All of those will work flawlessly.

    Then the “generally work well with Linux” like Acer, Lenovo, and Asus; maybe some HP, LG and Samsung. Then the “probably runs Linux fine, but it’s a weird brand” like Redmi, Chuwi, and Gateway.

    Then the “avoid at all costs” like Dell, Apple, Microsoft Surface, a lot of HPs, and anything with a Qualcomm ARM processor.

    • Laser@feddit.org
      2·
      6 hours ago

      Then the “avoid at all costs” like Dell

      Must have gotten lucky then. Bought a used Dell about one and a half years ago. Everything worked out of the box

      • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        I think some of their business oriented laptops are fine, but every consumer model I’ve owned, I’ve had problems with. I can’t trust them anymore, especially since they marketed an XPS as working with Ubuntu, then later changed their marketing to remove the fingerprint reader, which didn’t actually work with Ubuntu. I bought that machine solely because they promised me it fully worked with Ubuntu.

    • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      Nowadays with Apple, the bigger issue is the ARM Linux ecosystem being neglected in terms of support rather than the hardware compatibility (that is for M1/M2). The hardware for the most part works except for USB-HDMI and fingerprint (which didn’t work on my HP laptop either).

    • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      The Qualcomm stuff is actually coming along, as is Apple. They’re on pace with pretty much any non-raspberry pi SBC.