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Buying a new computer to run Linux on - suggestions?
(midwest.social)
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I will say that a second-hand ThinkPad is a great option. They can be real cheap, but you can also get a pretty decent new one for your budget.
You can likely find great T480-T495 that fits your needs really well.
I HIGHLY recommend against the T495. That thing has a great keyboard, fingerprint sensor, okay camera and mics, okay ports. But it is underpowered af, and Thinkpads always have the Thinkpad price.
It has a great chassis, but my coreboot Clevo NV41 has double the performance and kinda same battery life.
I disagree with it being underpowered for regular office use and media consumption. If you can get your hands on a 16 GB RAM one, it should be able to handle just about anything other than gaming.
The RAM doesnt matter, it has 8GB builtin (or is there a 4GB model??) and one slot flexible.
Yes the CPU is okay for regular office stuff. But the AMD linux support was suboptimal, I had regular suspend-resume issues where the lockscreen would freeze and I needed to hard shutdown.
And... for some reason that thing doesnt even boot anymore. Removed the battery, using official charger. Doesnt boot into the BIOS anymore, no idea what I could do honestly.
Maybw the mobo is damaged...
I'm farting around on a T480 for school and light retro gaming. Works great! Super easy to upgrade too
Another vote for the T480. I have a T480s running Mint and it's been lovely. No driver issues and for office/light media creation/consumption it seems to work without a hitch.
Agreed, I love mine.
A T460 is good as well.
I would vote against getting something like a T490 as it has one memory slot soldered onto the motherboard and it has the same processor as the T480 anyways iirc.